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The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that investigated the feasibility of a women-only professional accounting firm in the city of Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that could help reduce female graduate unemployment in the city. Practically, the study sought to find out if, and under what conditions, a women-only professional accounting firm in Al Ain might be useful in providing employment for women in professional accountancy and facilitating the entry of female graduates into the job market by providing them with professional training. Theoretically, the study sought to add to the literature on positive discrimination to help women’s job prospects.

The study followed a qualitative research approach. It sought to show some specific connections between various professional, cultural, and economic factors by crystallising them through a hypothetical, innovative solution to the problem of local female unemployment, namely, a women-only professional accounting firm in a location of limited employment opportunities. It did so by investigating the views of male and female accounting graduates and other stakeholders.

The main finding is that the model women-only professional accounting firm could be used to overcome family objections to female graduate employment by removing the requirement that women work a long distance away from their families. The study also showed the deep cultural entrenchment of gendered stereotypes of female professionals.

The study could have had a larger sample size with the survey, but it is important to note that this was not the focus of the study. However, the strength of the paper is in the qualitative aspect of canvassing views from various stakeholders.

The study brought to light key opportunities and challenges for policy makers who are seeking to address female graduate unemployment in economically remote locations.

The paper adds to the literature on positive discrimination for female job seekers in an adverse cultural and economic context.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the corpus of gender research in accounting journals, with the overall aim of evaluating the extent to which it has contributed to the understanding of the organization of accounting and its social and organizational functions.

Gender articles have been critically analyzed. The selection included all gender papers published between the years 2000 and 2014, in 58 journals ranked A*, A and B from the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journal ranking list. Patterns within the publishing norms of those journals were identified and critically reflected upon.

Gender research has been grouped into three categories, namely, gender as a dummy (or control) variable, gender as giving voice and gender as a process and organizing principle. Of these three categories, it can be contended that using gender as a dummy variable is very common, and it proved to be the least fruitful in explicating the roles of gender in accounting. Moreover, many published papers confuse sex with gender.

This paper discusses future avenues and approaches for research gender in accounting without, however, expanding on recent changes in gender research.

This paper is the first to systematically review gender research in the accounting field over the past three decades. Its key insight is to identify two persistent pitfalls within the current gender research practice, namely, the use of gender as a control variable only and the confusion of sex with gender. These pitfalls diminish the value of gender research overall and render it less relevant to the broader accounting literature. By using the term gender either as an add-on or, mistakenly, as a biological rather than cultural marker, the totality of those articles helps marginalize gender as an accounting research area because they fail to bring about the reconceptualization of accounting as a discipline. This stands in marked contrast to the achievements of gender approaches in other disciplines, such as sociology, history or work and employment. Articles that frequently decry the status of gender in accounting research turn out to be also reinforcing the marginalization of gender in accounting.

This paper aims to trace the hybridising of financial and service expertise in English local authority budget control to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the contexts that gave rise to hybridisation than do previous accountability research frameworks.

Using practice theory, this paper interprets the findings from a field study of Newcastle City Council and a review of relevant local authority regulation for England, stretching back to the 1980s.

The hybridisation of financial and service expertise has entailed major changes to the practices on which local authority management depends, fuelled by a changing societal role of local authorities. Frequently, local authorities are no longer providers of public services but enablers who purchase services and manage arms-length contracts. This paper identifies some of the ways in which three structural elements that underpin local authority management practices have evolved to give rise to novel practices.

Even though this paper’s research into changing regulatory frameworks, rules and evolving local authority financial practices is based on institutional changes in England since the 1980s, the fieldwork element which fleshes out certain implications for local authority practices has focused on Newcastle City Council. Future research could fruitfully examine these issues in other local authorities.

The hybridisation of financial and service expertise has contributed to reshaping local government beyond the rules that are put in place for regulating the sector by giving rise to new practices. Recent key developments include new service delivery arrangements, for example, through council-owned subsidiaries or third-sector organisations. It is important that, in an austerity context, new risks to “off the books” service quality is matched by new control and audit arrangements. Moreover, the professional bodies that service local government should recognise the new forms of hybridisation of finance and service expertise and ensure arrangements for the changing skill sets of those involved in service provision.

This is the first paper to analyse the emergence of hybrid financial expertise in the public sector with reference to distinct structural elements of the relevant practices.

