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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-07DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102818
Tiziana Di Cimbrini , Francesco Paolone
The paper compares two accountability systems concerning the aid provided after the Marsica earthquake occurred in Italy in 1915. The two account givers, the Government and a private Committee, face a hostile and favourable accountability environment respectively, because the media and public opinion severely criticized the response by the public authorities and praised the private initiative. The accounting systems adopted to operationalize the accountability systems are read in the light of the different dispositions of the accountability forums. While the Committee displays the full range of accounting practices available, discursive, calculative, and visual, the Government mainly relies on discursive practices and only exhibits a selection of calculative practices directing the audience towards specific blame-avoidance evaluation standards. By providing an example of an ‘attacking’ and defensive use of accounting, the study contributes to our understanding of the nexus between accounting, accountability, and blame avoidance in a post-natural disaster scenario.
{"title":"Accountability-based accounting in the blame game for post-disaster aid","authors":"Tiziana Di Cimbrini , Francesco Paolone","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102818","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102818","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The paper compares two accountability systems concerning the aid provided after the Marsica earthquake occurred in Italy in 1915. The two account givers, the Government and a private Committee, face a hostile and favourable accountability environment respectively, because the media and public opinion severely criticized the response by the public authorities and praised the private initiative. The accounting systems adopted to operationalize the accountability systems are read in the light of the different dispositions of the accountability forums. While the Committee displays the full range of accounting practices available, discursive, calculative, and visual, the Government mainly relies on discursive practices and only exhibits a selection of calculative practices directing the audience towards specific blame-avoidance evaluation standards. By providing an example of an ‘attacking’ and defensive use of accounting, the study contributes to our understanding of the nexus between accounting, accountability, and blame avoidance in a post-natural disaster scenario.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102818"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145265782","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 : 2025-09-26DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102816
Julie Gauneau, Caroline Lambert
Reporting conveys discourses of power and may give rise to forms of “washing” (greenwashing, diversity washing, etc.). This article analyzes the evolution of textual, quantitative, and visual discourses on diversity in the annual reports of a multinational organization (LVMH) between 2002 and 2019. By adopting an intersectional approach and combining different methods of discourse analysis, we uncover a new modality of diversity washing. We show that this does not take the form of a dissonance between diversity-related discourse and actions, but rather of a rhetorical antinomy between an explicit and an implicit discourse in the annual reports. We show that the implicit discourse sustains a subtext of intersectional oppression that manifests through phenomena of (in)visibilization, othering, exoticization, and silencing. Indeed, this discourse—through the sexual objectification of women, racial exclusion, and the hegemony of white heterosexual masculinity—performs identities by assigning women and individuals at the intersection of several minoritized identities to a defined and subordinate position. Our results also show that the visual (over)representation of women in annual reports does not necessarily indicate progress towards equality but may, on the contrary, perpetuate gender stereotypes.
{"title":"(In)visibilization, silencing and diversity washing: an intersectional analysis of diversity discourses","authors":"Julie Gauneau, Caroline Lambert","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102816","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102816","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Reporting conveys discourses of power and may give rise to forms of “washing” (greenwashing, diversity washing, etc.). This article analyzes the evolution of textual, quantitative, and visual discourses on diversity in the annual reports of a multinational organization (LVMH) between 2002 and 2019. By adopting an intersectional approach and combining different methods of discourse analysis, we uncover a new modality of diversity washing. We show that this does not take the form of a dissonance between diversity-related discourse and actions, but rather of a rhetorical antinomy between an explicit and an implicit discourse in the annual reports. We show that the implicit discourse sustains a subtext of intersectional oppression that manifests through phenomena of (in)visibilization, othering, exoticization, and silencing. Indeed, this discourse—through the sexual objectification of women, racial exclusion, and the hegemony of white heterosexual masculinity—performs identities by assigning women and individuals at the intersection of several minoritized identities to a defined and subordinate position. Our results also show that the visual (over)representation of women in annual reports does not necessarily indicate progress towards equality but may, on the contrary, perpetuate gender stereotypes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102816"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145157072","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 : 2025-09-19DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102817
Neil J. Dunne
Neoliberal annexation of universities results in ‘dark academia’, a state associated with stress, anxiety, exhaustion, guilt, fear and burnout. Accounting’s professional commitments and narrow teaching render our discipline especially culpable. Although prior research tends to describe the cause (neoliberalism) and effect (deleterious mental health) of dark academia, I argue for a nuanced and novel characterization of its nature. Specifically, I identify and describe its five ‘values’, namely individualism, illusion, inequality, isomorphism and infinitude. I then argue how Stoic philosophy can be deployed to confront these values. Specifically, in the autoethnographic tradition and mobilizing the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, I show how academics can accept and yet also resist dark academia’s values. I also challenge prior conceptualization of Stoicism as an impractical and self-centered philosophy by examining how it can realistically and pro-socially benefit the academic community in general. This research may be especially timely for marginalized members of our community, such as junior faculty and PhD students. It illuminates the untapped potential of Stoic philosophy to better understand and confront individual and community crises.
