Abstract
Despite analyses of accounting standard-setting as a political process, how controversies over proposed accounting technologies proliferate and endure remains largely under-studied. To explore this, we take a distinctive approach to the one taken by existing studies that has largely focused on constituents’ interests and ideological conflict. Drawing on the notion of the ‘political’ of artefacts from actor-network theory we investigate how the features of accounting technologies become objects of contestation during due process deliberations. We employ the case of other comprehensive income (OCI) and use empirical evidence from standard setters’ discussion papers and users’ responses to these to identify and discuss the ‘political qualities’ it is attributed with. We find that the articulation of these qualities works to amplify the controversies OCI is designed to address and to create new controversies. Our analysis reveals how controversies around accounting technologies can interact and multiply forming ‘political situations’ resulting in inadequate or incoherent policies. Accounting technologies are also found to be ‘ontologically political’ as their qualities are shaped and contested in their construction prior to their actual use, implying that alternative configurations are both possible and imaginable. Overall, our paper demonstrates the value of studying the object-centred socialities of accounting regulation.
Keywords
Accounting standard setting; Actor-network theory (ANT); IFRS; Other comprehensive income (OCI); The 'political'
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1. Introduction
As a former politician, I have done my best to keep ‘wheeling and dealing’ at bay and to keep accounting as apolitical as possible … But in the end, it is about trying to find the right accounting solution, rather than the politically expedient one … I think we have been largely successful in this balancing act, but I have to admit that [a recently published] IFRS [standard] is still subject to controversy (Hoogervorst, 2021).
The development and application of international financial reporting standards (IFRSs), although based on the principles of harmonisation, have not led to a reduction in political disagreements over how accounting problems are addressed. As the comments above by the previous International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) chairperson demonstrate, IFRSs in fact generate new sets of objects which are rife with dispute. This situation introduces an interesting puzzle: how controversies around particular accounting technologies created by standard-setting activities evolve and sometimes proliferate even after the promulgation and application of standards.
An issue that relates to this puzzle is that when standard setters develop an accounting standard, they are actively producing a narrative around the ‘technical’ casting aside any of the ‘political’ of accounting (Young, 2014). Complex matters are presented as problems that can be readily resolved by choosing among possible solutions, such as accounting technologies and their features. Such technologies are strategically designed to appear as the most rational, technically sound, and appropriate manner to address an identified problem to serve users’ needs (Young, 2006). This approach appears to overlook how the construction of an accounting problem and suggested solutions may generate multiple lines of contestation that can pose further problems. We thus conceive of an accounting technology as an object constructed by standard setters to address an accounting problem which is attributed with features and effects that are open to contestation.
Existing literature on the politics of accounting regulation provides us with insights into what provokes controversy in the development of accounting standards. A strand of research on the political economy of accounting more broadly (Cooper & Sherer, 1984; Tinker, 1980) and of accounting standard-setting in particular (Königsgruber, 2010; Perry & Nölke, 2006) highlights the role of accounting in sustaining existing power structures and questions the neutrality of standard-setting bodies. The development of accounting standards is analysed as involving struggles aimed at serving the interests of dominant economic actors, such as multinational corporations and financial institutions, and adhering to neoliberal ideologies while marginalising alternative socio-economic perspectives. A strand of research focusing particularly on the influence of lobbying in the development of accounting standards provides us with understandings of standards as the outcome of negotiations and compromises around actors’ – both standard setters’ and their constituents’ - predetermined interests and ideas (see e.g., Becker et al., 2021; Bengtsson, 2011; Botzem, 2012; Chahed, 2021; Hussein and Ketz, 1980, Hussein and Ketz, 1991).
Such understandings imply some form of acceptance of finalised standards, where controversy is reduced or removed, despite some constituents left disgruntled. Taking this approach comes with a ready acceptance of optimality across two issues. The first is that constituents are left optimally disgruntled (Fogarty et al., 1994). The second is that the most optimally possible standards and associated technologies emerge; ones that, despite their limitations, will likely result in the best possible accounting numbers reported. Yet, such acceptance of optimality leaves us with rather rationalist accounts of how controversies arise and are addressed, usually focusing on wider structural and institutional dynamics.
