Social and Environmental Accountability Journal

Accounting, accountability, and animal flourishing

This Special Issue explores animal flourishing in the context of accounting and accountability. The concept of flourishing has received little attention in accounting research to date, where it has primarily been considered in terms of organisational flourishing, or profitability, and to a lesser extent, in relation to humans (see Bebbington, 2021). A recent accounting definition positions accounting as enabling the flourishing of organisations, people, and nature (Carnegie et al., 2021). Here, flourishing of nature refers not only to species and ecosystems, but also extends to the flourishing of individual animals (Powell, 2026). Flourishing of animals is often discussed in terms of opportunities to exercise one’s capabilities, that is, the Capabilities Approach to flourishing. The Capabilities Approach, originally developed for humans and subsequently extended to sentient nonhuman animals, refers to innate capabilities, or substantive freedoms, that are central in leading a flourishing life (Nussbaum, 2023). For animals, this represents opportunities to exercise their agency and subjectivity through free movement and autonomy in how they live their lives, including sensory stimulation, play, imagination, emotions, and developing relationships with others and their environment (Nussbaum, 2011, 2018).

In considering animal flourishing, it would be useful to investigate what is meant by flourishing for animals given they occupy vastly different spaces, including domesticated, liminal and wild (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2025). Domesticated animals, for instance, occupy spaces where relations are designed and controlled by humans. Liminal animals live alongside humans, occupying the space between wild and domestic. The flourishing of wild animals presents further unique considerations in terms of conservation approaches, where not all approaches recognise or prioritise individual animals. Traditional conservation practices tend to operate at the collective level often focusing on protection of threatened species, particularly those considered ‘charismatic’ from a human perspective (Colléony et al., 2017; Kuokkanen, 2024). Additionally, there is a focus on removal of introduced species which can involve harmful and lethal methods toward individuals. This is particularly the case for animals that are deemed to be non-native or ‘invasive’ and which, in the species hierarchy, are considered lower value than animals that are endemic to a particular geographical area (Washington, 2018). The focus on ecological collectives can thus result in the marginalisation of individual wild animals, who are perceived to be mere components of a larger system, rendered valueless, and thus readily sacrificed in prioritising collectives (Fredriksen, 2016; Wallach et al., 2018).

The Special Issue invites authors to consider if/how accounting practices could shape conditions for animal flourishing, how such flourishing could be accounted for, and organisational accountability for animal flourishing. We now propose a range of suggestions for further research in this area that have the potential to offer important contributions in making animals visible within accounting (Vinnari & Vinnari, 2022). Possible areas to explore include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Accounting and animal flourishing
  • How could accounting help to shape the necessary conditions for animal flourishing?
  • How could we account for, or work to enable, the flourishing of individual animals, including those who have preferences that diverge from species-specific capabilities?
  • How would we go about accounting for animal flourishing? What forms would these accounts of flourishing take?
  • It has been suggested that accounts of animal flourishing might be produced in spaces where the aim is to provide opportunities for animals to exercise their capabilities, such as sanctuaries for rescued or formerly farmed animals (Powell & Vinnari, 2025). Where else could we find existing examples of accounts of flourishing?
  • What opportunities exist for accounting and what does flourishing mean for animals across varied spaces (domestic, liminal, wild)?
  • In what ways could multispecies justice (Celermajer et al., 2024) inform alternative forms of accounting that recognise agricultural animals beyond inputs, labour, and ‘units’ of production?
  • What kind of accounting practices could address better justice for domesticated and liminal animals? How could accounting practices be reconfigured to support multispecies flourishing across various spaces (e.g., farms, households, cities, conservation areas) without privileging one species (i.e. the human) over another?
  • To what extent is flourishing possible for domesticated animals living in relationships of asymmetrical dependency (Nussbaum, 2023), or for liminal animals that are frequently considered to be ‘pests’?
  • How could accounting contribute to conservation efforts that recognise individual wild animals alongside ecological collectives? How could aligning with compassionate conservation (Cardilini et al., 2026; Wallach et al., 2020) and/or multispecies justice approaches assist with these efforts?
  • How could accounting navigate the ethical tensions that arise when working towards simultaneous flourishing of individual animals and ecological collectives?
  • What can we learn from compassionate conservation and multispecies justice in attempting to balance flourishing across ecological levels? How could such place-sensitive, contextual approaches to conservation (Reed, 2022) assist in achieving this balance?
• Accountability and animal flourishing
  • What should organisations be accountable for in terms of animal flourishing?
  • To what extent are organisations accountable for animal flourishing and how could organisations demonstrate their accountability?
  • In considering the change needed to enable greater flourishing of animals, what are the collaborative opportunities between companies and other organisations?
  • How could accountability approaches resist perpetuating the human/nature binary and instead enhance understanding of human and nonhuman reciprocal relations needed to promote animal flourishing?
  • What responsibilities do organisations have in terms of supporting wild animal flourishing? Would this support involve human interventions designed to provide opportunities for wild animals to exercise their innate capabilities? If so, what form and extent could these interventions take?