Pub Date : 2025-12-02DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102835
Miguel Gil
While research on accounting in cartel contexts has largely focused on money laundering, limited attention has been given to how accounting both shapes and is shaped by broader organisational and symbolic dimensions. Informed by postcolonial theory, this study critically examines the role of accounting in structuring practices and shaping representations of violence within cartel activities. Drawing on interviews with individuals exposed to cartel activity in Mexico, as well as a wide range of news articles, the analysis reveals that accounting is systematically embedded in cartel activities, delineating the boundaries between legitimacy and illegality through framing and routinising. The findings also show that mimicry is used to adopt and subvert dominant organisational forms, while the blending of formal accounting language and local practices gives rise to hybridity, complicating conventional interpretations of violence and economic order. Adopting a postcolonial lens deepens the understanding of accounting in illicit settings, highlighting its central role in shaping contested identities and selectively determining the visibility or invisibility of violence.
{"title":"Accounting for the cartel","authors":"Miguel Gil","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102835","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102835","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While research on accounting in cartel contexts has largely focused on money laundering, limited attention has been given to how accounting both shapes and is shaped by broader organisational and symbolic dimensions. Informed by postcolonial theory, this study critically examines the role of accounting in structuring practices and shaping representations of violence within cartel activities. Drawing on interviews with individuals exposed to cartel activity in Mexico, as well as a wide range of news articles, the analysis reveals that accounting is systematically embedded in cartel activities, delineating the boundaries between legitimacy and illegality through framing and routinising. The findings also show that mimicry is used to adopt and subvert dominant organisational forms, while the blending of formal accounting language and local practices gives rise to hybridity, complicating conventional interpretations of violence and economic order. Adopting a postcolonial lens deepens the understanding of accounting in illicit settings, highlighting its central role in shaping contested identities and selectively determining the visibility or invisibility of violence.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 102835"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145685030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-29DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102826
Luis Emilio Cuenca Botey , Luis Adrián Mora Rodríguez , Isabel Pedraza Acosta
This article examines how accounting devices can emerge from popular political struggles and serve as tools for emancipation in a setting characterized by colonial spatial domination. Based on the concept of coloniality of dwelling (Mansilla et al., 2019), we explore how Porto Alegre’s Participatory Budgeting (1989–2006) enabled social movements to confront the territorial logics imposed by coloniality and thus to produce an accounting territorialisation from below, thereby strengthening their capacities for emancipation. This work complements studies on accounting territorialisation by showing how the spread of calculable spaces can arise from popular struggle and is not solely due to the influence of actors with regulatory authority and expert knowledge (Mennicken and Miller, 2012, Miller, 1992, Miller and Power, 2013, Free et al., 2019, Martinez et al., 2022). Furthermore, we show how, in this case, accounting tools became instruments of collective territorial vindication and transformation. Our analysis relies on archival materials and historical data that demonstrate how accounting helped build political territories and reshape geographic space. By situating this case within decolonial thinking and critical accounting studies, we reflect on the conditions of possibility for accounting to participate in emancipatory projects when it is appropriated by social movements that resist colonial patterns of space and power.
{"title":"Dynamics of territorialization: calculable spaces and the “coloniality of dwelling” within Porto Alegre’s participatory budgeting (1984–2006)","authors":"Luis Emilio Cuenca Botey , Luis Adrián Mora Rodríguez , Isabel Pedraza Acosta","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102826","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102826","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines how accounting devices can emerge from popular political struggles and serve as tools for emancipation in a setting characterized by colonial spatial domination. Based on the concept of <em>coloniality of dwelling</em> (Mansilla et al., 2019), we explore how Porto Alegre’s Participatory Budgeting (1989–2006) enabled social movements to confront the territorial logics imposed by coloniality and thus to produce an accounting territorialisation from below, thereby strengthening their capacities for emancipation. This work complements studies on accounting territorialisation by showing how the spread of calculable spaces can arise from popular struggle and is not solely due to the influence of actors with regulatory authority and expert knowledge (<span><span>Mennicken and Miller, 2012</span></span>, <span><span>Miller, 1992</span></span>, <span><span>Miller and Power, 2013</span></span>, <span><span>Free et al., 2019</span></span>, <span><span>Martinez et al., 2022</span></span>). Furthermore, we show how, in this case, accounting tools became instruments of collective territorial vindication and transformation. Our analysis relies on archival materials and historical data that demonstrate how accounting helped build political territories and reshape geographic space. By situating this case within decolonial thinking and critical accounting studies, we reflect on the conditions of possibility for accounting to participate in emancipatory projects when it is appropriated by social movements that resist colonial patterns of space and power.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 102826"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145617323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-25DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102827
Souod Alazemi , Shahzad Uddin
This paper critically examines the concept of board member ‘independence’ by drawing on Max Weber’s notion of traditionalism to theorise its practice in non-Western or Majority World contexts. Using family-owned public limited companies (PLCs) in Kuwait as a case study, we explore how cultural norms, political-economic histories, and kinship-based authority structures shape the recruitment, roles, and influence of supposedly independent committee members.