{"title":"Confronting dark academia: A Stoic strategy of acceptance and resistance","authors":"Neil J. Dunne","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102817","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102817","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Neoliberal annexation of universities results in ‘dark academia’, a state associated with stress, anxiety, exhaustion, guilt, fear and burnout. Accounting’s professional commitments and narrow teaching render our discipline especially culpable. Although prior research tends to describe the <em>cause</em> (neoliberalism) and <em>effect</em> (deleterious mental health) of dark academia, I argue for a nuanced and novel characterization of its <em>nature</em>. Specifically, I identify and describe its five ‘values’, namely <em>individualism, illusion, inequality, isomorphism</em> and <em>infinitude</em>. I then argue how Stoic philosophy can be deployed to confront these values. Specifically, in the autoethnographic tradition and mobilizing the <em>Meditations</em> of Marcus Aurelius, I show how academics can <em>accept</em> and yet also <em>resist</em> dark academia’s values. I also challenge prior conceptualization of Stoicism as an impractical and self-centered philosophy by examining how it can realistically and pro-socially benefit the academic community in general. This research may be especially timely for marginalized members of our community, such as junior faculty and PhD students. It illuminates the untapped potential of Stoic philosophy to better understand and confront individual and community crises.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102817"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145104566","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 : 2025-09-19DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102815
Gizelle D Willows , Michael Harber
Employing a conceptualization of identity work as ‘boundary work’ from organizational theory, this paper contributes to research examining how the Big Four audit firms attempt to legitimize their behavior, preserve their reputation, and grow their influence in capital markets. The South African post-apartheid socio-political context, together with recent regulatory pressures placed on the Big Four to demonstrate ‘true’ and ‘genuine’ racial transformation, provides an opportune setting to explore the behavior of the Big Four. On matters of race and racism, research is limited by the highly contested nature of the topic and the fact that dialogue surrounding race is usually guarded, informal, and thereby opaque. Yet, in South Africa, the government has refined over the years an intricate legislated ‘scorecard’ for organizations (especially corporates) to ‘measure’ their racial equity performance. This system is given considerable prominence in public and corporate affairs; indeed, it is ‘an accounting mechanism’ for establishing social legitimacy in matters of race. Through a discourse analysis of parliamentary debate and regulatory communications, we showcase the ‘institutional entrepreneurialism’ of the Big Four. Applying Critical Race Theory, our interpretation highlights unintended consequences and paradoxes which are created when race equity is ‘measured’ and ‘performance’ is determined by what is effectively a compliance-based accounting system. We argue that such a system hinders rather than promotes constructive conversation and hides, intentionally or unintentionally, the perspectives needed to achieve a truly transformed ‘culture’ of inclusive opportunity, trust, and respect. We also provide a further example of the Big Four representing themselves as paragons of virtue, ‘agents of transformational change’, in such a manner as to convey the idea that racial equity cannot be achieved in the local profession without their valiant efforts. Such rhetoric again shows how the Big Four represent the two dominant institutional logics of commercialism and professionalism as complementary, not conflicting, or contradictory.
