Jean-Luc Moriceau, Géraldine Guérillot, Isabela dos Santos Paes. Repentirs and incomplete-able accountability. Hugo Letiche; Ivo De Loo; Carolyn Cordery; Jean-Luc Moriceau. Accounting research : ethnographic methods in organisation and accounting, Routledge, pp.255-268, 2024, Business for Society, 978-1-032-44289-1. ⟨10.4324/9781003371441-16⟩.

In this chapter, Jean-Luc Moriceau, Géraldine Guérillot and Isabela Paes bear witness to ethnographic accountability as never fully achievable as narcissism is always a looming threat. The starting point is an award-winning social responsibility project operation by a French company. Ethnography in Senegal, the destination country, evidenced that accountability had been incomplete and partial. While the published ethnographic account seemed accurate at the time, faces and landscapes were later encountered in the field that continued to haunt them. Methodologically, the authors suggest that ethnographic accountability may have less to do with reflexivity than with the (always difficult) ability to listen to the Other. Accountability is never complete-able: one must always be ready to encounter other voices and faces that challenge and deconstruct what one thought was the ‘right’ or ‘richest possible’ account.