Based on qualitative data − including interviews, archival materials, and field observations − we find that independence is largely symbolic. Independent members are often selected through Diwaniya-based social networks and valued more for their loyalty and discretion than for providing impartial oversight. The relationship between family owners and independent members reflects Weber’s chief–subject model, with board processes grounded in personalist logics rather than the institutional rationalities of Western capitalist governance.
This study contributes to the corporate governance literature by rethinking independence through a cultural-political lens and calls for policies and research that promote context-sensitive, decolonial approaches to governance in the Majority World.
{"title":"Independent directors in family PLCs in the majority world − insights from a Middle Eastern country","authors":"Souod Alazemi , Shahzad Uddin","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102827","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102827","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper critically examines the concept of board member ‘independence’ by drawing on Max Weber’s notion of traditionalism to theorise its practice in non-Western or Majority World contexts. Using family-owned public limited companies (PLCs) in Kuwait as a case study, we explore how cultural norms, political-economic histories, and kinship-based authority structures shape the recruitment, roles, and influence of supposedly independent committee members.</div><div>Based on qualitative data − including interviews, archival materials, and field observations − we find that independence is largely symbolic. Independent members are often selected through Diwaniya-based social networks and valued more for their loyalty and discretion than for providing impartial oversight. The relationship between family owners and independent members reflects Weber’s chief–subject model, with board processes grounded in personalist logics rather than the institutional rationalities of Western capitalist governance.</div><div>This study contributes to the corporate governance literature by rethinking independence through a cultural-political lens and calls for policies and research that promote context-sensitive, decolonial approaches to governance in the Majority World.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 102827"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145584504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-24DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102824
Andrew West
This paper develops a critical accounting theory based on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, that goes beyond his well-known scheme of practices, institutions, internal goods and virtues to incorporate his hostility towards managerial capitalism and his ‘revolutionary Aristotelianism’. It proposes that two distinctive aspects of MacIntyrean thought provide the conceptual apparatus for a critical accounting that can move beyond critique of the status quo and the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, towards flourishing human communities. These aspects include, firstly, his support for a politics of local communities characterised by Aristotelian questioning and secondly, his commitment to an objective morality associated with human flourishing, that finds expression within well-ordered practices. The paper develops these by asking what the goods of accounting are, and what we can expect from good accountants. Postulating the common good of accounting as ‘transparency aiding understanding’, the paper explores how accounting can contribute by, for example, supporting a distributist political economy and serving the internal goods of other practices. It also draws attention to the very real possibility that our desires may be misdirected and that this may underpin many problematic contemporary accounting practices. The deleterious effects of contemporary compartmentalisation are also considered as a hindrance to the development of accountants as capable moral agents. The paper highlights ways in which these possibilities can be developed through further research.
{"title":"A ‘Utopia of the present’: MacIntyrean thought as critical accounting theory","authors":"Andrew West","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102824","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102824","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper develops a critical accounting theory based on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, that goes beyond his well-known scheme of practices, institutions, internal goods and virtues to incorporate his hostility towards managerial capitalism and his ‘revolutionary Aristotelianism’. It proposes that two distinctive aspects of MacIntyrean thought provide the conceptual apparatus for a critical accounting that can move beyond critique of the status quo and the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, towards flourishing human communities. These aspects include, firstly, his support for a politics of local communities characterised by Aristotelian questioning and secondly, his commitment to an objective morality associated with human flourishing, that finds expression within well-ordered practices. The paper develops these by asking what the goods of accounting are, and what we can expect from good accountants. Postulating the common good of accounting as ‘transparency aiding understanding’, the paper explores how accounting can contribute by, for example, supporting a distributist political economy and serving the internal goods of other practices. It also draws attention to the very real possibility that our desires may be misdirected and that this may underpin many problematic contemporary accounting practices. The deleterious effects of contemporary compartmentalisation are also considered as a hindrance to the development of accountants as capable moral agents. The paper highlights ways in which these possibilities can be developed through further research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 102824"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145584503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-19DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102825
Didier Chabanet , Christine Noël Lemaître
This article examines the impact of the digitization policy implemented at Pôle emploi—the French national agency responsible for providing compensation and support to employees who have involuntarily lost their jobs—on the work of its advisors, specifically looking at the level of autonomy they have in assisting jobseekers. Qualitative in nature, the data collected results from observations made in the different branches of Pôle emploi, 25 individual semi-directive interviews and a dozen group interviews. Referring to labor process theory, we analyze the discourse and practices of Pôle emploi advisors, and in particular their criticisms of digitalization regarding the standardization of their work and making it possible to support jobseekers remotely, without a face-to-face relationship, through entirely dematerialized procedures, or even support without any advisor being involved, which is so far rare but technically conceivable. Our results also highlight the ambiguity of the impact of digital tools, as some advisors point to the benefits that digitalization can bring in improving the quality of their work and increasing their room for maneuver. This observation leads us to discuss the conditions of use of digital tools, and to distinguish between situations that could usefully lead to a digital standardization of activities, and those which should enable advisors to retain their autonomy of judgment, to better provide support to jobseekers.