{"title":"Boundaries of transformation: Race, compliance, and identity work in South Africa’s Big Four accounting firms","authors":"Gizelle D Willows , Michael Harber","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102815","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102815","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Employing a conceptualization of identity work as ‘boundary work’ from organizational theory, this paper contributes to research examining how the Big Four audit firms attempt to legitimize their behavior, preserve their reputation, and grow their influence in capital markets. The South African post-apartheid socio-political context, together with recent regulatory pressures placed on the Big Four to demonstrate ‘true’ and ‘genuine’ racial transformation, provides an opportune setting to explore the behavior of the Big Four. On matters of race and racism, research is limited by the highly contested nature of the topic and the fact that dialogue surrounding race is usually guarded, informal, and thereby opaque. Yet, in South Africa, the government has refined over the years an intricate legislated ‘scorecard’ for organizations (especially corporates) to ‘measure’ their racial equity performance. This system is given considerable prominence in public and corporate affairs; indeed, it is ‘an accounting mechanism’ for establishing social legitimacy in matters of race. Through a discourse analysis of parliamentary debate and regulatory communications, we showcase the ‘institutional entrepreneurialism’ of the Big Four. Applying Critical Race Theory, our interpretation highlights unintended consequences and paradoxes which are created when race equity is ‘measured’ and ‘performance’ is determined by what is effectively a compliance-based accounting system. We argue that such a system hinders rather than promotes constructive conversation and hides, intentionally or unintentionally, the perspectives needed to achieve a truly transformed ‘culture’ of inclusive opportunity, trust, and respect. We also provide a further example of the Big Four representing themselves as paragons of virtue, ‘agents of transformational change’, in such a manner as to convey the idea that racial equity cannot be achieved in the local profession without their valiant efforts. Such rhetoric again shows how the Big Four represent the two dominant institutional logics of commercialism and professionalism as complementary, not conflicting, or contradictory.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102815"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145104564","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 : 2025-09-12DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102814
Nathalie Clavijo , Ludivine Perray-Redslob
This paper presents a counter account in the form of a letter written by a mother to her two sons, following a racist attack against one of them. The letter mobilizes memories and systems of knowledge from the South(s) — specifically from South America and West Africa — two geographies that coexist in the first author’s everyday life. In doing so, it offers a counter-pedagogy of cruelty, a concept developed by feminist decolonial anthropologist Rita Segato, who describes the pedagogy of cruelty as a systemic pedagogy that teaches individuals to objectify others, erase empathy, and normalize disposability. The letter interlaces lullabies, ancestral knowledge, spiritual traditions, and embodied experiences to resist the dehumanizing language of accounting, and instead center love, memory, and relationality. This paper contributes to the feminist counter-accounting agenda by advancing counter accounts as counter-pedagogies of cruelty. These accounts are grounded in: (1) love, understood as a form of resistance; (2) non-duality, which embraces complexity, messiness, and the coexistence of diverse epistemologies; and (3) alternative forms of writing and knowledge-making that challenge the epistemic oppression embedded in dominant academic norms.
{"title":"Countering the pedagogy of cruelty with love from/for the South(s)","authors":"Nathalie Clavijo , Ludivine Perray-Redslob","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102814","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102814","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents a counter account in the form of a letter written by a mother to her two sons, following a racist attack against one of them. The letter mobilizes memories and systems of knowledge from the South(s) — specifically from South America and West Africa — two geographies that coexist in the first author’s everyday life. In doing so, it offers a counter-pedagogy of cruelty, a concept developed by feminist decolonial anthropologist Rita Segato, who describes the pedagogy of cruelty as a systemic pedagogy that teaches individuals to objectify others, erase empathy, and normalize disposability. The letter interlaces lullabies, ancestral knowledge, spiritual traditions, and embodied experiences to resist the dehumanizing language of accounting, and instead center love, memory, and relationality. This paper contributes to the feminist counter-accounting agenda by advancing counter accounts as counter-pedagogies of cruelty. These accounts are grounded in: (1) love, understood as a form of resistance; (2) non-duality, which embraces complexity, messiness, and the coexistence of diverse epistemologies; and (3) alternative forms of writing and knowledge-making that challenge the epistemic oppression embedded in dominant academic norms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102814"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145046100","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 : 2025-09-01DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102813
Amanda Curry , Johan Sandström , Stig Westerdahl
This article provides an assessment of previous research on the nexus between accounting and migration. Despite ideas of accounting and migration interlinking in many ways, and with migration as one of the most important global challenges, the research conversation is limited and sprawling. Four different streams are discerned in the nexus between accounting and migration: i) historizing the migrant, ii) controlling migrants at the border, iii) constructing the employable migrant, and iv) listening to the voices of migrants. Based on a cross-stream analysis, five interrelated roles of accounting in the making of migrants and migration are highlighted, roles that also serve as springboards to suggestions for future research.
