The Business Firm as an Enterprise Entity. Perspectives from Accounting, Economics and Law[L'Entité Entreprise au croisement de l'économie, du droit et de la comptabilité]

Today, the business firm faces major upheavals, such as globalization and financialization, which have been challenging the frameworks used to understand, manage, and govern it. Understanding the business firm and how it operates thus requires a combination of knowledge drawn from accounting, economics, and law. Their coordination is based here on the concept of an entity or dynamic system. Every organization thus constitutes an entity — that is, a socio-economic universe characterized by the interaction among the individuals who enact it and with the social structures that define it. Accounting, control, and audit arrangements are defined within this framework as an "accounting system," an integral component of the dynamic system that is each organization. This institutional approach challenges contractualist perspectives; the shareholder governance model; international accounting convergence and the fair value accounting model; and, more generally, the place and role of the accounting system in corporate management, governance, and social responsibility.