Reconfiguring Digital Accountability: AI-Powered Innovations and Transnational Governance in a Postnational Accounting Context

TL;DR

This paper examines how AI-driven innovations are transforming organizational accountability within transnational governance, emphasizing the co-constructed, networked nature of accountability and proposing strategies for responsible AI adoption.

Contribution

It integrates TAM, ANT, and institutional theory to analyze AI adoption in a global context, extending existing models to include compliance and legitimacy factors.

Findings

Accountability is co-constructed within global socio-technical networks.

Organizational strategies include governance reconfiguration and external engagement.

AI adoption influences and is influenced by regulatory, ethical, and cultural pressures.

Abstract

This study explores how AI-powered digital innovations are reshaping organisational accountability in a transnational governance context. As AI systems increasingly mediate decision-making in domains such as auditing and financial reporting, traditional mechanisms of accountability, based on control, transparency, and auditability, are being destabilised. We integrate the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and institutional theory to examine how organisations adopt AI technologies in response to regulatory, ethical, and cultural pressures that transcend national boundaries. We argue that accountability is co-constructed within global socio-technical networks, shaped not only by user perceptions but also by governance logics and normative expectations. Extending TAM, we incorporate compliance and legitimacy as key factors in perceived usefulness and usability. Drawing on ANT, we reconceptualise accountability as a relational and emergent property of networked assemblages. We propose two organisational strategies including internal governance reconfiguration and external actor-network engagement to foster responsible, legitimate, and globally accepted AI adoption in the accounting domain.