The paper aims to explore the links between corruption and accounting in the public procurement setting. In particular, it investigates how accounting can fight or facilitate…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to explore the links between corruption and accounting in the public procurement setting. In particular, it investigates how accounting can fight or facilitate corruption
Design/methodology/approach
The study takes a qualitative approach, analyzing one of the worst recent Italian cases of corruption, the “MOSE” trial. Documents produced during the trial are analyzed.
Findings
The findings contribute to our understanding of how the (mis)use of accounting can help to build a “sustainable” corruption network, and be used to create, maintain and share corruptive cash flows. Participating actors can use accounting tools to coordinate their actions and organize their misconduct. Accounting may also reveal the existence of such networks, however, by enabling the fiscal police to discover tax fraud, and by reconstructing how a corruption network functions from records kept to manage internal cash flows and the provision of other benefits.
Practical implications
Because corruption is a worldwide phenomenon, a better understanding of how it functions may lead (among other things) to the identification of more effective prevention measures. Particular attention should be paid to events that favor corruption, such as extraordinary occurrences, huge amounts of public resources and new institutional structure without appropriate control and balance tools.
Originality/value
Given the specific features of episodes of corruption, qualitative studies on this topic are scarce. Little is known about corruption processes, and even less about the part that accounting can play in them. The MOSE case offers some intriguing insight, showing how accounting can be used to build a “sustainable” corruption network by collecting slush funds and facilitating benefit-sharing among individuals.
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Antonella Cugini, Giovanna Michelon and Silvia Pilonato
– The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss an accounting innovation in the cost measurement system of rail transport companies.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss an accounting innovation in the cost measurement system of rail transport companies.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors identify the distinctive features that cost accounting systems should have in order to capture the particular structure of the production process of rail transport companies and develop an innovative accounting practice that addresses the specific features of railway services, particularly the high fixed costs associated with the infrastructure. This accounting innovation is applied to Trentino Trasporti, a medium-sized, privately owned passenger railway company operating in the Trentino Alto Adige region of Italy.
Findings
Evidence suggests that the new accounting practice facilitates the operational connection between the company's resources and their consumption during the provision of transport services.
Practical implications
This connection enables companies to identify new opportunities for improvement and cost optimisation by finding the real origins of cost consumption in the provision of rail transport services.
Originality/value
The case analysed also shows the necessity of integrating activity-based costing (ABC) with an accounting innovation that can represent the resources consumed by the various elements of the infrastructure that support the provision of services. This innovation has important managerial outcomes for all service companies that operate with an infrastructure network, including transport, service, and utility companies, and useful implications for the accounting profession that deals with cost systems in networked-based companies.
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Giovanna Michelon, Silvia Pilonato, Federica Ricceri and Robin W Roberts
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it examines nuances that specific camouflaging perspectives provide to enhance traditional and widely adopted theories in social and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it examines nuances that specific camouflaging perspectives provide to enhance traditional and widely adopted theories in social and environmental accounting. Second, within research on camouflaging, the paper stimulates multidisciplinarity and cross-fertilization by presenting recent developments in organizational theory that hold promise for enhancing our understanding of camouflaging. Finally, it discusses how the research contributions published in this special issue help advance the notion of corporate camouflaging.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper makes use of an extensive literature review and discusses research implications related with the choice of theoretical framework.
Findings
The idea of camouflaging may provide narrower and more refined perspective(s) that can help researchers delve deeper into their topic of interest and thereby support potentially substantive contributions to the field.
Originality/value
The paper offers suggestions for future social and environmental accounting research that adopts the concepts of organized hypocrisy, organizational façades and functional stupidity into the study of organizations.
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Emilio Passetti, Lino Cinquini and Andrea Tenucci
The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the implementation of internal environmental management and voluntary environmental information is related to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the implementation of internal environmental management and voluntary environmental information is related to organisational change.
Design/methodology/approach
Organisational change literature provided a framework for the analysis of the materials which were collected through a mixed method. Data on internal environmental management were collected through a survey, while a quality disclosure index was used to assess the quality of the environmental voluntary disclosure. Interviews were used to enhance the quantitative results interpreted according to the four pathways proposed by Tilt (2006) and characterised by several levels of internal environmental management and voluntary disclosure.
