The Humanization Of Accounting: A Dialogical Exploration By Doctoral Students On Love-Based Accounting

Abstract

This study aims to explore the pure consciousness of accounting students in interpreting the phenomenon of Love-Based Accounting as a form of humanization of conventional accounting practices, which are considered too mechanical and positivistic. This study employs Edmund Husserl’s descriptive-phenomenological qualitative approach, comprising the stages of epoché, phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation, and the synthesis of essence. Informants were selected purposively, namely six active doctoral accounting students who had completed courses in behavioral accounting and social and spiritual accounting. Data were collected through dialogic in-depth interviews and analyzed through horizontalizing, imaginative variation, and textural-structural synthesis. The research results indicate that, in the students’ view, love-based accounting represents three layers of meaning: (1) Noema as an accounting reality that is honest, fair, and oriented toward others; (2) Noesis in the form of an inner struggle between curricular dogma and the conscience of humanity; and (3) the transcendental essence that love is the highest foundation of accountability. This study contributes to the development of critical and humanistic accounting and provides pedagogical implications for the reconstruction of a more dialogical, reflective, and humanistic accounting curriculum.