Abstract

This chapter outlines the sources of public accountability in financial accounting practices and how public accounting attempts to ensure financial accounts are trustworthy. External parties often have limited powers to compel managers to reveal financial information, and so laws and regulations require managers to account for the resources entrusted to them. The chapter also examines the demands for accounts beyond the financial to a broader range of subject matters such as environmental accounting and corporate social responsibility reporting. The chapter looks at the macro roles of financial statements and other accounts as acts of public accountability as well as the micro roles of accountability practices and pressures on individuals involved in attesting to these accounts as being “true and fair.”