Severe inequality from climate change exists between the Global North and Global South. The North significantly contributes to climate change yet retreats to protect itself…
Abstract
Purpose
Severe inequality from climate change exists between the Global North and Global South. The North significantly contributes to climate change yet retreats to protect itself against its harmful impacts. Conversely, members of the Global South bear the brunt of the climate crisis with limited protection against its destructive effects. Climate justice aims to address this inequality. This paper explores the effects of climate change reforms and policies that have been established to foster accountability and climate justice.
Design/methodology/approach
This research follows a qualitative exploratory case study method. It draws on a supply- and demand-led approach and local accounts to analyse the (in)effectiveness with which six national and international reforms and policies have achieved accountability for climate justice. The research analysed a variety of empirical documents including contemporary research, reports, academic literature, non-government and government documents and policies, media releases and Pacific Islander accounts.
Findings
Climate change reforms and policies, which come together to form supply-side accountability, have largely failed to engender accountability in the Global North for the impacts of climate change. Nor have they mitigated climate change to any tangible extent at all. This has created a system of modern-day climate apartheid. Improving accountability and remediating climate injustices going forward will require a focus on demand-led instruments and accountability, which includes the voice of citizens.
Originality/value
This paper responds to AAAJ’s special issue call for examining accounting and accountability with regard to environmental and climate racism. Limited research to date explores the issue of climate apartheid and climate justice and its relationship with accountability. This research attempts to fill that gap.
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Erin Jade Twyford, Farzana Aman Tanima and Sendirella George
In this paper, the authors explore racialisation through human-centric counter-accounts (counter-stories) to bring together critical race theory (CRT) and counter-accounting.
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, the authors explore racialisation through human-centric counter-accounts (counter-stories) to bring together critical race theory (CRT) and counter-accounting.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors utilise CRT to demonstrate the emancipatory role of counter-stories in (re)telling racialized narratives, specifically the narrative of asylum seekers who arrive by sea and are subjected to the inhumane and oppressive nature of the Australian government's policy of offshore immigration detention.
Findings
Counter-stories, as tools of accountability, can make visible oppressive forces and the hidden practices of racialized social practices and norms.
Research limitations/implications
This paper emphasises that we are not in a post-racial world, and racialisation remains a fundamental challenge. We must continue to refute race as an ontological truth and strive to provide a platform for counter-stories that can spark or drive social change. This requires allies, including academics, to give that platform, support their plight, and offer avenues for change.
Originality/value
The authors introduce CRT as a theoretical tool for examining racialisation, opening space for a more critical confluence of accounting and race with potentially wide-reaching implications for our discipline. The paper also contributes to the limited accounting literature concerning asylum seekers, particularly in the use of counter-stories that offer a way of refuting, or challenging, the majoritarian/dominant narratives around asylum-seeking.
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Glenn Finau, Diane Jarvis, Natalie Stoeckl, Silva Larson, Daniel Grainger, Michael Douglas, Ewamian Aboriginal Corporation, Ryan Barrowei, Bessie Coleman, David Groves, Joshua Hunter, Maria Lee and Michael Markham
This paper aims to present the findings of a government-initiated project that sought to explore the possibility of incorporating cultural connections to land within the federal…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the findings of a government-initiated project that sought to explore the possibility of incorporating cultural connections to land within the federal national accounting system using the United Nations Systems of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN-SEEA) framework as a basis.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a critical dialogic approach and responding to the calls for critical accountants to engage with stakeholders, the authors worked with two Indigenous groups of Australia to develop a system of accounts that incorporates their cultural connections to “Country”. The two groups were clans from the Mungguy Country in the Kakadu region of Northern Territory and the Ewamian Aboriginal Corporation of Northern Queensland. Conducting two-day workshops on separate occasions with both groups, the authors attempted to meld the Indigenous worldviews with the worldviews embodied within national accounting systems and the UN-SEEA framework.
Findings
The models developed highlight significant differences between the ontological foundations of Indigenous and Western-worldviews and the authors reflect on the tensions created between these competing worldviews. The authors also offer pragmatic solutions that could be implemented by the Indigenous Traditional Owners and the government in terms of developing such an accounting system that incorporates connections to Country.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to providing a contemporary case study of engagement with Indigenous peoples in the co-development of a system of accounting for and by Indigenous peoples; it also contributes to the ongoing debate on bridging the divide between critique and praxis; and finally, the paper delves into an area that is largely unexplored within accounting research which is national accounting.
