Critical Perspectives on Accounting最新文献

As our lives were suddenly transformed with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments had to act quickly to protect their populations, both in terms of health and economy. While we have seen states massively support civil society through social measures, one wonders what legacy this will leave, especially concerning the current dominant ideology of neoliberalism. In this essay, we want to contribute to this reflection by focusing on the phenomenon of public debts, since they are reaching record levels because of the COVID-19 crisis. We argue that massive public debts are, in fact, central and vital to neoliberalism and that state interventions (and central bank use of quantitative easing) that we have witnessed recently are in accordance with usual neoliberal practices and thus do not necessarily constitute a departure from the latter. We propose avenues of research to better understand public debt as a mechanism for redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top, which has thus far been understudied in the critical accounting literature, while opening avenues for political action related to the subject of this essay.

Sustainability has become a global trend to which Argentina is no stranger. This trend is materialised, among other things, in the surge of the social balance sheet (SBS). In this article, based on the theory of the “system of professions” developed by Abbott (1988), we will try to understand how the Argentinean accounting profession has tried to extend its jurisdiction to the preparation and verification of social balance sheets. We will see how, despite its intellectual, academic and political actions, the Argentinean accounting profession has not succeeded in expanding its jurisdiction to the SBS. Thus, attempts to legislate the preparation and verification of the SBS have not always been successful. Although many Argentinean firms prepare an SBS, very few use the SBS model proposed by this profession or have their SBS verified by accountants.

The background of our analysis is the evolution of the power structure in Argentina, illustrating the tension between a profession originally organised in a corporatist way, which was inherited from a former economic model, and the new global trends, which are linked to the expansion of financial markets and the rise of sustainability. This structural change creates difficulties for the profession that will ultimately impede its expansionist purpose. We use this case to illustrate certain limitations of the Abbottian approach when it is applied to a context outside the Anglo-Saxon world.

Over the last two decades, sustainability disclosure has become a well-established practice among large and medium-sized companies. Despite the increasing number of sustainability reports published annually, concerns have arisen regarding their credibility. Skeptics view sustainability reporting as a form of decoupling – a symbolic practice disconnected from the actual practices. The purpose of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of decoupling in corporate sustainability, exemplified by selective disclosure. Drawing on the counter-accounting approach and institutional theory, we identify forms of selective disclosure and their drivers. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 333 negative events derived from MSCI’s controversies database. The analysis reveals that 69 % of negative events were reported selectively indicating a prevalence of decoupling in sustainability reporting. Selective disclosure manifests in three forms: vague disclosure, avoidance, and hypocrisy. Our findings indicate a higher likelihood of selective disclosure in the areas of labor rights/supply chain and human rights/community. Additionally, companies that publish integrated reports are less likely to engage in selective disclosure. Strikingly, neither Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines nor assurance measures can effectively deter companies from engaging in selective disclosure. Our findings underscore the urgency of transitioning from a sustainability reporting practice primarily driven by business-case considerations to a more dialogic accounting approach.

What purpose does ESG accounting really serve? As the “alphabet soup” of sustainability accounting standards thickens with the growing interest in ESG investing, this article looks beyond the usual critiques of social and environmental accounting to reveal how these new standards are productive for capital. Analysing the work of the SASB and the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the article shows that accounting for ESG is more than the smoke-screen or green-washing exercise that critical voices often observe. By mapping, quantifying and coding social, environmental and political issues to be incorporated into capital’s valuation regime, ESG accounting standards establish a technical and rhetorical basis upon which ethical claims can become productive for capital, regardless of whether or not these ethical claims translate into any practical difference in business operations and their socio-ecological impacts.

The opportunities of digital technologies, but also their risks, are shaping organisations and societies. Their influence on the future of accounting is often presented as decisive. In fact, information technologies and accounting are so intertwined that it seems impossible to separate the two. Nevertheless, as practices, they emerge from different knowledge disciplines. We examine the intersection of accounting and information technologies through an ethnographic study conducted in a multinational high-tech company in the process of implementing a new IT system. We pay particular attention to the interactions between accountants and technologists, which we analyse through the concept of knowledge templates. A template based on mobilising formalised knowledge to intervene on the organisation in a systematic way treats technology as a set of solutions for predetermined needs. Conversely, a template that treats technology as an emerging complex imposes modes of coordination based on modularity, traceability, and collaboration. Through sociomaterial interactions, a plurality of templates emerges that influences local practices. This article contributes to the literature by showing that accounting emerges through its entanglement with different bodies of knowledge following potentially divergent knowledge templates. Information technologies therefore pose a challenge to accounting: is it possible to conceive of a modular and radically decentralised accounting? This would be an accounting that accepts the pluralism of representations, orientations, and legitimate organisational discourses. It would be an accounting system with greater emancipatory potential.

