How Relational Accounting Matters

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two types of relational accounting systems: the first is focused on meaningful events and life-stage transitions; the second, on the anticipated moral consequences of action and its effects on how individuals weigh and keep track of their options. Relational accounting represents the sociological counterpoint to mental accounting in that it uses cultural, moral, and relational processes to develop an interpretive social science of choice and decision making. Like mental accounting, relational accounting violates the economic notion of fungibility. Money in one mental account is not a perfect substitute for money in another account. Unlike mental accounting, however, relational accounting locates individual decision making in the moments of the life cycle that are culturally meaningful and collectively enforced and in overarching moral structures.

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