Approaches to decision making and accounting at the national- and business levels have to be reconsidered in light of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution of land and water, land-use changes, lack of equality and other problems. Cost-Benefit Analysis is clearly not helping to address these issues. In this book, Positional Analysis is advocated as a multidimensional and ideologically open approach. Positional Analysis is based on a political economic conceptual framework (as part of ecological economics) that differs from neoclassical ideas of individuals, firms and markets. It also raises issues of how national and business accounting can be reconfigured to meet these challenges.

Table of Contents:

List of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Democracy as a lead concept in dealing with sustainable development (Peter Söderbaum)

Chapter 2: Fundamentals of sustainability economics and positional analysis (Peter Söderbaum)

Chapter 3: Mainstream economics and alternative perspectives in a political power game (Peter Söderbaum)

Chapter 4: Positional analysis as an approach to decision-making, accounting and democracy (Peter Söderbaum)

Chapter 5: On the need for broadening out and opening up accounting (Judy Brown)

Chapter 6: Positional analysis in relation to other pluralistic accounting practices (Judy Brown)

Chapter 7: Sustainability, ethics, and democracy: A pluralistic approach to the navigation of disagreements (Malgorzata Dereniowska)

Chapter 8: Positional analysis and practical ethics (Malgorzata Dereniowska)

Chapter 9: Democracy, sustainability and positional analysis: An interview with Peter Söderbaum (with introduction by Judy Brown)

Chapter 10: Philosophy, ethics and positional analysis: An interview with Peter Söderbaum (with introduction by Malgorzata Dereniowska)

Appendix: The early history of positional analysis (Peter Söderbaum)

Index

Judy Brown is a Professor of Accounting at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Peter Söderbaum is Professor Emeritus in Ecological Economics at Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden.

Malgorzata Dereniowska is an Associated Member of GREQAM-AMSE, Aix-Marseille University, France.