Rethinking Financial Reporting: Reinstating the Social License of Limited Liability

Abstract

Shyam Sunder’s monograph ‘Rethinking Financial Reporting: Standards, Norms and Institutions’ explores the extent to which it is possible to deliver ‘better financial reporting’ so as to support investment decision making and valuation. In this review paper it is argued that a more fundamental and radical challenge is required in a world where financial reporting is politically and socially constructed. The institutions governing financial reporting have pursued a project that has been complicit in undermining the social license granted by limited liability. The priority is to explore how financial reporting might contribute to securing the social license granted by limited liability.