{"title":"Accounting for migration: An inquiry into a research conversation in the margins","authors":"Amanda Curry , Johan Sandström , Stig Westerdahl","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102813","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102813","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article provides an assessment of previous research on the nexus between accounting and migration. Despite ideas of accounting and migration interlinking in many ways, and with migration as one of the most important global challenges, the research conversation is limited and sprawling. Four different streams are discerned in the nexus between accounting and migration: i) historizing the migrant, ii) controlling migrants at the border, iii) constructing the employable migrant, and iv) listening to the voices of migrants. Based on a cross-stream analysis, five interrelated roles of accounting in the making of migrants and migration are highlighted, roles that also serve as springboards to suggestions for future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102813"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144922553","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 : 2025-08-20DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102810
Pier-Luc Lajoie
Drawing on Deloitte’s content marketing between 2017 and 2022, this study examines how a conception of artificial intelligence (AI) is shaped and disseminated according to the precepts of technical propaganda outlined by Jacques Ellul. The firm promotes a romantic-managerial conception of AI that suggests business specialists can help organizations reap the benefits of the miraculous promises of a human-centered AI, without incurring any of the drawbacks, based on the assumption that it is possible to control AI. Three complementary discursive archetypes are mobilized by the firm to spur organizations into action: the prophet, arousing enthusiasm by spreading the “Good News” about AI; the demystifier, numbing concerns about the potential drifts of the technical society; and the bird of ill omen, stoking a fear of inertia. This study highlights the relevance of Jacques Ellul’s work to stimulate the ongoing debate within the critical accounting community about the perils of AI’s proliferation in organizations and society. Beyond its traditional function of legitimizing expertise, content marketing is mobilized as a propaganda vehicle for a conception of AI seemingly shaped in the mold of the firm’s own professional services offering. Finally, by showing how the precepts of propaganda are incorporated into content marketing, this study highlights the commercialization of contemporary social issues as a pivotal step in the colonization of professional accounting services by marketing expertise.
{"title":"Content marketing as a propaganda vehicle for a romantic-managerial conception of artificial intelligence","authors":"Pier-Luc Lajoie","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102810","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102810","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Drawing on Deloitte’s content marketing between 2017 and 2022, this study examines how a conception of artificial intelligence (AI) is shaped and disseminated according to the precepts of technical propaganda outlined by Jacques Ellul. The firm promotes a romantic-managerial conception of AI that suggests business specialists can help organizations reap the benefits of the miraculous promises of a human-centered AI, without incurring any of the drawbacks, based on the assumption that it is possible to control AI. Three complementary discursive archetypes are mobilized by the firm to spur organizations into action: the prophet, arousing enthusiasm by spreading the “Good News” about AI; the demystifier, numbing concerns about the potential drifts of the technical society; and the bird of ill omen, stoking a fear of inertia. This study highlights the relevance of Jacques Ellul’s work to stimulate the ongoing debate within the critical accounting community about the perils of AI’s proliferation in organizations and society. Beyond its traditional function of legitimizing expertise, content marketing is mobilized as a propaganda vehicle for a conception of AI seemingly shaped in the mold of the firm’s own professional services offering. Finally, by showing how the precepts of propaganda are incorporated into content marketing, this study highlights the commercialization of contemporary social issues as a pivotal step in the colonization of professional accounting services by marketing expertise.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 102810"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144866833","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 : 2025-08-12DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2025.102811
James Brackley , Charika Channuntapipat , Florian Gebreiter
Following numerous high-profile scandals, the issue of audit quality continues to attract extensive debate among practitioners, policy makers and academics. Meanwhile, an increasingly ‘pluralistic’ multi-method literature has developed, seeking to better understand audit failure through the range of cultures and working practices in accounting firms. In this paper, we draw on the theory of ‘critical performativity’ to further our understanding of the backstage socio-technical arrangements contributing to audit failure. In elaborating on the methodology for such an approach, we conduct a multi-method ‘standpoint’ analysis from the perspective of junior auditors, following a major audit quality initiative in a Big-4 firm. Our analysis shows that the initiative not only failed to address core audit quality issues, it also exacerbated them by driving a less critical “box-ticking” approach in a “get it done at all costs” culture. We found that a significant number of trainees developed critical perspectives on auditing as they pushed back against this “box-ticking” approach and sought to place more emphasis on challenging the client. We frame these trainees as “refusing to play the game”, but note that these critical perspectives were increasingly marginalised within the firm, with the large majority of these trainees planning to leave the firm at the end of their training contracts. We suggest that these conclusions, which are drawn from critical perspectives within the firm, provide us with an important basis from which to make practical suggestions on how junior auditors can be better supported, and how their critical perspectives can be further developed.
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