From Ledgers to Liminality: Finding Meaning In The Rituals of Accounting

I am Dr. Mohit Dar, a Lecturer in Accounting at Aston Business School, Aston University. Before entering academia, I worked as a Chartered Accountant across both the private and public sectors in the UK. While my professional path is in accounting, my Kashmiri family heritage has strong roots in law. My great-grandfather, Pandit Janki Nath Koul (on my mother’s side), was admitted to Gray’s Inn on 7th November 1891 and called to the Bar on 19th November 1894. He also studied the Law Tripos at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. Being inspired by his legacy of striving for social justice, I wanted to shift my focus from profit driven work to more societal impact accounting. Therefore, my journey into social housing began.

Moving into social housing was more difficult than I anticipated. Being used to a high-pressure environment with a results driven competitive focus I was suddenly put into a very contrasting culture. An important example of this was the slower month-end accounting period. From 3 working days to produce the accounts I was now having to deal with a 12-day process. Being employed in this social organisation to take the finance department forward and to introduce ‘modern’ commercial/business-like practices I was now faced with a challenge.

With my team of 22 I had to somehow move them to a 3-day month-end cycle. I split my team into groups and asked them two questions: “What does World class finance look to you?” and “What is not World class finance?” This was one of the exercises I designed to help my colleagues to get on board with a more efficient way of producing month-end accounts. Of course, not everyone agreed with my ideas, and some left because of this. Naturally, many were resistant to the change, and the transition was not easy. This friction led to a slowdown in our progress. It was challenging to see valued team members who had once been so integral to our success grapple with the new direction we were heading in. At times I questioned whether I had made the right choice. However, my idea of creating faster month-ends meant we could raise the bar in my social housing association and have more time to meet other goals. Senior management would be able to make better decisions since they would have received reports much quicker. Eventually, a year and a half later, we successfully reached this 3-day goal. The question still remains as to whether we created a better team or simply a faster process?

This reflection brings me to the concept of liminality, which I only truly grasped years later while studying for my PhD in accounting titled ‘Liminality in UK social housing associations: ethnographies of accounting change.’ Liminality is essentially the uncomfortable “in-between” state where you’re neither here nor there. It is the state between two states. Liminality is a place of risk, ambiguity, and confusion but also a place for opportunities, hope and change.

A key part of liminality which relates to my accounting experience is ‘rituals.’ In simple terms, a ritual is a meaningful repeated process. As an accountant we have many ‘accounting/office rituals’ one of which is the month-end process. I was tasked with changing from the old 12-day ritual to a new 3-day ritual with the process being liminality.

And so, accounting is not just about transactions. It is a ritualised practice. Those that can adapt to the space of liminality can see it as an opportunity for change whereas those that do not adapt will often see it as a threat and a place of risk. This ethical tension, between improvement and preservation is a core lesson of my career. Through my experience I realised that we all get into liminality whether we know it or not. Change is not just mechanical, it is an inward journey and is utterly, inevitably, liminal.

If you would like to read more about my journey, please refer to my PhD and my academic paper:

Dar, M., Cordery, C., De Loo, I. and Manochin, M. (2025), “An autoethnographic reflection on accounting rituals in a turbulent environment”, Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Vol. 22 No.1, pp. 104-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRAM-10-2022-0167

Dar, M., (2021) Liminality in UK social housing associations: ethnographies of accounting change, Doctoral Thesis.