Philip Bougen and Stuart Ogden
The use of accounting information in industrial relations has reached a critical stage in its development. Further studies which merely serve to ornate the existing framework of…
Abstract
The use of accounting information in industrial relations has reached a critical stage in its development. Further studies which merely serve to ornate the existing framework of analysis (for example by continuing the debate as to the type and amount of appropriate information disclosure; the dangers of non‐disclosure; the costs and benefits of disclosure, etc.) we believe to be of little value. The subject area needs to be exposed to a much wider critical analysis encompassing specific alternative perspectives as to the nature and roles of organisations, accounting, and industrial relations. In this paper we review first some of the orthodox perspectives derived from models of organisation which have been employed to analyse the role of accounting. Secondly we discuss the conceptualisations of industrial relations which have informed much of the discussion as to the use which may be made of accounting information to promote good industrial relations. Our discussion of both these areas suggests that the role of power, although largely ignored, is of central importance to analysis of these areas.
This paper aims to explore accounting across time and space via novels.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore accounting across time and space via novels.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses distant readings.
Findings
The paper reveals peculiarities and commonalities of the work of Certified Public Accountants 70 years ago and now.
Originality/value
The originality/value is to be decided by readers.
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Lisa Evans and Ian Fraser
The paper aims to explore the social origins of Scottish chartered accountants and the accounting stereotype as portrayed in popular fiction.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to explore the social origins of Scottish chartered accountants and the accounting stereotype as portrayed in popular fiction.
Design/methodology/approach
The detective novels of the Scottish chartered accountant Alexander Clark Smith are used as a lens through which to explore the social origins of accountants and the changing popular representations of the accountant.
Findings
The novels contribute to our understanding of the construction of accounting stereotypes and of the social origins of Scottish accountants. They suggest that, while working class access to the profession was a reality, so was class division within it. In addition, Smith was ahead of contemporary professional discourse in creating a protagonist who combines the positive aspects of the traditional stereotype with qualities of a private‐eye action‐hero, and who uses accounting skills to uncover corruption and address (social) wrongs. However, this unconventional portrayal may have been incongruent with the image the profession wished to portray. The public image (or stereotype) portrayed by its members would have been as important in signalling and maintaining the profession's collective status as the recruitment of its leadership from social elites.
Originality/value
Smith's portrayal of accountants in personal and societal settings at a time of profound social change, as well as his background in the Scottish profession, provide a rich source for the study of social origins of Scottish chartered accountancy during the first half of the twentieth century. Further, Smith's novels are of a popular genre, and innovative in the construction of their hero and of accounting itself; as such they merit attention because of their potential to influence the construction of the accounting stereotype(s) within the popular imagination.
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C. Richard Baker and Martin E. Persson
Accounting history has tended to ignore the accounting research enterprise, focusing instead on particular episodes or periods, such as histories of standards setting or histories…
Abstract
Accounting history has tended to ignore the accounting research enterprise, focusing instead on particular episodes or periods, such as histories of standards setting or histories of the accounting profession. In effect, methodological and theoretical differences within the accounting research discipline have so profoundly divided the discipline that researchers working in one area are relatively unable or unwilling to understand the key issues in other areas. This chapter seeks to shed some light on the greatest divide in accounting research: the divide between positive and critical accounting research. This chapter argues that both positive and critical accounting research can trace their origins to certain key figures who were doctoral students at the University of Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The chapter employs Foucault’s concept of genealogy to examine the origins of the positivist and critical paradigms in accounting research.
David Bailey, George Harte and Roger Sugden
Drawing on evidence of major Western governments’ concerns with the wider economic, social and environmental impact and performance of transnational firms, we argue that recent…
Abstract
Drawing on evidence of major Western governments’ concerns with the wider economic, social and environmental impact and performance of transnational firms, we argue that recent emphasis on deregulating industrial development, such as in the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment and ongoing discussions over a multilateral framework on investment, necessitates a fuller and regulated, rather than voluntaristic, corporate accountability, covering further details of the impact and performance of transnationals.
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Dean Neu, Jeff Everett and Abu Shiraz Rahaman
This paper uses the ideas and concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and aims to to examine how accounting works in the context of international development.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper uses the ideas and concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and aims to to examine how accounting works in the context of international development.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study approach within El Salvador is used. Data sources include archival documents, 35 semi‐structured interviews with field participants, and participant observations. The focus is on the activities of the Inter‐American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Development Agency (UNDP) in the country of El Salvador, showing how complex assemblages of people, technologies such as accounting, and discourses such as accountability come to claim or “territorialize” particular physical and discursive spaces.
Findings
The analysis highlights how accounting and its associated actors further the development aspirations of loan beneficiaries; yet at the same time contribute to the “over‐organization” of these actors' social space.
Originality/value
The paper illustrates that the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari – assemblage, desire, Bodies without Organs, and lines of flight to name a few – open up for consideration and analysis a series of field‐specific processes that have previously been largely un‐explored within the accounting literature.