Applications of accounting ideas, values and practices have consequences. In exercising social, political, economic, environmental and cultural responsibility, individuals and organisations have moral responsibility for the consequences for anyone (and anything) else of whatever uses they make of accountings. This article exposits consequences of accountings as a concept, explains how discerning consequences is an interpretative process, as is classifying them and configuring them wholistically. These matters are exemplified using a Pacific atoll people. Longitudinal materials are used to analyse how, in the changing life circumstances of this people (not least that most are living in diaspora), accountings have played various parts in a variety of ways. Mostly, these accountings have been practised in conjunction with various forms of colonialism. However, one comprises the remnants of the people’s own accounting, based not on money but on genealogy, and it is helping sustain the diaspora. The analysis discerns 14 classes of consequences of these accountings. Further analysis of distributional consequences, one of the 14, illuminates the nature of consequences and exemplifies claims that knowledge and understanding about consequences as a concept has wider benefits. The article can assist researchers to articulate consequences which accountings may be having, or may have had, for other socially-constructed entities or identities (e.g., a community, settlement, society, organisation, industry, country, planet). It may also assist people on whom accountings are being applied by someone else to withstand or mitigate undesirable or objectionable consequences. However, given power asymmetries between these people and the sorts of individuals and organisations knowledgeable and wealthy enough to make extensive use of accountings, its main intent is to assist the latter in exercising moral responsibility when applying accountings, by being more appreciative of their complex consequences.

Abstract in te Taetae ni Kiribati Imwiin rokoia taan Waikua iaon Nikunau n ririki ake a bwakanako tao n aia tai ara bakatibu ake a tibutarara ao e kakoauaki bwa iai aia aanga kain Nikunau ni ikonibwai n oin aia katei. Aanga ni iokinibwai akanne ake a kaungaia kain Nikunau ni iangoi aanga n numerai aia aanga ni karikirake n aia utu, n aia kaawa ao n aia abwamakoro. Iai aika a nako raoi ao iai naba aika a nako buaka bwa are bon anne aron te waaki ni karikirake ke ni ikonibwai.

E mwenga raoi te I-Nikunau, e bon tiku ni mwengana, ma ngkana e tarai boong aika ana roko ibukin kabwaiaia natiia ma tibuia ao anne, ea tau te borau ni ukoukora te kabwaia. Akea bwa ea borau te nati ma tibu n Nikunau ibukin ukoran te kabwaia ke te maiu raoi nako Tarawa, Niutiran, Toromon, etc.

Te kamatebwai aio e maroroakina aia kanganga ke kabwaiaia te nati n Nikunau ni iruwa i abatera ma te kantaninga ma te onimaki bwa iriaia are te mauri, te raoi ao te tabomoa.