Findings
The results indicated that companies implement more internal activities than external disclosure. Environmental planning and operational practices were the most important changes carried out. When environmental management accounting and environmental disclosure were also implemented, environmental aspects were more integrated within companies, thus revealing that a more structured integration of sustainability aspects within organisational values had taken place. The results underline the importance of primarily establishing a set of internal changes, driven by environmental planning, to promote organisational change.
Research limitations/implications
The study presents a larger empirical analysis of the organisational change pathways followed by companies, showing similarities and differences among the four pathways. The results underline the importance of both dimensions for studying organisational changes. The framework of Tilt has been enriched, considering a more precise explanation of the internal aspects and adding the concept of the quality of disclosure as proxy to assess organisational change.
Originality/value
Organisational change is investigated through an extensive analysis of internal and external aspects and collecting quantitative and qualitative evidence. The analysis complements previous sustainability accounting literature focussed on the analysis of internal environmental management and external disclosure.
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Patrizio Monfardini, Silvia Macchia and Davide Eltrudis
Knowledge-intensive public organizations (KIPOs henceforth) rely heavily on knowledge as the primary resource to provide public services. This study deals with a specific kind of…
Abstract
Purpose
Knowledge-intensive public organizations (KIPOs henceforth) rely heavily on knowledge as the primary resource to provide public services. This study deals with a specific kind of KIPO in the judiciary system: the courts. The paper aims to explore the court’s managerial and organisational change resulting from the national recovery and resilience plan (NRRP) reform in response to Covid-19, focussing on how this neglected KIPO responds to change, either by showing acts of resistance or undergoing a hybridisation process.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a qualitative research design, developing an explorative case study to investigate the process of a court’s managerial and organisational change caused by NRRP reform and to shed light on how this neglected KIPO reacts to change, showing resistance acts and developing the hybridisation process. Thirty-one interviews in six months have been conducted with the three main actors in Courts: judges, clerks and trial clerks.
Findings
The paper shows that in this understudied KIPO, judges fiercely resist the managerial logic that decades of reforms have been trying to impose. The recent introduction of an office for speeding up trials (Ufficio Per il Processo (UPP)) was initially opposed. Then, the resistance strategy changed, and judges started to benefit from UPP delegating repetitive and low-value tasks while retaining their core activities. Clerks approached the reform with a more positive attitude, seeing in UPP the mechanism to bridge the distance between them and the judges.
Originality/value
Considering their relevance to society, courts must be more addressed in KIPOs' studies. This paper allows the reader to enter such KIPO and understand its peculiar features. Secondly, the article helps to understand micropractices of resistance that may hinder the effectiveness of managerial reforms.
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Mohamed Chelli, Sylvain Durocher and Anne Fortin
The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the specific negative media context surrounding the company’s environmental activities.
Design/methodology/approach
Thompson’s (2007) and Eagleton’s (2007) theorizations are used to build an extended ideological framework to analyze ENGIE’s environmental talk from 2001 to 2015.
Findings
ENGIE drew extensively on a combination of symbolic and substantive ideological strategies in its annual and sustainability reports while ignoring several major issues raised in the press. Its substantive ideological mode of operation included actions for the environment, innovation, partnerships and educating stakeholders/staff, while its symbolic ideological mode of operation used issue identification, legal compliance, rationalization, stakeholders’ responsibilization and unification. Both ideological modes of operation worked synergistically to cast a positive light on ENGIE’s environmental activities, sustaining the ideology of a company that reconciles the irreconcilable despite negative press coverage.
Originality/value
This paper develops the notion of environmentally friendly ideology to analyze the environmental discourse of a polluting company. It is the first to use both Thompson’s and Eagleton’s ideological frameworks to make sense of corporate environmental discourse. Linking corporate discourse with media coverage, it further contributes to the burgeoning literature that interpretively distinguishes between symbolic and substantive ideological strategies by highlighting the company’s progressive shift from symbolic to more substantive disclosure.