The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s Wave Crashes Upon the Shores of Accounting: The Value Metric for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Almost 30 years ago, Elliott (1992) shared several critical insights about the inadequacies of the field of accounting to account for radical changes in the ways businesses develop and execute strategy based on the fundamental opportunities that had come about due to information age technology. Accounting has remained virtually unchanged for over 500 years and society has now entered what Schwab (2015) referred to as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” where technology advancements follow an exponential growth curve introduces a reality that combines technology across the physical, digital, and biological domains. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to change both public and private sector organizations, and society itself, however, the accounting practices are not positioned to take advantage of these changes. With this phenomenon in mind, this study seeks to address a gap in the literature that the current accounting practices are insufficient to meet the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution as they do not provide a raw, non-monetized common unit of value, that can measure productivity on a ratio scale for non-profit organizations or at the sub-corporate level in for-profit organization. Through a discussion guided by the literature, this study seeks to generate a scholastic dialogue on how to address this problem.