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the usefulness of institutional theory to critical studies. It pursues this topic by exploring some of the possibilities for allocating local authority funds more fairly for poor residents. This paper aims to shed light on the institution of budgeting in a democratically elected local government under austerity.

This paper uses world culture theory, the study of the devolution of cultural authority to individuals and organisations through which they turn into agentic actors. Based on a field study of Newcastle City Council’s (NCC’s) budget-related practices, the paper uses the notion of actorhood to explore the use of fairness in austerity budgets.

This paper documents how new concerns with fairness gave rise to new local authority practices and gave NCC characteristics of actorhood. This paper also shows why it might make sense for a local authority that is managing austerity budget cuts and cutting back on services to make more detailed performance information public, rather than attempting to hide service deterioration, as some prior literature suggests. This paper delineates the limits to actorhood, in this study’s case, principally the inability to overcome structural constraints of legal state power.

The paper is suggestive of ways in which local government can fight inequality in opposition to central government austerity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative accounting study of actorhood. It coins the phrase fairness assemblage to denote a combination of various accounting technologies, organisational elements and local government practices.

The audit of development funds that flow between development not-for-profit organisations (DNPOs) is virtually free from effective external regulation. When programme DNPOs subcontract development work to field DNPOs, they are under current international audit rules free to specify audit frameworks that are limited to the accuracy of the books. Questions of the efficacy of the development work can thus be bracketed off. This paper aims to develop an argument for improving the regulation of cross-national audits of DNPOs.

Based on a review of the applicable audit regulation and ongoing debates of legitimacy and accountability, this paper articulates a series of problems that should be considered in the regulation of cross-national DNPO audits with reference to their specific legitimacy communities.

The special consideration that is due to the beneficiaries of development activities suggests that cross-national DNPO audits should be regulated not just with reference to general audit and accounting rules. Consideration should be given as well to some of the key context variables that potentially have a bearing on the likelihood that the audited development programmes meet the claims of the legitimacy community of development. These can include the level and depth of accountability afforded to the beneficiaries, potentially conflicting legitimacy relationships, the nature of admissible records for the audit and the provisions for programme funds to cover the overheads of field DNPOs.

The managerial implications of this paper concern the regulation, commissioning and conduct of cross-national DNPO audits. The authors propose a series of remedies to the scoping of field DNPO audits in a cross-national context.

Focusing on the functioning of cross-border NPO audits, this paper adds an important facet to ongoing discussions about the accountability of current regulation to represent the new interdependencies brought about by the forces of globalisation.

Concomitant with the trend towards specialisation in UK accountancy and the rise of relatively separate formal spheres of professional work along formal specialisms such as tax, audit and management consultancy, women entered the profession in unprecedented numbers, but not evenly distributed across those specialisms. This paper aims to draw on the sociology of accountancy and feminist studies of the professions to show that specialisms have emerged through and, in turn, have been shaped and recreated by gender as well as other processes.

The paper's research approach combines the sociology of professions with critical gender studies. It draws on interviews, brochures, web pages, and results from a questionnaire survey to investigate professional identities within UK accountancy.

Accountants' self-articulated notions of professionalism in the different specialisms are gendered and ordered hierarchically. Gender is an encompassing conceptual frame for ordering discursive attributes of the different specialisms. Working long and unpredictable hours was central to accountants' understandings of their professional life. Socialising with clients was seen as functional in bringing new opportunities to the firm. Socialising with peers also was deemed important, especially in solving internal frictions and in controlling new entrants' behaviour in firms. The more “public” the ideology of a specialism, the more masculine it was perceived to be.

This study challenges the uniform representations of professional identities offered by previous studies. It suggests that gender offers a discursive and ideological frame of reference for accountancy whose relevance extends beyond the working practices of men and women to the very constitution of the profession. It does so with reference to an original mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of a policy model for the accounting and auditing profession that fits the current fragmented regulatory context of the UAE and GCC, and could help accountancy to become a cornerstone of an improved corporate governance regime. This paper aims to focus on the features of accountancy within the UAE and GCC, and develop some suggestions for a regional model.

This is a qualitative paper. Data for this paper were collected via in‐depth interviews with partners in Big Four audit firms in the UAE, accounting academics, and accounting students at the UAEU. Valuable primary sources of data were also web sites and publications from official organizations. A short survey was also administered to students.

