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The paper aims to use a neoliberal ideology to frame an analysis of how the power of ideas can be used to maintain a failed corporate governance model based on stockholder primacy.

The paper employs the concept of corporate hegemony to provide an understanding of the conditioning environment in the USA in the 1990s. It examines the tactics that neoliberals used to gain consensus for their ideology and to skillfully deflect criticism in the face of significant policy failures that have had a global impact.

The paper highlights the power of ideology to create a desired outcome. It finds that Sarbanes‐Oxley represented a neoliberal victory in that it legitimated shareholder primacy and continued use of a failed corporate governance model.

Sarbanes‐Oxley did not address the systemic problems associated with deregulation; it will not resolve the basic problem of how to prevent corporate malfeasance in an economic environment that rewards arbitrage capitalism, high risk and a focus on short‐term profits.

If shareholder primacy weakens accountability, as the paper suggests, then accounting researchers need to develop models that focus on deregulation rather than on regulatory capture and the use of state power to promote private interests. Accounting academics need to assume the role of public intellectuals and to reject Milton Friedman's focus on negative freedom as the sole objective of economic activity and examine economic well being in terms of positive freedom.

The accounting profession has been charged by Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger with a public responsibility to fulfill a “public watchdog” function. This function demands that the accountant maintains total independence from the client at all times and requires complete fidelity to the public trust (Briloff, 1990). The accounting profession also fulfills a monitoring and enforcing role in society in that the monitoring of contracts is considered a necessary cost of contracting (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). The North American Free Trade Agreement is viewed as a coalition of participants who interact through a system of contracts and agreements regarding trade between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Explicit in the agreement is the recognition of the individual rights of the labor sector. This article discusses the rights of labor acknowledged by NAFTA, and the role accounting should play as a response to these agreements. Previous papers have called for the creation of a value theory in accounting that is socially conscious (Tinker, Merino, and Neimark, 1982) and for the development of a political economy of accounting which explicitly considers the relationships between accounting and the institutional structure of the economy (Cooper & Sherer, 1984). The Economist (4/9/94, p.14) calls for social disclosure as a means of advancing the cause of human rights in the third world. Following this literature, which calls on the accounting profession to become actively involved in setting accounting policy that is socially conscious, this article recommends making changes to the existing U.S. and North American accounting systems to facilitate fair economic growth and resource allocation between the North American countries. Recommendations include encouraging accounting standard setters and governmental bodies to require publicly traded companies doing business under NAFTA to provide additional disclosures concerning labor and other NAFTA agreements, such as environmental disclosures, in order to provide socially relevant information to stakeholders in all three countries. Additionally, an international group of auditors should be formed and funded by the NAFTA countries to monitor and publish compliance with the NAFTA agreements on labor and other issues, and to provide credibility to the required disclosures.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on 30 years of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ), and contemplates the future. It makes a case for diversity, including a broad range of theories and research methodologies, as a defining feature of AAAJ. As we have done since 1988 in AAAJ’s first editorial, we continue to urge interdisciplinary accounting researchers to undertake innovative research and be both original and creative, avoiding the narrow focus and detachment from society that is characteristic of globally pervasive North American economics-based accounting research.

The paper employs an analysis and critique of trends in interdisciplinary research, drawing upon the previous 29 editorials/commentaries published in AAAJ. It also elucidates the field of scholarship associated with AAAJ in 2016 as evidence of the patterning of recent research and publishing trends.

This paper identifies challenges confronting interdisciplinary researchers in the globalised academic community. These include our obsession with theoretical engorgement and our adversarial rather than cooperative approach to knowledge development. Furthermore, the authors argue that researchers must reflect on their motivation, informing theories and values if they intend to contribute to practice, policy and a wider societal good. Accounting researchers have a responsibility to go beyond observation, engaging in and constructing a more equal and fair society.

This commentary reflects on developments in AAAJ and its community over three decades. The authors also address the wider AAAJ community, including the Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting (APIRA) conference attendees, AAAJ special issue editors, the editorial board, ad hoc reviewers, authors and supporters across AAAJ’s 30 years.

This editorial reflects on 25 years of AAAJ and on the interdisciplinary accounting movement and its future direction. It emphasises the Editors' commitment to encouraging the application of a broad range of theories and research methodologies as well as their ongoing support for diversity as a defining feature of AAAJ. This includes the wider community, which includes the APIRA conference attendees, Special Issue editors and the many individuals who have all played an important part in AAAJ's 25 years. The Editors continue to urge interdisciplinary accounting researchers to undertake innovative research and be both original and creative, thereby avoiding a narrowness that is an increasing feature of North American economics based accounting research. The important role of academic researchers is highlighted in not simply observing, but also engaging in and constructing an enabling accounting. The purpose here is to reflect on the past and to look towards the future.

