It was only meeting up
with David Owen and, subsequently,
with Reg Mathews, James Guthrie and
Lee Parker that provided the support to
take this 'social accounting' seriously.
The turning point was the 1987 book
with Dave Owen and Keith Maunders -
Corporate Social Reporting. Not that
resistance disappeared at that point - or,
indeed, has disappeared since. Active
hostility to environmental issues in accounting
was present until 1990; active
hostility to social accounting was present
until the mid 1990s; and passive
hostility - or, at best, overwhelming indifference
- is still present in both the
profession and academe4. Social and
environmental accounting has garnered,
and continues to garner, considerable
hostility from critical theorists, feminists
and post-modernists - and although this
critique continues, it has helped generate
a more coherent theoretical basis for
social accounting.