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Giacomo Manetti, Marco Bellucci and Stefania Oliva
This article aims to contribute to the critical accounting literature by reviewing how previous studies have addressed the topic of dialogic accounting (DA), examining the main…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to contribute to the critical accounting literature by reviewing how previous studies have addressed the topic of dialogic accounting (DA), examining the main themes investigated and discussing potential further developments of the DA research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study builds on a systematic literature review of 186 research products indexed on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar that were published between 2004 and 2019 in 55 accounting or non-accounting scientific journals and 14 books.
Findings
First, a content analysis of each contribution informs a classification in terms of research design, methodology, geographical setting and sector of analysis. Second, a bibliometric analysis provides several visual representations of the network of research products included in our review using bibliographic coupling, cooccurrence and coauthorship analyses. Third, and most importantly, the main narrative review discusses the development of the research strand on DA from the seminal works that introduced the topic, through the core of critical contributions inspired by the struggle between democracy and agonism, to the most recent contributions, in which new topics emerge and innovative methodologies are applied to the study of DA.
Originality/value
The main contribution of this manuscript is twofold. In addition to providing a systematic, bibliometric and narrative review of the evolution of nearly two decades of literature on DA, the present study is intended to collect ideas for further research and to discuss how the advent of new technologies and the peculiarities of various institutional contexts can shape the future research agenda on this critical form of accounting.
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Massimo Sargiacomo and Stephen P. Walker
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organizations played pivotal roles in a governmental programme of housing reconstruction…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organizations played pivotal roles in a governmental programme of housing reconstruction following a major earthquake in central Italy in 2009. Venturing beyond the boundaries of institutional isomorphism and using a Foucauldian approach, the longitudinal analysis seeks to illuminate accounting and performance challenges and provide insights to the calculative techniques associated with evacuee housing.
Design/methodology/approach
In “act 1” this paper investigates the role of a consortium created during the recovery stage of the disaster to construct temporary housing. In “act 2” attention shifts to consortia established for the reconstruction of buildings in devastated communities. The total observation period is 11 years. 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 key-actors. A broad range of official documents was also consulted.
Findings
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake a comprehensive reporting system was established to facilitate the construction of 19 new towns for 15,000 evacuees. The mix of accountants, engineers and architects who developed the system and a building prototype evidences the assembly of diverse calculative techniques by different experts and the de-territorialization of subject disciplines. During reconstruction technologies of government included the introduction of standardised systems and vocabularies that homogenised administrative procedures among diverse experts.
Research limitations/implications
This paper provides academics and policymakers with insights to accounting, performance management and accountability in hybrid organizations in the largely unexplored realm of post-disaster evacuee housing. Further studies are needed to examine the politics of calculation in similar contexts.
Originality/value
This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring the role played by individual experts working for hybrid organizations. Further, by exploring actual practices over an extended period of post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, the study highlights how experts intervened to solve problems at the meso-political level and at the micro-organizational level.
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Xiaochen Zhang and Huifang Yin
The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of information disclosure by unlisted bond issuers on the stock price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of information disclosure by unlisted bond issuers on the stock price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper takes advantage of information disclosure during the bond issuance and examines the spillover effect of unlisted bond issuers' information disclosure on listed firms in the stock market. The sample is composed of A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2018. All the data are obtained from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research and WIND databases. The impact of bond market information disclosure on price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry is identified through multivariate regression analyses.
Findings
Empirical results show that price informativeness of listed firms has a significantly positive association with the information disclosure of same-industry unlisted bond issuers. Further analyses show that the above finding is more significant when information disclosure of bond issuers is a more important channel for acquiring industry information (i.e. when industry is more concentrated, when economic uncertainty is high, and when industry information is less transparent) and understanding the industry competitive landscape (i.e. when bond issuers are relatively large, when bond issuers and listed firms have more direct product competition, when bond issuance firms are large-scale state-owned business groups), and when there are more cross-market information intermediaries (i.e. more cross-market institutional investors and more sell-side analysts). This paper indicates that information disclosure of bond issuers has a positive spillover effect on the stock market.
Originality/value
The novelty of the research is that the authors examine industry information spillover from unlisted firms to listed firms leveraging on unlisted firms' information disclosure in bond markets.
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Giuseppe Grossi, Ileana Steccolini, Pawan Adhikari, Judy Brown, Mark Christensen, Carolyn Cordery, Laurence Ferry, Philippe Lassou, Bruce McDonald III, Ringa Raudla, Mariafrancesca Sicilia and Eija Vinnari
The purpose of this polyphonic paper is to report on interdisciplinary discussions on the state-of-the-art and future of public sector accounting research (PSAR). The authors hope…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this polyphonic paper is to report on interdisciplinary discussions on the state-of-the-art and future of public sector accounting research (PSAR). The authors hope to enliven the debates of the past and future developments in terms of context, themes, theories, methods and impacts in the field of PSAR by the exchanges they include here.
