Title: Resilience for whom? Accounting as immunological work and the selective construction of organisational futures

Abstract:

This paper critically examines how accounting practices construct and distribute organisational resilience across socio-ecological spheres. Moving beyond the prevailing view of resilience as a capability housed in organisational resources, structures, or functions we propose an ontological shift drawing on Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of “anthroposphere”. We argue that resilience arises from the immunological relations among accounting, human actors, and material infrastructures that create and calibrate membranes between adjoining organizational spaces. These relations are characterised by permeability (how membranes protect or exclude from signals and claims) and selectivity (the distribution of protection and exclusion).

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with executives, senior managers and key informants from the accounting departments of two organisations in the fashion industry, the paper reveals how accounting sustains selective resilience by conferring legitimacy and agility within organisational bubbles while filtering out uncomfortable dependencies and vulnerabilities. This raises important questions about whose resilience counts and how.

The central contribution of this study is to conceptualise immunological work as the ongoing, iterative process through accounting continuously redefines what can be absorbed, what must be displaced, and who remains entitled to protection as conditions evolve. It does so, by thickening or thinning organisational membranes thereby redistributing who is shielded, who is exposed, and which futures become actionable in the name of resilience. We show that resilience is not a generic capacity, but the outcome of patterned immunological operations performed through accounting. These operations shape, in systematic ways, who is cushioned from shocks, who is required to absorb them, and which futures are rendered thinkable and actionable in the name of resilience.

Short Bio:

Laura Mazzola is a Lecturer in Accounting at Royal Holloway, University of London. She holds a PhD in Business and Law, specialising in Social and Environmental Accounting, from the University of Bergamo, and was a visiting scholar with the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) at the University of St Andrews. Her research sits at the intersection of sustainable development and organisational practice, examining how accounting technologies and accountability mechanisms are used to govern sustainability issues. Her work focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals, accounting for poverty, and, more recently, accounting and resilience.