Financial accounting and reporting : sustaining relevance in the present time paradigm

Abstract

Accountants are looking for innovative solutions to challenges and problems that seem to become increasingly numerous and complicated. Researchers debate whether the emergence of these challenges is due to a general dissatisfaction with the existing accounting paradigm. This article therefore presents a transdisciplinary approach aimed at creating a new accounting paradigm. The discipline of accounting is challenged by blending the limitations within the present paradigm with the discoveries in physics and quantum mechanics. This study shifts the attention to those aspects of reality that characterise today's accelerated social change, disorder, instability, diversity, disequilibrium and non-linear relationships - all with a heightened sensitivity to the flow of time. By interpreting financial accounting and reporting from this perspective, new perspectives are offered from a holistic paradigm of transcendence in relation to the arrow of time and information capacity.