Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Science, engineering, and all other learned disciplines, as well as our socio-political-economic organizations are artifactsresults of our imagination and ingenuity. Modern corporationa marvel of organizational engineeringwould not be possible without imagination. To run organizations, in the face of the centrifugal forces of divergent self-interest and inherently dispersed information, we need accounting. Accounting, too, is an artifact that arose from human imagination, as a precursor of, or contemporaneously with, mathematics, writing and the civilization itself. We explore the case for imagination in our discipline with respect to its environment, scholarship and instruction. Specifically, accounting scholarship includes examination not only of the way things were and are, but also of how they can be. Why should we imagine alternate scenarios, instead of simply waiting for changes to occur, or being forced upon us? We must do so, because imagination is necessary to bring about innovation in practice and in institutions, so our children might live in a better world.
Author: Shyam Sunder
Institutions: Yale University, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics
Language: English
Subfield: Accounting
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3123488560