It's 2022: What is accounting today? Redefining accounting for tomorrow

Seminar abstract

What is accounting today? Are conventional definitions of accounting adequately descriptive and relevant? What accounting is not is mere neutral, benign, technical practice. Importantly, accounting is social practice and moral practice as understood in academe based on the valuable research of accounting scholars in the sociological, interpretative and critical traditions around the globe during the last four decades. The presentation proposes a new definition of accounting for discussion, debate and, in due course, adoption. It will depict accounting as a discipline that has yet to reach its true potential. What is that potential? Accounting can indeed help to shape a better world. The implications for teaching accounting and the future value of an accounting education or understanding are addressed.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

We welcome you to join us online on Wednesday 19 October at 9am.

Speaker bio

Professor Garry Carnegie

Professor Garry Carnegie became an Emeritus Professor of RMIT University on 1 January 2018, having served as Head, School of Accounting and Professor of Accounting at RMIT from 2010 to 2017. Subsequently, he was Education Advisor at CPA Australia for a period of 18 months. During his Headship, the annual RMIT Accounting Educators Conference was inaugurated and mounted and he was a Chief Investigator of the CPA Australia research study on “Shaping the future of accounting in business education in Australia”.

Prior to joining academe, Garry gained experience in the IT industry, professional accounting services and in the financial services industry. He worked full-time in the Australian higher education sector from 1985 and held full-time professorial posts in accounting from 1994 at Deakin University, Melbourne University Private/The University of Melbourne and University of Ballarat (now Federation University Australia). Since 1993, he has been a member of the Editorial Board of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ), becoming an Associate Editor in 2013. Across a continuous period of 25 years (1995 to 2019), he served as Editor/Joint Editor of Accounting History and, in 2020, was the Consulting Editor.

In 2020, he received the Academy of Accounting Historians Hourglass Award and, in 2021, an AFAANZ Life Membership Award. In 2019, he was admitted as a member of the AAAJ Accounting Research Hall of Fame. He is a member of both CPA Australia and CA ANZ.