Prevailing criticism of tax minimization strategies is impacting contemporary business decisions. While extant research has focused on an alleged ‘moral’ shift among large accounting firms and corporates, little is known about tax responsibilities in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Thus, we examine the following research question: How do SMEs and tax accountants perceive responsibility within the context of taxation? Our empirical investigation involves semi-structured interviews with accountants and their SME clients in Italy. Our findings point to an entanglement of legal, economic, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities enacted in mundane tax strategy work. We propose a model of ‘shared responsibility’, aiming to clarify the complementary role of SMEs, tax accountants, and state actions in the curtailment of public funding, ultimately affecting the survival of all actors involved. Our work contributes to growing scholarship on business taxation as a form of social responsibility by emphasizing the shared nature of such responsibility, as well as showing how a current reliance on reputational risks to incentivise more responsible tax behaviour is ill suited to the SME context.

In this polemical essay, we seek to provoke reflection and debate on the role of critique in addressing the global ecological crisis that we find ourselves confronted with in the Anthropocene. Drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s reading of capitalism, we will suggest that the core functional process of capitalism is one of infinite growth that subsumes any attempts at resistance, escape, or socially progressive practice. Critique, we will suggest, is a part of capitalist processes, not an opposition to it. Consequently, we will argue that, given the inextricable imbrication of accounting and capitalism, without an impossible and unconceptualisable ‘post-capitalist accounting’, all notions of sustainable accounting are protracted exercises in futility that serve rather than abate ecological collapse. Paradoxically, any attempt to produce such accounting makes it harder to achieve.

There is a long-standing debate within the social and environmental accounting research community concerning whether research engagement with (commercial) organisations and decision-makers is detrimental to the pursuit of sustainability transformation. Those critical of engagement research see such an approach as futile or outright harmful, suggesting that scholars are bound to be co-opted in the process and essentially end up reproducing systems of domination. In response, we emphasise in this paper how engagement research requires an exercise of reflexivity, which, hopefully, makes us “more conscious and more systematic” about engagement research and provides “the mutual surveillance” (Bourdieu, 2000b, p. 119) required for this academic exercise. Drawing on Bourdieu’s Pascalian Meditations, we discuss the implications of the notions of intellectual autonomy and scientific capital in the field of social and environmental accounting research and stress that both the scholastic situation and engagement with the social world are necessary elements for scholarship. We argue, on the one hand, that critical research in social and environmental accounting is a key mechanism to enhance the scientific capital of the field—through improved theorising of power and conflict—and hence retain (strengthen) the autonomy of social and environmental accounting. On the other hand, we also suggest that reinvigorating research on the relevance of accounting techniques for sustainable development is essential for our scientific capital and the wider contribution of social accounting across intellectual fields and beyond.

Reflecting on how critical academics intervene in the public sphere, this paper explores how accounting is mobilized to reinforce and counter neoliberal hegemony in a public-policy debate over the role and size of government debt. The paper draws on the work of Gramsci, Laclau, and Mouffe to analyze case-data derived from three decades of media articles, research reports, and government financial documents in the Canadian province of Québec. The study finds that hegemonic actors seek consent from the population by exciting emotions (esp. fear and guilt), referencing the common sense, and aligning their arguments with people’s everyday experiences. While counter-hegemonic actors initially relied on conceptual reason and logic in their arguments, positioning accounting as an ‘ammunition machine’, they too came to adopt an approach aimed at exciting emotions, translating accounting concepts into non-economic fields, and rearticulating hegemonic signifiers, in an effort to refine and reshape the common sense. Highlighting the limitations of purely rational modes of argumentation, the study has implications for the manner in which accounting academics intervene in the public sphere and how they need to be skilled translators and re-articulators of hegemonic discourse.