{"title":"The impact of digitalization on the autonomy of public service employees: Pôle emploi advisors fighting for the recognition of their professional skills","authors":"Didier Chabanet , Christine Noël Lemaître","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102825","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102825","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines the impact of the digitization policy implemented at Pôle emploi—the French national agency responsible for providing compensation and support to employees who have involuntarily lost their jobs—on the work of its advisors, specifically looking at the level of autonomy they have in assisting jobseekers. Qualitative in nature, the data collected results from observations made in the different branches of Pôle emploi, 25 individual semi-directive interviews and a dozen group interviews. Referring to labor process theory, we analyze the discourse and practices of Pôle emploi advisors, and in particular their criticisms of digitalization regarding the standardization of their work and making it possible to support jobseekers remotely, without a face-to-face relationship, through entirely dematerialized procedures, or even support without any advisor being involved, which is so far rare but technically conceivable. Our results also highlight the ambiguity of the impact of digital tools, as some advisors point to the benefits that digitalization can bring in improving the quality of their work and increasing their room for maneuver. This observation leads us to discuss the conditions of use of digital tools, and to distinguish between situations that could usefully lead to a digital standardization of activities, and those which should enable advisors to retain their autonomy of judgment, to better provide support to jobseekers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102825"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145578809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-06DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102823
Thereza Balliester Reis , Vincent Mugo Kamau
Studies on financial inclusion place a strong emphasis on financial literacy and individual financial responsibility. Over-spending and over-indebtedness are often thought to be consequences of a lack of understanding of prudent budgeting, saving, and investment. Building on the critical accounting and everyday financialisation frameworks, this study challenges those claims. Using the FinAccess 2021 survey and interviewing 30 low-income workers in Nairobi, Kenya, we find indications that many are financially literate. In fact, participants report several strategic techniques to save on costs, such as splitting transactions on M-Pesa to avoid fees. Yet, as their income is low, these individuals often find themselves indebted for sustained periods, particularly for basic needs such as food and transportation. Furthermore, where individuals show signs of over-indebtedness, these seem to be consequences of structural and income constraints rather than a lack of understanding of money management practices. Our article critiques established understandings of financial knowledge by presenting new evidence on everyday financial practices in Nairobi. Our results suggest that financialisation of everyday life has spread to countries beyond the Global North and might have severe consequences for development goals.
{"title":"Are low-income workers financially irresponsible? Analysing financial literacy and over-indebtedness in Nairobi","authors":"Thereza Balliester Reis , Vincent Mugo Kamau","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102823","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102823","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Studies on financial inclusion place a strong emphasis on financial literacy and individual financial responsibility. Over-spending and over-indebtedness are often thought to be consequences of a lack of understanding of prudent budgeting, saving, and investment. Building on the critical accounting and everyday financialisation frameworks, this study challenges those claims. Using the FinAccess 2021 survey and interviewing 30 low-income workers in Nairobi, Kenya, we find indications that many are financially literate. In fact, participants report several strategic techniques to save on costs, such as splitting transactions on M-Pesa to avoid fees. Yet, as their income is low, these individuals often find themselves indebted for sustained periods, particularly for basic needs such as food and transportation. Furthermore, where individuals show signs of over-indebtedness, these seem to be consequences of structural and income constraints rather than a lack of understanding of money management practices. Our article critiques established understandings of financial knowledge by presenting new evidence on everyday financial practices in Nairobi. Our results suggest that financialisation of everyday life has spread to countries beyond the Global North and might have severe consequences for development goals.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102823"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145474113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-30DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102822
Neil J. Dunne , Niamh M. Brennan , Collette E. Kirwan
This research applies framing theory to examine and model how powerful global entities such as the Big Four audit firms oppose regulatory proposals. To examine Big Four framing, an under-researched phenomenon, we conduct a frame-package analysis, a methodological innovation hitherto not deployed in the accounting or auditing literatures. Specifically, we analyze the Big Four’s consultation responses to a UK regulator. We conceptualize the Big Four’s frames as ‘frame packages’ comprising reasoning devices and framing devices and contextualize our findings by examining the regulator’s reports. We find that the Big Four deploy mimetic frames, which mirror the regulator’s priorities, and conditioned frames, which map to institutional logics. Our frame-package analysis, the longitudinal nature of the data, and the resultant frame-process model, illuminate how the Big Four’s frames originate, escalate, and expire. Our novel frame-process model can help regulators foresee how those under scrutiny may construct and adapt their responses to regulatory projects.
