Critical Perspectives on Accounting 23 (2012) 201–212 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Critical Perspectives on Accounting journa l h o me pa g e: www.elsevier.com/locate/cpa Understandings of accountability: an autoethnographic account using metaphor Jane Gibbon Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 28 August 2009 Received in revised form 18 October 2011 Accepted 1 November 2011 Keywords: Accountability Autoethnography Metaphor Social account Not-for-profit a b s t r a c t The practical engagement of developing social accounts has provided me with an opportu- nity to consider different understandings of accountability. My reflective personal account, an autoethnography, explores difference in approaches to and insights into accountabil- ity in practice. The changed understandings of accountability developed during and after the production of two sets of social accounts with a not-for-profit organization. As part of the sense making process within the personal account, generative metaphor is used to enable reflection on the problem of accountability within social accounts. In this case the problem is both acknowledging and recognising the effect of my approach to and under- standings of accountability during the production and reporting of two social accounts. The first social account was developed with a more formal and instrumental approach to accountability than the second which drew upon the initial experience and understanding of the first included a broader and more complex view of accountability. The recognition of a changed appreciation of accountability through the experience provides a deeper view of how accountability can be played out in practice with a not-for-profit community based organization. The result is my acknowledgement of a broader more encompassing notion of the complexity of accountability as part of a fragmented and changing world (Miller, 2002). By acknowledging this complexity I have opened a space that enables me to recognise the influence of my approach to accountability in practice. There is a need to recognise how we approach accountability in order to counter the current dominance of calculative forms of accountability from the ‘business case’ perspective supporting control of powerful elites that steer society. An accountability that includes complexity and the non-calculative is a more appropriate form for a not-for-profit organization rather than a dominant calculative accountability. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Understandings of accountability can change through experience. Accountability is not always, although is often under- stood to be, a clear formal linear process of responsibility (Roberts, 1991, 1996) firmly dominated by the calculative. Although the onus is on a quantitative, market based accountability a divide between the narrative and quantitative within is iden- tified in an educational context by Kamuf (2007). The conversion to monetary value is being included across all experience in order to convert everything into universal monetary value, especially where the US leads an accountability movement that is determined to “close down any pockets of resistance such as the university” (Kamuf, 2007, p. 255). Universities are often, surprisingly, not-for-profit organizations and the particular concern of the strengthening influence of a quantitative accountability can also be seen within other not-for-profit organizations. It might be expected that a not-for-profit context is E-mail address: jane.gibbon@newcastle.ac.uk 1045-2354/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2011.12.005