Redistributing responsibility: a diffractive approach to corporate accountability

In this paper we draw on Barad’s posthuman performativity and diffractive methodology to provide insights into the ethical dimensions of accounting and financial reporting practices to understand corporate accountability differently. We focus on the production of a financial report, turning our attention to the intra-actions of both human and non-human agents that enact material-discursive boundaries. These boundaries create world-knowing ‘representations’ and, in doing so, perform accountability. By adopting Barad’s approach, we demonstrate the ethico-onto-epistem-ology of financial reporting using an illustrative case. This case study explores the reorganisation strategy of a former asbestos manufacturer and its attempts to evade compensation payments by redistributing this responsibility to a separate legal entity. However, artefacts such as financial reports, leave ‘traces’ of practices, human and non-human agency and boundary-making intra-actions which reveal a prioritisation by those charged with governance with safeguarding shareholder wealth and delivering a technical, rather than, moral or ethical accountability.