Critical Perspectives on Accounting最新文献

Problems linked to tax injustices have gained worldwide attention recently, as the aggressive tax planning practices of multinational companies have increasingly been exposed. Legislative reforms and enhanced corporate social responsibility practices have been introduced to deter tax avoidance, yet with little enduring success. However, little attention has been paid to the role of tax scholarship or to the statutory interpretation in the problems of tax avoidance. This paper contradicts the commonplace view that tax law scholarship serves the public interest. The paper approaches tax scholarship as a social practice, and argues that conflicting interests emerge when tax scholars conduct doctrinal study of law. As many tax scholars work for the tax advisory industry alongside their scholarly jobs, they have an incentive to propose legal arguments in their scholarly work that advance their private clients’ interests. Since judges use scholarship as an interpretive aid when defining the content of tax law, tax scholarship might bias the development of legal doctrine. It is argued that scholarship may therefore change the distributive effects of tax systems, in favor of the tax advisory firms’ clients. As a result, the democratic legitimacy of tax systems may be undermined. This article illustrates the problematic aspects of tax scholars’ double roles using empirical examples from Finnish legal culture and Finnish law reviews and codes of conduct in universities. This paper develops an argument that if such problems are prevalent in a country with little corruption and strong democratic institutions, they may be widespread in jurisdictions beyond Finland.

This paper offers a critical analysis of the politics of accounting standard setting. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) hold an increasingly monopolistic role in accounting regulation across the globe, and make claims to transparency, neutrality and superior expertise to legitimize their hegemonic position. In 2009 the IASB extended their standard setting beyond listed entities to the International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-Sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs). This paper explores the political antagonisms surrounding this extension, finding that the IASB undertook this project to block counter articulations from several bodies. To unpack the politics of the IASB’s extension this paper draws on Laclau and Mouffe’s hegemony and Glynos and Howarth’s political logics, to argue that the IASB maintain and extend hegemony by dismissing and blocking alternatives through the rhetoric of superior expertise, which ultimately enables them to extend ideologies of advanced financial capital and capital markets to new spaces.

There are fewer women in the upper echelons of accounting academia in Italy than in other European countries, and fewer female full professors than in other disciplines at Italian universities. The purpose of this research is to investigate the barriers experienced by Italian women in accounting academia and contributes with suggestions to alleviate these. The paper adopts a phenomenographic approach to identify the ways in which a group of 24 Italian women, at different hierarchical levels, experienced barriers to their academic careers. The study identifies different categories of barriers that combine to prevent female perspectives and progression within accounting academia. Underpinning these barriers is a patriarchal culture that has a significant influence on women’s careers in academia. The patriarchal structure in both the workplace and society, engenders difficulties in maintaining work-life balance, and shapes male and female roles in the academic workplace.

The paper contributes to the literature on gender in the academic accounting discipline, exploring women’s experiences of accounting academia, linking findings of a persistence of patriarchy, and arguing for a more feminist academic organisation. This is the first research in this area to use a phenomenographic method to investigate the barriers to career progression for Italian female academics in accounting and in examining the experience of women at different career levels, including those who have left accounting academia. The paper contributes to research on women’s barriers to career advancement, bringing new insights to the understanding of the gender gap in accounting academia and in making suggestions for structural change.

How do the media represent the complex, opaque and controversial phenomenon of corporate tax avoidance? Based on media’s articles pertaining to the international “LuxLeaks” news leak, we identify a contest over tax avoidance representation which reveals a peculiar normative dynamic. We find that the field of tax avoidance is characterized by a vague and highly ambiguous normative framework, as the media rely on very different norms to elaborate distinct normative standpoints to represent LuxLeaks. How can the problem of tax avoidance (and consequently its solution) be delimited if there is disagreement over which norm should be used to assess it? Our study then highlights the need to step back and (re)consider broader assumptions of normativity in relation to tax avoidance, to advance the debate. We propose to import Baier’s (2013) socio-legal perspective on normativity into the tax realm, to better understand not just the legal and social norms as distinct normative systems but also their interdependence. Based on discursive insights from the press, we map out the normative structure specific to LuxLeaks, as conceptualized using Baier’s platform. To exemplify how this kind of conceptualization can nurture future research, we initiate a reflection on how normativity could evolve in the tax avoidance field, considering possible implications of the press representations analyzed.

This paper introduces silence as a form of resistance. Critical accounting studies portrayed resistance in terms of visibility and voice, and silence as a passive reaction from marginalized groups unable to speak, deprived of ‘voice’. Instead, we draw on an ethnographic study to follow various resisting strategies drawing on silence to actively undermine accounting technologies and practices. We draw on Scott’s infrapolitics and introduce silence as a strategic act, constitutive of power relations yet with multiple and situated meanings. We argue that silence acts both to forge a form of contestation that dares not speak its name and to constitute a space for the development of an alternative conduct to reclaim independence. Specifically, we identify four tactics using silence as a form of resistance – silence to escape accountability and control; silence to negotiate an alternative; silence to reclaim independence; and silence to retain power and authority. We then discuss the potential and limits of such silent resistance to support the emergence of alternative conducts.