In summary, accountancy's regulatory context in the UAE has remained fragmented. The state has taken the lead role, regulating in some detail the affairs of audit firms. The fragmented regulatory context of accounting and auditing in the UAE has allowed the Big Four to import their global quality assurance systems into the UAE, hiring mainly auditors with foreign examined qualifications. This may present advantages for the policy objective “internationalisation of the UAE economy”. It may, however, be regarded as suboptimal for the policy objectives “localisation of the accountancy profession to support the growth and development of local (family) businesses” and “Emiratisation of the accountancy profession”.

It is suggested that the possible shape of a stronger UAE‐based accountancy profession be investigated in more detail and its suggested positive effects for specific, relevant UAE policies be put to the test. More interviews with other relevant institutions and local accountants would have enriched understanding of the profession.

Understanding the financial regulatory context of UAE is crucial for the understanding and further development of the profession. The Big Four firms have a key role to play in orchestrating efforts towards further professional development.

Small and medium‐sized practitioners need to be supported by a clearer regulatory context, which allows them to exist alongside the Big Four.

The paper presents empirical and qualitative evidence about the regulatory context of the UAE.

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the impact of regulation on management control practices. It explores the processes by which the institutionalised properties of certain management controls are adapted to organisational contexts and underpin organisational routines. The authors are interested in the voluntary adoption of management controls with highly developed institutional logics, how organisations respond initially to the institutional logics of new management controls and by what means those logics become a workable basis for institutionalising controls in the organisation.

The paper explores some of the ways in which the institutional logics of management control come to have organisational effects, studying a seemingly simple organisational response to institutional processes: compliance. The argument is illustrated with examples from university accreditation as a management control institution that combines cultural and administrative controls. The paper is based on participant observation in three universities.

The authors find that compliance requires considerable organisational meaning-making and that organisational work of compliance separates into adaptation and execution. Moreover, the process of compliance produces distinctions between experts of the accreditation logic, users of the accreditation logic, agnostics and sceptics. Rather than passive acquiescence, compliance with regulated management control is a creative process of arranging and translating general prescriptions for use in a specific context.

This is the first study of university accreditation as a management control institution. It adds to a still emerging literature on the effects of institutional logics, and in particular regulatory logics, on organisational management control.

This paper aims to develop understanding of how the pursuit of practice change in auditing, especially in relation to audit methodologies, is conveyed, presented, reflected in and enabled (or hindered) through discursive, textual constructions by audit firms.

The paper uses an extensive series of interviews with audit practitioners, educators and regulators and a textual study of the content, concordances and narratives contained in two key audit methodological texts published by KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms.

Major discursive shifts in audit methodologies are identified over the last decade, with the dominant audit discourse switching from one of “business value” to one of “audit quality”. Such shifts are analysed in terms of developments in the wider, organisational field and discursive (re)constructions of audit at the level of the audit firm.

The identified shifts in auditing discourse are important in a number of respects. They demonstrate the significance of discursive elements of audit practice, contradicting influential prior claims that methodological discussions and developments in audit over the last decade had focused consistently on notions of “audit quality”. Methodologically, they demonstrate the importance and opportunities for knowledge development available by combining institutional, field‐wide analysis with a detailed discursive study of individual interviews and texts.

This literature review seeks to engage with the discussion of the limitations of studying corporate governance processes as a “black box” by developing a theoretical framework for qualitative corporate governance research that can support the design of future hermeneutic research into corporate governance practices.

The approach is to develop a qualitative research framework based on the methodological discussions in the business and sociology literatures, and compare it with existing alternative research frameworks in the corporate governance literature and three qualitative field studies in corporate governance.

This paper identifies methodological gaps that have made it difficult for extant qualitative studies of corporate governance to capture the complexity of the practices they have studied. This paper suggests three main implications for future qualitative corporate governance research: it should seek to articulate the multiple meanings of corporate governance rules, techniques, and processes as they arise in practice in order to facilitate a better discussion of the complexity of corporate governance practices; it should reflect on the role of the researcher in the field and his/her interactions with the subjects because through those interactions the multiple meanings of practice can be detected by the researcher; it should seek to articulate how the authors of research papers choose the contexts in which they place their observations from the field and how they variously zoom in and out of their fields of study to foreground either local detail or the wider contexts.

Through a close reading of alternative corporate governance research frameworks and qualitative studies this paper explains how future scholarly and practical corporate governance research can produce insights into the lived experience of corporate governance.