What is measured counts: harmonized corporate reporting and sustainable economic development

Abstract

Keynes argued for the continued prioritization of economic goals over social needs on grounds that the time was not right for social conscience to prevail: "For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight" (1930, cited in Schumacher, 1973, p. 22). This essay illustrates the role that accounting plays in confining management practices within the "economic necessity" tunnel amidst social and environmental degradation. A recent report on The World Bank's performance in developing countries is used to argue that the conventional accounting framework is not an appropriate tool to guide organized effort in balancing the competing-interdependent needs of multiple stakeholders.