THE FASBS CONCEPTUAL-FRAMEWORK, FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING AND THE MAINTENANCE OF THE SOCIAL WORLD

This paper addresses the functional failure of the FASB's Conceptual Framework. It suggests that the reason for the problems encountered by the FASB in its CF project (and those encountered in other CF projects), is that the FASB CF is elaborated around a highly problematic conception of the relationship between financial accounting and economic reality. The CF involves a process of mundane reasoning around a central incorrigible proposition of our society, that social reality exists objectively and intersubjectively. This paper draws on anthropology to show that this assumption of a concrete, objective social reality is a product of everyday reasoning such as that of the FASB members. A comparison of the FASB's reasoning about economic reality, with the reasoning of the African Azande about their poison oracle reality, shows how those two realities are both socially maintained by the same process of commonsense reasoning. A number of important implications follow which extend beyond CFs and financial accounting practices. These implications relate to the essential culture and value-dependency of logic, reasoning and rationality, and have attendant inferences for the potential role of accounting researchers in influencing society rather than merely participating in the legitimizing and reproduction of the status quo. © 1991.