Design/methodology/approach
This polyphonic paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach. It brings into conversation ideas, views and approaches of several scholars on the actual and future developments of PSAR in various contexts, and explores potential implications.
Findings
This paper has brought together scholars from a plurality of disciplines, research methods and geographical areas, showing at the same time several points of convergence on important future themes (such as accounting as a mean for public, accounting, hybridity and value pluralism) and enabling conditions (accounting capabilities, profession and digitalisation) for PSA scholarship and practice, and the richness of looking at them from a plurality of perspectives.
Research limitations/implications
Exploring these past and future developments opens up the potential for interesting theoretical insights. A much greater theoretical and practical reconsideration of PSAR will be fostered by the exchanges included here.
Originality/value
In setting out a future research agenda, this paper fosters theoretical and methodological pluralism in the interdisciplinary research community interested in PSAR in various contexts. The discussion perspectives presented in this paper constitute not only a basis for further research in this relevant accounting area on the role, status and developments of PSAR but also creative potential for practitioners to be more reflective on their practices and also intended and united outcomes of such practices.
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Carlo Vermiglio, Guido Noto, Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar and Vincenzo Zarone
This paper aims to analyse how emerging technologies (ETs) impact on improving performance in disaster management (DM) processes and, concretely, their impact on the performance…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse how emerging technologies (ETs) impact on improving performance in disaster management (DM) processes and, concretely, their impact on the performance according to the different phases of the DM cycle (preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation).
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology is based on a systematic review of the literature. Scopus, ProQuest, EBSCO and Web of Science were used as data sources, and an initial sample of 373 scientific articles was collected. After abstracts and full texts were read and refinements to the search were made, a final corpus of 69 publications was analysed using VOSviewer software for text mining and cluster visualisation.
Findings
The results highlight how ETs foster the preparedness and resilience of specific systems when dealing with different phases of the DM cycle. Simulation and disaster risk reduction are the fields of major relevance in the application of ETs to DM.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature by adding the lenses of performance measurement, management and accountability in analysing the impact of ETs on DM. It thus represents a starting point for scholars to develop future research on a rapidly and continuously developing topic.
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Noemi Sinkovics and Jason Archie-acheampong
This study aims to investigate how different academic fields within and outside of international business (IB) engage with the topics of social value creation in the context of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how different academic fields within and outside of international business (IB) engage with the topics of social value creation in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs). The aim is to take stock of the main themes and offer suggestions for future research avenues.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper undertakes a scoping review. The authors use the Web of Science database to identify relevant articles. The database search yielded 466 articles. The NVivo software was used to code and identify key thematic areas.
Findings
The matrix analysis performed in NVivo yielded 15 main thematic areas spanning 37 research fields. However, further analysis revealed that 89 per cent of the articles originated from 13 fields. Furthermore, while IB journals represent the second-largest field home to publications related to the social value creation of MNEs, they only account for 12 per cent of the sample.
Originality/value
The paper responds to prior calls to reduce disciplinary silos through the performing of a thematic analysis across a multitude of research fields.
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Garry D. Carnegie, Delfina Gomes, Lee D. Parker, Karen McBride and Eva Tsahuridu
This article centres on the pertinence of redefining accounting for tomorrow, particularly for facilitating the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and…
Abstract
Purpose
This article centres on the pertinence of redefining accounting for tomorrow, particularly for facilitating the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, thereby, for shaping a better world. In aspiring for accounting to reach its full potential as a multidimensional technical, social and moral practice, this paper aims to focus on ideas, initiatives and proposals for realising accounting’s future potential and responsibilities.
Design/methodology/approach
The study deploys a further developed “strategic implementation framework”, initially proposed by Carnegie et al. (2023), with an emphasis on accounting serving “the public interest” so as “to enable the flourishing of organisations, people and nature” (Carnegie et al., 2021a, p. 69; 2021b). It depicts strategies towards the future of accounting and the world.
Findings
Significant opportunities are identified for accounting and accountants, working closely with a diversity of stakeholders, to become alert to and cognisant of the nature, roles, uses and impacts of accounting. The evidence presented notes a predominant inattention of accounting and accountants to the SDGs despite the deteriorating state of our social and natural environment.
Research limitations/implications
Whilst this article examines other articles in this special issue (SI), there is no substitute for carefully reading, reflecting on and deliberating upon these articles individually.
Originality/value
The time for accounting to focus on creating a better world can no longer be extended. Accounting’s full potential will not be realised by remaining in a narrow and complacent, technicist state.