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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 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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of specific active labour market policies (ALMP) and increased use of zero hour contracts (ZHCs) in creating an environment in which low-wage jobs flourish. Alongside these, it examines the role of financialization over the last 30 years in fostering the nuturalization of policies that institutionalize low wages and deregulate the economy in favour of big business.

This paper draws upon academic literature, official statistics, and analyses via the concept of neoliberalism.

This paper demonstrates that via a set of interconnected macro and micro factors low pay is set to remain entrenched in the UK. It has demonstrated that this is not the result of some natural response to labour market demands. Far from it, it has argued that these policy choices are neoliberal in motivation and the outcome of establishing low pay and insecure employment is a significant character of the contemporary labour market is deliberate.

This paper encourages a re-think of how the authors address this issue of low pay in the UK by highlighting alternative forms of understanding the causes of low pay.

It presents an alternative analysis of low pay in the UK which allows us to understand and call into question the low-pay economy. In doing so it demonstrates that crucial to this understanding is state regulation.

This paper allows for a more nuanced understanding of the economic conditions of the inequality caused by low pay, and provides an argument as to alternative ways in which this can be addressed.

The paper examines the relationship between the rise of neoliberalism and finance capital, the subsequent emergence of the neoliberal organization, the associated proliferation of ALMP and ZHCs, and the impact of these on creating a low-wage economy. It makes the argument that the UK’s low-wage economy is the result of regulatory choices influenced by a political preference for financialization, even if such choices are presented as not being so. Thus, the contribution of this paper is that it brings together distinct and important contemporary issues for scholars of employee relations, but connects them to the role of the state and neoliberal regulation.

The intention of this chapter is to examine race and racism in the accounting industry in the context of neutrality. Objectivity and impartiality minimize the space for alternative voices, too often unheard from the margin, that speak of a differing racialized professional existence for the Black accountant. A Critical Race Theory (CRT) of accountancy is called for among a number of takes in the genre of Critical Accounting to begin a process of unpacking systemic processes within the profession, which encourage homogeneity and exclusion.

Belief in professional colorblindness as impartiality where race is concerned is critiqued as a tool of domination that fosters injustice because it hides racism from the institution while simultaneously allowing racist practice to go unchallenged.

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.

Recent research has shown that female US House candidates were more likely to talk about so-called “female issues” on Twitter during the 2012 election (Evans and Clark, 2015). In this paper, the author extends this former work by investigating the Twitter activity of all US House representatives during their 2012 election and seven months later (June and July of 2013). The purpose of this paper is to show that women do talk more about “female issues” than men, but do not only focus on these issues.

This paper content analyzes the tweets sent by female and male representatives in the 113th Congress during their 2012 elections, and seven months later.

Female representatives spend significantly more time devoted to “female issues” on Twitter than male representatives, but their time is not dominated entirely by “female issues.” Even though the difference is not statistically significant, women sent more tweets about “male issues” than men both during and after the 2012 election. Women tweet more than men about “women,” but they also care about business issues, as is evidenced by that issue being one of the most discussed on Twitter by female representatives during both the election and seven months later.

Unlike other studies on gender and issue discussion, this paper examines a new type of communication: Twitter. Tweets are split by issue type (female/male) and the author sees that while women do discuss “female issues” more than men, they do not exclude “male issues.” This paper also shows that women focus on “female issues” both during elections and after.

We examine the influences of African-American and female legislators on the supportiveness of states toward elders. Previous research shows complementary supportiveness among women and minority legislators on education policy and a range of social policies affecting families. Women legislators extend this support to various dimensions of “state age friendliness.” We examine here whether African-American legislators extend their support similarly. We draw on a cross-sectional data set for the 50 American states around the year 2000 in conjunction with regression. We find that, controlling for the most prominent alternative factors generally shaping state orientations and policies, women legislators are selectively supportive of dimensions of state elderly friendliness, but African-American legislators do not share this support. We attribute the discrepancy in the support of this area of social policy to women and minority legislators having specific divergent priorities with regard to elders as well as to how these priorities are conditioned by women and black legislators being concentrated in different states having distinctive cultures.

Transforming gender research in accounting is possible, desirable, and promising: the past few decades have included prescient work and expansive theories. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the legacy of the 1992 special issue “Fe[men]ists' account” and urge new linkages and contexts for a continuation of visionary inquiries.

By reviewing pioneering feminist research in various disciplines, the author opens the margins and boundaries of gender‐in‐accounting research. Innovative multidisciplinary works from different regions of the globe reveal methods for challenging entrenched premises and recasting new meanings.

Reflecting on our embedded ideas, expanding boundaries, and imagining new areas of inquiry are not only plausible, they are essential, for contesting repression and discrimination and advancing social justice.

Tying the current rhetoric of global neo‐liberalism to contemporary feminist struggles, the paper illustrates the significant consequences of economic globalization on women, and accounting's connection. As there is no single story regarding gender, research exploring the unexplored has precedent in accounting literature, providing a foundation for new insights and enhanced possibilities for advancing and transforming the field.

The paper re‐imagines the accounting‐gender dilemma, offering practical yet expansive research concepts regarding values, class, the construction of gender, and the impositions of economic structures.