Although wealth inequality is increasingly considered a massive societal problem, only a few jurisdictions charge wealth taxes on a wide range of assets on annual due days.

Against this backdrop, the present paper asks whether there are reasons to tax wealth from a tax equity perspective. It interprets tax equity as a procedural rule, which means taxing people with equal ability to pay equally and people with unequal ability to pay unequally. Since ability to pay refers to ‘economic capacity’, which is often understood as economic power, which in turn depends on the interpretation of market theories, answering the research question requires reference to market theories.

The paper shows, firstly, that economists who argue that a wealth tax in addition to an income tax leads to double taxation refer to neoclassical market theory and its power interpretation. However, neoclassical market theory is not adequate to justify that wealth should not be taxed.

Secondly, the paper provides an alternative ability to pay interpretation and a different understanding of wealth. It refers to political-cultural market theory that explicitly deals with power and power distribution. From this perspective, there are reasons to ascribe an ability to pay to wealth that is independent of the ability to pay of income. For that reason, taxing individuals’ wealth supports tax equity.

Thirdly, the present paper asks whether wealth taxation is feasible. It finds that, from the perspective of the political-cultural market theory, the main obstacle preventing the introduction of wealth taxation lies in the prevailing neoclassical market culture.

The emergence of double-entry bookkeeping has been traced back to roughly the same period as the emergence of practices which are today broadly understood as capitalist. This has led some to suggest that capitalism and accounting are interdependent. This thesis, however, neglects an important set of similarly-paired developments that occurred much earlier: around the same time as the first traces of accounting appeared in ancient Mesopotamia, patriarchal forms of social organization were also spreading across that region. In this paper, we propose that accounting practices are less a function of the rise of capitalism and more a function of the expansion of patriarchy, which itself fuelled the widespread adoption of capitalism. Drawing on anthropological insights and the work of feminist scholars, the paper offers an alternative perspective, one that we hope will help fuel resistance against the current, damaging hegemony: a ‘herstory’ of accounting. In addition, this study has implications for how we understand a number of topics of importance to critical accountants, including accountability, violence and subjugation, women’s rights and working and living conditions, capitalism (and neoliberalism), environmental degradation, spirituality, and the rise of political states.

This paper examines the spread of financial logic and reasoning into the valuation practices by which living beings are valued. The purpose is two-fold. First, by conducting a literature review, the paper aims to connect critical accounting studies and other disciplines that address the financialization of living beings. The second purpose is cross-disciplinary as the aim is to problematize the disparate treatment of living beings in the previous financialization literature. In contrast to the previous financialization literature, this paper takes a multispecies approach by acknowledging the complex interdependences between all living beings. The research method used is a problematizing review, which enables the researcher to rethink and deconstruct dominant assumptions in the existing literature on the financialization of living beings. According to the findings, the financialization of living beings has been studied mainly from the perspective of three different theoretical traditions: 1) Foucauldian-inspired tradition of biopolitics and governmentality 2) ANT-inspired performativity and 3) financialization as a mode of Marxist capital accumulation. In addition, this paper identifies factors that enable and hamper the financialization process. By reviewing different disciplines, this paper suggests new and more holistic ways to study the financialization of living beings in critical accounting research.

This paper discusses the significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Processing (LLP), in the context of management control. The key concern is the epistemological shift from traditional deductive approaches to an inductive approach brought about by AI technologies. The paper elaborates on shifts related to the forms, practices, and infrastructures of management control, discussing new avenues for research in social studies of accounting. The discussion outlines how the integration of AI in accounting not only changes accounting practice but also fuels the relevance of some of the prior insights about social aspects of calculative practices. On a final note, the paper also suggests that, given the speed and scope at which new calculative technology is being introduced in virtually all parts of society, accounting scholars may draw upon prior insights and contribute to wider debates about the social impact of AI in society.

Accounting practices were essential to Spain’s transformation into a liberal State. The process began in 1835 as the properties and assets controlled by the Catholic Church and Town Councils were confiscated across the country, culminating in the 1855 seizure process. Informed by Foucault’s concept of governmentality, this paper identifies the role and importance of accounting in the enactment of the seizure process in 1855. The seizure was designed to address a worsening national debt and to replace the values and relationships of the Ancien Regime’s absolute monarchy with the political principles of liberalism. The intended outcome of the confiscation was to lay the foundations of a modern capitalist State at a time of great political, social, and economic turmoil. Ultimately, rather than supporting the liberal aims of the seizure process, accounting practices helped the dominant political classes to further promote their interests. Most properties were sold to people who were already large landowners and this confirmed the true aim of the seizure process: to increase their wealth and, thus, their political power.