Sustainable Development and Emancipatory Accounting

The term emancipatory accounting refers to the idea that accounting has the potential to become knowledge that can free humanity from social injustices and environmental crises. Pala Molisa in an article entitled "A Spiritual Reflection on Emancipation and Accounting" published in 2011 in Critical Perspectives on Accounting believes that accounting is essentially a liberating knowledge. The emancipatory potential of accounting knowledge can be realized if the requirements are met. The requirements are the erosion of spiritual alienation efforts while continuing to promote spiritual development efforts. These efforts must be made at the individual and community level.

The main essence of an emancipatory struggle lies in the efforts of spiritual realization to free humanity from social injustices and environmental crises. This struggle requires change, especially the change or transformation of spirit. This process is possible because human beings are essentially both immanent and transcendent. This means that humans are spiritual beings. Humans can not be separated from the element of spirituality which is inherently transcendent. Every struggle that adopts sustainable development as its spirit will fail to achieve its goals if humanity does not have the required level of spiritual awareness. These efforts have long been attempted by various religions in the world. In the lessons of the world's leading religions contained the principles of spirituality about the harmony of life, namely wisdom, love, compassion, understanding, and empathy. In the principles of spirituality contained the values ​​of emancipation as valuable guidelines for humanity in developing a harmonious life in the ecosystem they occupy. Of course, it is not misleading if anyone believes that the willingness and ability to achieve higher levels of spirituality is a real challenge for humanity in its efforts to achieve sustainable development goals.

Reduction, even cessation, of social injustices and environmental crises are also important themes attempted in the sustainable development agenda. It can be said that sustainable development is an emancipatory project that views and places humanity at the center of its struggle. This concept can be easily found in textual sources of sustainable development thinking published by international bodies under the auspices of the United Nations. Recognition of humanity's central position in the sustainable development agenda must be understood as recognition of its transformative capacity.

When the principles of spirituality are adopted by a community and inhertited from generation to generation, these principles can be built into local policies that are deeply rooted and embedded in the practices of daily life. The principles of spirituality that underlie local wisdom can guide humanity into emancipatory behaviors. The wise behaviors can encourage the achievement of harmony in life, exactly as aspired and fought for in the agenda of sustainable development, harmony between the achievement of economic, social, and environmental goals.

The aspect of harmonizing objectives is also an important guideline for the sustainability of business organizations, the place where accounting takes its crucial role. In business practice, the important role of accounting is undeniable. The cliche definition "accounting is the language of business" clearly implies that. Business practices that require long-term sustainability must have an emancipatory character as their spirit, so that they can harmonize the achievement of economic, social and environmental goals. A sustainable business organization needs a language that is able to resonance the emancipation and harmony it aspires for. In other words emancipatory business practices must be facilitated by emancipatory accounting practices as the catalyst. This condition mirrors the need to develop emancipatory accounting and discover characteristics that must be attached to it. Through emancipatory accounting, accounting practitioners will be able to provide mechanisms to facilitate and encourage business entities to apply emancipatory business practices, business practices that can create freedom for the ecosystem, current generations and future generations.

To be able to play that important function, emancipatory accounting must have three basic characteristics, namely (1) accounting is aimed at and having the role of providing information about the ability of business entities to carry out business activities that emancipate ecosystems, intrageneration and intergeneration; (2) accounting must take the role as a catalyst for the creation of emancipatory business practices by continuously encouraging spiritual transformation through education for business and accounting practitioners; and (3) accounting must act as a business information system that facilitate the implementation of economic, social, and environmental accountability by business entities to preserve the harmony of life guided by the concept of integrated-in-harmony view of sustainable development.

The three basic qualitative characteristics of emancipatory accounting must be developed and translated [by accounting transformers] into accounting concepts that guide the making of standards to regulate emancipatory accounting practices. Accounting practitioners are recommended to be able to utilize their transformative capacity properly. They are required to educate themselves to obtain a higher level of intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual awareness, so that they can take a central role (means become an active catalyst for change) in the sustainable development agenda.