What is the role of accounting in disaster recovery and relief? A literature review

This study explores the role of accounting system and its output on government's and donors' responses to disasters across the world. It discusses potential contribution and limitation of accounting in the disaster relief and recovery process. To do so, a literature review of 22 papers on accounting and disaster is performed. The review papers were search and gathered from reputable journals indexed in Scopus database. This study discovers that accounting can play a more extensive role, rather than dealing merely with financial loss calculation and budget preparation for disaster recovery and relief program. Accounting has a broader role and this extended role has not been sufficiently covered in several previous studies. The role of accounting in responding to disasters is beyond the calculative function and passive recording of events. Accounting can support the establishment of exceptional governance, facilitate dialogue and create mutual understanding between stakeholders through financial information. In addition, accounting can assist the projects monitoring and evaluation and its outputs (budget, unit cost calculation, and storage bookkeeping) can be used by researchers to understand what really happens and how society responses to disasters.