Beyond Financial Accountability: Deconstructing Accountability through the Values of Tunjuk Ajar Melayu

Abstract

This study deconstructs the dominant conception of modern accountability through a single ethical value, amanah, as articulated in Tunjuk Ajar Melayu by Tenas Effendy. Modern accountability is often operationalized through formal reporting, compliance, audit, and measurable performance, which can privilege external control and financial or administrative visibility over the moral, relational, and transcendental dimensions of responsibility. The study employs a postmodern paradigm and an interpretive qualitative approach, using Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive reading as its analytical lens. The primary source is the corpus of petuah, pantun, syair, and ungkapan concerning amanah within Tunjuk Ajar Melayu, complemented by scholarly literature on accountability, postmodernism, indigenous accounting, and Malay ethics. The analysis proceeds by tracing the internal structure of amanah itself, examining the binary oppositions embedded in dominant accountability discourse, and re- signifying accountability from within amanah’s own textual field. The findings show that amanah alone carries a transcendental dimension linking responsibility to faith and the Hereafter, a moral-personal dimension grounded in honesty and steadfastness, a social-relational dimension tied to marwah and communal trust, a custodial dimension concerning the safekeeping of what is entrusted, and a consequential-normative dimension in which betrayal of trust is understood to bring social and moral ruin. Together these dimensions extend accountability beyond formal compliance and financial measurement toward a substantive, moral, relational, and transcendental conception grounded entirely in one indigenous value. Rather than claiming a single universal form of Malay accountability, the study presents amanah, as articulated in Tunjuk Ajar Melayu, as a self-sufficient epistemic resource for rethinking accountability in accounting research.