{"title":"Uncovering the nature of framing: The Big Four audit firms versus a competition regulator","authors":"Neil J. Dunne , Niamh M. Brennan , Collette E. Kirwan","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102822","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102822","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This research applies framing theory to examine and model how powerful global entities such as the Big Four audit firms oppose regulatory proposals. To examine Big Four framing, an under-researched phenomenon, we conduct a frame-package analysis, a methodological innovation hitherto not deployed in the accounting or auditing literatures. Specifically, we analyze the Big Four’s consultation responses to a UK regulator. We conceptualize the Big Four’s frames as ‘frame packages’ comprising reasoning devices and framing devices and contextualize our findings by examining the regulator’s reports. We find that the Big Four deploy <em>mimetic</em> frames, which mirror the regulator’s priorities, and <em>conditioned</em> frames, which map to institutional logics. Our frame-package analysis, the longitudinal nature of the data, and the resultant frame-process model, illuminate how the Big Four’s frames originate, escalate, and expire. Our novel frame-process model can help regulators foresee how those under scrutiny may construct and adapt their responses to regulatory projects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102822"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145424333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-21DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102820
Oriane Couchoux , Gabrielle Patry-Beaudoin
In this paper, we examine how women understand, explain, and enact their financial situation and decisions after becoming mothers. Drawing on the paradox and sensemaking literatures to illuminate data collected through 32 semi-structured interviews, we show that motherhood triggers a shift in women’s financial mindset as they feel pressured by two competing sets of societal expectations. This understanding allows us to identify two scripts that coexist in the accounts of mothers and are used intermittently to explain and guide their child-related financial decisions and their financial relationship with their co-parent: (1) the “financial project” script and (2) the “financial sacrifice” script. On the one hand, mothers feel that they must be aware and autonomous financial agents who manage motherhood as a project through “sound” financial and accounting practices. On the other hand, women also emphasize the importance of financial dedication and sacrifices for their children as a form of caregiving. Our findings highlight the pervasive financialization of everyday life and the spread of accounting tools and principles to the personal sphere. Combined with ideals of intensive mothering, these phenomena have important implications for women’s motherhood journey, resulting in higher financial pressure on women and greater financial inequalities between women and men.
{"title":"Accounting for motherhood: The impact of competing societal ideals on the financial experiences of mothers","authors":"Oriane Couchoux , Gabrielle Patry-Beaudoin","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102820","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102820","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we examine how women understand, explain, and enact their financial situation and decisions after becoming mothers. Drawing on the paradox and sensemaking literatures to illuminate data collected through 32 semi-structured interviews, we show that motherhood triggers a shift in women’s financial mindset as they feel pressured by two competing sets of societal expectations. This understanding allows us to identify two scripts that coexist in the accounts of mothers and are used intermittently to explain and guide their child-related financial decisions and their financial relationship with their co-parent: (1) the “financial project” script and (2) the “financial sacrifice” script. On the one hand, mothers feel that they must be aware and autonomous financial agents who manage motherhood as a project through “sound” financial and accounting practices. On the other hand, women also emphasize the importance of financial dedication and sacrifices for their children as a form of caregiving. Our findings highlight the pervasive financialization of everyday life and the spread of accounting tools and principles to the personal sphere. Combined with ideals of intensive mothering, these phenomena have important implications for women’s motherhood journey, resulting in higher financial pressure on women and greater financial inequalities between women and men.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102820"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145361006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-17DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102821
Lisa Baudot , Garrison Nuttall , Dana Wallace , Huikun Wu
In their financialized daily lives, individuals are expected to take responsibility for their financial futures. Yet, as a growing segment of the population, older individuals face questionable state resources, evolving retirement and pension systems, and other threats to financial security (e.g., market and other crises) that present challenges to meeting such expectations. Using 23 semi-structured interviews, we investigate how older individuals in the United States represent their financial behaviors relative to their financial experiences. Using self-determination theory, we find that older individuals represent their financial behaviors as ‘responsibilized’ based on fundamental needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In their formation of responsibilized financial behaviors, older individuals present themselves as self-determined subjects who take care of themselves financially and are not a financial ‘burden’. In internalizing such behaviors, we find that older individuals convey a range of calculative practices and accounting technologies that underlie their responsibilized financial behaviors and financializing trends encountered throughout their lives. Rather than being purely intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, perceptions of financial behaviors appear as both enabled and disciplined by the socioeconomic system that individuals face.
