Concluding conference: Ecology and accounting philosophies

Concluding conference of the research programme “Human Enterprises: Ecology & Accounting Philosophies” common to the Collège des Bernardins and AgroParisTech.

Accounting, philosophies and ecology. These words seem to be opposed to each other and yet everything brings them together. While ecology seems to permeate all current debates, the issue is still too often treated in a technical and superficial manner – just like our vision of accounting. Yet ecology requires us to re-interrogate our relationships with the world, and to lay the foundations for new forms of organisation and human enterprise. But how can we conceive, construct and frame human action? This is precisely the role that has been assigned to accounting since the beginning of civilisation and which is found in our modern organisational systems.

For three years, a multi-disciplinary research team (managers, economists, philosophers, ecologists, jurists, anthropologists, etc.) from French and British academic institutions and civil society, in collaboration with artists, has been working on this question: what greening of accounting to serve what project for an ecological society? What is at stake in thinking differently about accounting, but also about ecology? What does it mean to take seriously the idea of accounting as a genuine philosophical system of human action, at the level of companies and ecosystems, in order to address ecological issues? And what are the potential pitfalls?

This colloquium, organised in an academic day and a morning with decision-makers, will be the occasion to conclude and present a synthesis of this programme.

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