Vicente Pérez-Chamorro, Araceli Casasola-Balsells, Fernando Gutiérrez-Hidalgo
{"title":"A decolonial view of the role of accounting in the US management of the Spanish telephone monopoly","authors":"Vicente Pérez-Chamorro, Araceli Casasola-Balsells, Fernando Gutiérrez-Hidalgo","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102734","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Latin American decolonial thinking offers an alternative perspective to modern Western thought for the analysis of the role of accounting in relations of power, economic domination, knowledge and subjectivity in corporate capitalism. By applying a decolonial perspective, this paper contributes to previous literature on how conflicting public and private economic interests shape and are shaped by accounting practices. In particular, it analyses the role of accounting in the web of domination and power relations of a foreign company involved in the private management of a monopoly. To that end, it examines the historical case of the private management of the Spanish telephone monopoly at a time when the Spanish concessionary company was a subsidiary of the US multinational, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. The analysis of the case shows that the accounting was embedded within a geopolitical system of knowledge that strengthened a colonial matrix of power resulting in the domination of US capital over the Spanish state. This research contributes to a better understanding of how the colonial matrix of power operates through the subalternisation of the population not only in the Global South but also in Europe, imposing the rhetoric of modernity (conversion, progress and development) and exporting it to other latitudes by claiming its universality.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":8.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235424000339/pdfft?md5=ae97b97c771833ac4dd4aa92aa13f67a&pid=1-s2.0-S1045235424000339-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235424000339","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Latin American decolonial thinking offers an alternative perspective to modern Western thought for the analysis of the role of accounting in relations of power, economic domination, knowledge and subjectivity in corporate capitalism. By applying a decolonial perspective, this paper contributes to previous literature on how conflicting public and private economic interests shape and are shaped by accounting practices. In particular, it analyses the role of accounting in the web of domination and power relations of a foreign company involved in the private management of a monopoly. To that end, it examines the historical case of the private management of the Spanish telephone monopoly at a time when the Spanish concessionary company was a subsidiary of the US multinational, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. The analysis of the case shows that the accounting was embedded within a geopolitical system of knowledge that strengthened a colonial matrix of power resulting in the domination of US capital over the Spanish state. This research contributes to a better understanding of how the colonial matrix of power operates through the subalternisation of the population not only in the Global South but also in Europe, imposing the rhetoric of modernity (conversion, progress and development) and exporting it to other latitudes by claiming its universality.
期刊介绍:
Critical Perspectives on Accounting aims to provide a forum for the growing number of accounting researchers and practitioners who realize that conventional theory and practice is ill-suited to the challenges of the modern environment, and that accounting practices and corporate behavior are inextricably connected with many allocative, distributive, social, and ecological problems of our era. From such concerns, a new literature is emerging that seeks to reformulate corporate, social, and political activity, and the theoretical and practical means by which we apprehend and affect that activity. Research Areas Include: • Studies involving the political economy of accounting, critical accounting, radical accounting, and accounting''s implication in the exercise of power • Financial accounting''s role in the processes of international capital formation, including its impact on stock market stability and international banking activities • Management accounting''s role in organizing the labor process • The relationship between accounting and the state in various social formations • Studies of accounting''s historical role, as a means of "remembering" the subject''s social and conflictual character • The role of accounting in establishing "real" democracy at work and other domains of life • Accounting''s adjudicative function in international exchanges, such as that of the Third World debt • Antagonisms between the social and private character of accounting, such as conflicts of interest in the audit process • The identification of new constituencies for radical and critical accounting information • Accounting''s involvement in gender and class conflicts in the workplace • The interplay between accounting, social conflict, industrialization, bureaucracy, and technocracy • Reappraisals of the role of accounting as a science and technology • Critical reviews of "useful" scientific knowledge about organizations