{"title":"Internalizing responsibilized financial behavior: Self-determination among older individuals in the United States","authors":"Lisa Baudot , Garrison Nuttall , Dana Wallace , Huikun Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102821","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102821","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In their financialized daily lives, individuals are expected to take responsibility for their financial futures. Yet, as a growing segment of the population, older individuals face questionable state resources, evolving retirement and pension systems, and other threats to financial security (e.g., market and other crises) that present challenges to meeting such expectations. Using 23 semi-structured interviews, we investigate how older individuals in the United States represent their financial behaviors relative to their financial experiences. Using self-determination theory, we find that older individuals represent their financial behaviors as ‘responsibilized’ based on fundamental needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In their formation of responsibilized financial behaviors, older individuals present themselves as self-determined subjects who take care of themselves financially and are not a financial ‘burden’. In internalizing such behaviors, we find that older individuals convey a range of calculative practices and accounting technologies that underlie their responsibilized financial behaviors and financializing trends encountered throughout their lives. Rather than being purely intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, perceptions of financial behaviors appear as both enabled and disciplined by the socioeconomic system that individuals face.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102821"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-08DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102819
Annette Quayle, Andrew West
Although there is wide acknowledgement that the media play a significant role in the construction of scandals involving fraud and corruption, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the issue of morality. As scandals are prima facie dependent upon wrongdoing, an adequate understanding of their construction requires examining whether and how they are framed in moral terms. This paper explores the potential moral framing of wrongdoing in the context of an ongoing political scandal involving two mayors at a local government municipality, through both initial media allegations and subsequent trial proceedings. Drawing on key perspectives from ethics and moral philosophy, we examine how prominent media newspapers frame wrongdoing in terms of adverse outcomes (utilitarian), a violation of duties (deontological), and character (virtue ethics). Our investigation extends the literature by showing how the moral and ethical dimensions of fraud and corruption are either emphasised or silenced due to intentional and unintentional media bias, and highlight the frequent conflation between legal and ethical wrongdoing in media narratives. Our analysis also shows how media often frame fraud and corruption in terms of a breach of legality yet frequently fails to articulate why this behaviour is non-compliant with moral or ethical norms, despite evidence that these moral dimensions are present. Finally, we highlight a difference between ethics and governance, demonstrating how employee behaviour may contravene principles of good governance without necessarily breaching ethical standards or the law.
{"title":"Political scandals, media bias and the moral ambiguity of fraud and corruption","authors":"Annette Quayle, Andrew West","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102819","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102819","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although there is wide acknowledgement that the media play a significant role in the construction of scandals involving fraud and corruption, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the issue of morality. As scandals are <em>prima facie</em> dependent upon wrongdoing, an adequate understanding of their construction requires examining whether and how they are framed in moral terms. This paper explores the potential moral framing of wrongdoing in the context of an ongoing political scandal involving two mayors at a local government municipality, through both initial media allegations and subsequent trial proceedings. Drawing on key perspectives from ethics and moral philosophy, we examine how prominent media newspapers frame wrongdoing in terms of adverse outcomes (utilitarian), a violation of duties (deontological), and character (virtue ethics). Our investigation extends the literature by showing how the moral and ethical dimensions of fraud and corruption are either emphasised or silenced due to intentional and unintentional media bias, and highlight the frequent conflation between legal and ethical wrongdoing in media narratives. Our analysis also shows how media often frame fraud and corruption in terms of a breach of legality yet frequently fails to articulate why this behaviour is non-compliant with moral or ethical norms, despite evidence that these moral dimensions are present. Finally, we highlight a difference between ethics and governance, demonstrating how employee behaviour may contravene principles of good governance without necessarily breaching ethical standards or the law.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102819"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145265783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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