The paper employs a literature‐based analysis and critique. It also identifies via empirical data the field of scholarship associated with AAAJ and evidence of the patterning of recent publications.

This editorial draws together various themes in our previous AAAJ editorials and highlights milestones in the journey to our current position. It identifies various challenges that confront interdisciplinary researchers in the globalised academic community. It also points to the need for researchers to reflect on their motivation, informing theories and values to ensure that their academic endeavours are making a contribution to practice, policy and a wider societal good.

It is hoped the practical and research issues explored in this editorial will invoke more interdisciplinary perspectives on accounting and the accounting profession, and assist scholars in reflecting on their academic studies and potential challenges facing them.

This editorial reflects on the developments in AAAJ over the past 25 years and discusses various contributions. It also celebrates the top ten authors, topics, Special Issue editors, and the last ten AAAJ Best Paper awards.

This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data into accounting's top-40 journals. While Bernardi only considered publications in business-ethics journals in his initial ranking, we developed a methodology to identify ethics articles in accounting's top-40 journals. The purpose of this research is to provide a more complete list of accounting's ethics authors for use by authors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In this study, 26 business-ethics and accounting's top-40 journals were analyzed for a 23-year period between 1986 through 2008. Our data indicate that 16.8 percent of the 4,680 colleagues with either a PhD or DBA who teach accounting at North American institutions had authored/coauthored one ethics article and only 6.3 percent had authored/coauthored more than one ethics article in the 66 journals we examined. Consequently, 83.2 percent of the PhDs and DBAs in accounting had not authored/coauthored even one ethics article.

Manufacturing offshoring has received substantial attention within international business studies that have explored where activities are located and how they are governed. However, recent examples of manufacturing relocation to the home country/region have put the advantages of offshoring under scrutiny, since the location of production activities in high-cost countries may have positive impacts in terms of innovation and marketing opportunities. Despite the growing interest in offshoring and “relocations of second degree,” there is a lack of knowledge on the alternative strategies firms may implement after offshoring. This chapter aims to propose a comprehensive framework to summarize and classify the multiple alternatives firms may implement after the initial relocation abroad of manufacturing activities. Based on an extensive literature review and a comparative analysis of Italian case studies, the chapter suggests theoretical advancement in the theory of location of business activities, offering multiple post-offshoring strategic options that may be implemented individually or in combination. In so doing, the analysis also stresses the variety of strategic paths and the complexity of choices concerning manufacturing location, emphasizing reshoring as a nuanced phenomenon and exploring how domestic and foreign locations can complement each other and be mutually reinforcing.

This paper seeks to challenge a tacit, but nevertheless prevalent, notion that a robust corporate governance framework will, as a matter of course, engender good corporate social responsibility and, thereby, ‘ethical’ decision-making. It does so by drawing, in the first instance, on an example of apparent good corporate social responsibility and exposing the possibly unethical dimensions of the incident. The paper suggests that corporate governance always has a subjective ethical dimension and that such regimes are best understood as ‘regimes of practice’ – actions, actors and discourses – that shape and mould both thinking and action. Such regimes, it is posited, can best be explored by looking at actual instances or events of significance and analysing these. The paper then offers the example of international pharmaceutical companies’ HIV/AIDS drugs pricing policies, especially in South Africa, as such a critical incident and interrogates it using the ‘analytics’ approach outlined by Dean (1999). The principal aims of the paper are to demonstrate that corporate social responsibility and corporate governance regimes are not neutral processes but aspects of ‘governmentality’ and to offer a technique, analytics, by which such processes can be explicated.

The focus of this paper is to provide an understanding to the economics of accounting crime. The accounting crime is considered to be part of the white-collar crime, where economists believe that white-collar criminals are rational men. Thus, this paper assumes that a person commits an accounting crime is a rational man. In making choices, the criminal managers take account of expected gains and costs from various available actions. If they estimate that there is a net gain from their actions, they do commit an accounting crime. External pressures, internal pressures, capital requirements, and compensation pressures are the circumstances that may lead managers to commit an accounting crime. The paper concludes by arguing that if white-collar criminals know that costs of their action are more than the benefits of the action, as a rational man they will not take that action. Thus, the most important step to prevent white-collar crime is to make the cost of the crime so high that it will never generate an estimated net gain for white-collar criminals.