Six Capitals, or Can Accountants Save the Planet – Rethinking Capitalism for the Twenty–First Century - Hardcover

Gleeson–white, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393246671 ISBN 13: 9780393246674

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015

Synopsis

This is the story of a twenty-first-century revolution being led by the most unlikely of rebels: accountants. Only the second revolution in accounting since double-entry bookkeeping began, it is of seismic proportions, driven by the 2008 financial crash and our ongoing environmental crisis. The changes it will wreak are profound and far-reaching and not only will transform the way the world does business but also will alter the nature of capitalism.While the wealth of nations and corporations has been vital to the global economy, increasingly the world is coming to realize that such endless growth is limited by the earth's resources and comes at a huge price to the planet and to human well-being. It simply cannot be sustained.This revolution demands that we go beyond merely accounting for traditional financial and industrial capital and take account of the benefits and detriments to the natural world and society. It urges us to include four new categories of wealth: intellectual (such as intellectual property), human (skills, productivity, and health), social and relationship (shared norms and values), and natural (environment). Making them part of our financial statements and GDP figures may be the only way to address the many calamities we face.Six Capitals

About this title

About the Author

Jane Gleeson-White is the author of Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance, which won the 2012 Waverley Library Award for Literature. Gleeson-White has degrees in economics and literature from the University of Sydney.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393246671
• ISBN 13: 9780393246674
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304