In this paper we take the perspective that we need a different approach – one that engages with studying the particular characteristics of contested objects – in order to provide alternative understandings about how controversies over accounting standards proliferate and persist. We therefore distance ourselves from perspectives on the ‘politics’ of accounting standard-setting as discussed above and adopt a ‘political’ stance as advocated by actor-network theory (ANT). For this approach we take inspiration from the works of Andrew Barry (Barry, 2001, p. 7; Barry, 2013a) who defined the ‘political’ as “an index of space of contestation and dissensus” counterposed to politics which relates to “particular institutionalised conflicts” and of Liliana Doganova (Doganova, 2024) who studied how technologies acquire ‘political qualities’ in the sense that they create debates about their uses and effects that transcend their assigned function. Our study is motivated by the overarching question of: how do accounting technologies animate controversies? More specifically, we ask: how are the technical features of accounting technologies turned into political issues? How are political qualities attributed to accounting technologies? How do these political qualities create new controversies and amplify existing ones?
We explore these questions through the case of the development of other comprehensive income (OCI). OCI can be conceived of as an accounting technology created by standard setters. In a political sense, technologies are political artefacts; they are “ways of building order in our word” (Winner, 1986, p. 28). OCI has been proposed by standard setters as a solution for the broader problem of reporting financial performance and in particular for the problem of how to report controversial gains and losses, resulting largely from fair value measurements, outside net income (Detzen, 2016; Durocher, Picard and Dugal, 2024a, Durocher, Picard and Dugal, 2024b). OCI represents an interesting case to study our research questions as it is regarded one of the most controversial topics of accounting standard-setting (Schipper, 2022). This is because despite being proposed as a solution to issues such as avoiding volatility in net income, its construction led to further issues that invited discontent and that called for further resolution. Also, given that OCI is inextricably linked to other controversies such as the debate on fair value accounting, it is curious to study how it acquires political qualities relative to such controversies and forms what Barry, 2012, Barry, 2013a terms as a ‘political situation’ where a controversy about a technology is related to other controversies about related matters.
As we already know, uses and users of an accounting technology are assumed, or imagined, by standard setters when an accounting technology is designed (Young, 2006). We thus start with a position that in the design of OCI standard setters make hypotheses about its functionalities and explore how users react. Previous work exploring actual users’ views empirically has provided us with insights that users hold dissonant evaluations compared to those of standard setters when it comes to technologies loaded with political tension such as fair value accounting (Georgiou, 2018). Users are also found to frame debates such as those on goodwill impairments in irreconcilable ways (Durocher & Georgiou, 2022). Comparing and contrasting real users’ views with the hypotheses that standard setters make will therefore enable us to uncover the 'political' of OCI.1 We take a focus on how naturalised uses of OCI are turned into ‘matters of concern’ (Latour, 2004a, Latour, 2004b) by financial statement users.
With this paper we seek to make two contributions. The first relates to our understandings of politics in standard-setting processes. By taking a detour from existing approaches to politics, we analyse controversies as flowing from the political qualities of accounting technologies themselves that arise in deliberations. Such an understanding of politics enables us to develop critical observations in relation to the development of accounting standards. Controversies are bound to multiply and intersect leading to ‘political situations’ which often result in inadequate or incoherent policies. Accounting technologies are also found to be ‘ontologically political’ as their qualities are shaped and contested in their construction and could hence be otherwise.
Our second contribution relates to our understandings of OCI accounting. By analysing documentary evidence involving draft papers published by standard setters and responses to these by financial statement users, we identify and discuss four political qualities of OCI that cause controversy. We find that debate over OCI constitutes it as an object extending beyond financial performance presentation and is found to be further problematising what constitutes financial performance, generating conflicts about the presentation of financial performance, intensifying debates on measurement, and challenging approaches of developing standards. In this way we contribute to the emerging interpretive-critical work on the topic (Detzen, 2016; Durocher, Picard and Dugal, 2024a, Durocher, Picard and Dugal, 2024b; Durocher & Neal, 2025) and respond to calls to explore the social issues underlying the computational practices of ‘profit’ (Lowe, Nama, Bryer, et al., 2020; Lowe, Nama, & Preda, 2020). Our findings also enable us to reflect on the impact of users’ interventions in articulating the qualities of proposed accounting technologies.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In the next section we outline the notions from an ANT-inspired theory of politics that we use to study controversies over accounting technologies and present our arguments for using OCI as a case study for this. In Section 3 we discuss how we collected and analysed our empirical material. We present and analyse our findings on the four political qualities of OCI that cause controversies in Section 4. The discussion in Section 5 provides further analysis of the empirical evidence highlighting how controversies over OCI relate other controversies about related matters creating a ‘political situation’ and the potential of our political stance for providing critique for standard-setting activities. Concluding remarks are provided in the final section.

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