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Article
Publication date: 19 March 2018

Dominic Detzen

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how “New Deal” regulatory initiatives, primarily the Securities Acts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), changed US auditors’…

3095

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how “New Deal” regulatory initiatives, primarily the Securities Acts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), changed US auditors’ professional knowledge conception, culminating in the 1938 expansion of the Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP), the first US body to set accounting principles.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper combines Halliday’s (1985) knowledge mandates with Hancher and Moran’s (1989) regulatory space to attain a theory-based understanding of auditors’ changing knowledge conceptions amid regulatory pressure. It draws on a range of primary and secondary sources to examine the period from 1929 to 1938.

Findings

Following the stock market crash, the newly created SEC aimed to engage auditors as a means to regulate companies’ accounting practices based on a set of codified principles. While entailing increased status, this new role conflicted with the auditors’ knowledge conception, which was based on professional judgment and personal integrity. Pressure from the SEC and academics eventually made auditors agree to a codification of their professional knowledge and create the CAP as a cooperative regulatory solution.

Originality/value

The paper explores the role of auditors’ knowledge conceptions in the emergence of today’s standard setting. It is suggested that auditors’ incomplete control of their professional knowledge made standard setting a form of co-regulation, located between the actors occupying the regulatory space of accounting.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Available. Open Access. Open Access
Article
Publication date: 28 February 2023

Dominic Detzen and Lukas Löhlein

This paper studies the interactive valuation discourses of an online user community (transfermarkt.de) that seeks to determine market values for soccer players. Despite their…

1853

Abstract

Purpose

This paper studies the interactive valuation discourses of an online user community (transfermarkt.de) that seeks to determine market values for soccer players. Despite their seemingly casual nature, these values have featured in newspapers, transfer negotiations, academic research, and capital market communication – and have thus become reified.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper employs netnographic research methodology to collect and thematically analyze a wide range of user entries on the platform. These entries are studied using theoretical insights from the sociology of quantification and valuation.

Findings

The analysis reveals how values are constructed in constant interaction between value-proposing users and value-justifying “experts.” This dynamic form of relational valuation positions players relative to one another as well as to actual transactions on the transfer market. In the absence of authoritative guidelines, it is this possibility and affordance for interaction that enacts a coherent valuation regime. The paper further reveals the platform's response to a disruptive event, which risked bringing the user-expert dynamics to a halt, requiring intervention from the platform to repair its valuation frame.

Originality/value

The paper responds to increased scholarly interests in the valuation of professional athletes. It contributes to the extant literature on valuation, first, by analyzing the dynamic valuation work that feeds into the social construction of values and, second, by studying platform participation and user interaction in a socially engineered online space.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 37 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 15 January 2018

Dominic Detzen and Sebastian Hoffmann

The purpose of this paper is to study how two accounting professors at a German university dealt with their denazification, a process carried out by the Allied Forces following…

913

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study how two accounting professors at a German university dealt with their denazification, a process carried out by the Allied Forces following the Second World War to free German society from Nazi ideology. It is argued that the professors carried a stigma due to their affiliation with a university that had been aligned with the Nazi state apparatus.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses Goffman’s work on “Stigma” (1963/1986) and “Frame Analysis” (1974/1986) to explore how the professors aimed to dismiss any link with the Nazi regime. Primary sources from the university archives were accessed with a particular focus on the professors’ post-war justification accounts.

Findings

The paper shows how the professors created a particular frame, which they supported by downplaying frame breaks, primarily their Nazi party memberships. Instead, they were preoccupied with what Goffman (1974/1986) terms “the vulnerability of experience,” exploiting that their past behavior requires context and is thus open to interpretation. The professors themselves provide this guidance to readers, which is a strategy that we call “authoring” of past information.

Originality/value

The paper shows how “counter accounts” can be constructed by assigning roles and powers to characters therein and by providing context and interpreting behavior on behalf of the readers. It is suggested that this “authoring” of past information is successful only on the surface. A closer examination unveils ambiguity, making this strategy risky and fragile.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Available. Open Access. Open Access
Article
Publication date: 5 September 2018

Dominic Detzen and Lukas Loehlein

The purpose of this paper is to examine how professional service firms (PSFs) manage the linguistic tensions between global Englishization and local multilingualism. It achieves…

5788

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how professional service firms (PSFs) manage the linguistic tensions between global Englishization and local multilingualism. It achieves this by analysing the work of Big Four audit firms in Luxembourg, where three official languages co-exist: Luxembourgish, French, and German. In addition, expatriates bring with them their native languages in a corporate environment that uses English as its lingua franca.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper combines the institutionalist sociology of the professions with theoretical concepts from sociolinguistics to study the multifaceted role of language in PSFs. Empirically, the paper draws from 25 interviews with current and former audit professionals.

Findings

The client orientation of the Big Four segments each firm into language teams based on the client’s language. It is thus the client languages, rather than English as the corporate language, that mediate, define, and structure intra- and inter-organizational relationships. While the firms emphasize the benefits of their linguistic adaptability, the paper reveals tensions along language lines, suggesting that language can be a means of creating cohesion and division within the firms.

Originality/value

This paper connects research on PSFs with that on the role of language in multinational organizations. In light of the Big Four’s increasingly global workforce, it draws attention to the linguistic divisions within the firms that question the existence of a singular corporate culture. While prior literature has centred on firms’ global–local divide, the paper shows that even single branches of such firm networks are not monolithic constructs, as conflicts and clashes unfold amid a series of “local–local” divides.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

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Article
Publication date: 29 November 2024

Sharif Mahmud Khalid and Chinyere O. Uche

Large mining companies are often subject to stigmatisation. Thus, these companies try to shift stigma to artisanal small-scale miners in stigma management. This study seeks to…

109

Abstract

Purpose

Large mining companies are often subject to stigmatisation. Thus, these companies try to shift stigma to artisanal small-scale miners in stigma management. This study seeks to understand why and how these mining companies use corporate reporting in shifting stigma.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a qualitative study that combines data collected from semi-structured interviews, focus group and secondary documents.

Findings

The findings suggest that large mining companies involved in shifting stigma use corporate reporting to promote a positive image and avoid investor discrimination. Artisanal small-scale miners are targeted because of their vulnerability to stereotyping and discrimination. The findings suggest that mining companies shift stigma by blaming and shaming artisanal small-scale miners for child labour, human endangerment and environmental damage in reporting. The work of these miners is abnormalised as violating moral order. It is observed that the information provided in corporate reporting is often decontextualised from reality.

Originality/value

This paper makes an original contribution to accounting studies by showing how corporate reporting is used in counter-accounting in the context of stigma management. Counter-accounting as a form of stigma management is operationalised through the blaming and shaming of artisanal small-scale miners.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

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