Doing critical management accounting research in emerging economies

The paper introduces methodological and theoretical premises of critical management accounting research and provides some guidance for researchers. We see critical management accounting research in terms of three overlapping and interrelated ‘analytical acts’ that researchers often perform: contextualising, historicising and theorising. To contextualise, researchers need to establish connections between local, everyday management accounting occurrences and changes taking place in the wider socio-political and cultural spheres. Historicising relates micro-histories to macro-histories. Thus, critical researchers need to locate management accounting technologies in historically-specific social and political contexts, and understand their emergence and reproduction as outcomes of the evolution of political-economic systems. Given the empirical findings are often site-specific and idiosyncratic in critical research, theorisation is important. Although they may be quite interesting in their peculiarity, especially to the local readership in those countries, these findings need to be made interesting for wider consumption. Theorising, in this sense, is a critical act signifying local occurrences by raising and placing them in a higher-order schema of meaning

Weapons of the weak: subalterns' emancipatory accounting in Ceylon tea

Purpose – This paper aims to report on subalterns' emancipatory accounting (SEA) embedded in transformation of governance and accountability structures (GAS) in Ceylon Tea. <p/>Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on James Scott's political anthropology to examine how subalterns' resistance and emancipatory accounting triggers structural transformations. <p/>Findings – An attempt is made to theorise subaltern resistance as a form of emancipatory accounting. Concerning the commentaries that accounting has been to suppress or hegemonise the subalterns and appreciating the analysis of indigenous resistance implicated in emancipatory potential, this paper examines how a distinct subaltern group in Ceylon Tea deployed their own weapons towards the changes in GAS. <p/>Originality/value – The accounting literature neglects how subalterns reconstruct governance and accountability structures: this paper introduces a social accounting perspective on resistance, control and structural transformations. Also, it introduces to accounting researchers James Scott's political anthropology as an alternative framework

Changing regimes of governance in a less developed country

Purpose – This paper examines the changing regimes of governance and the roles of accounting therein in a less developed country (LDC) by using Sri Lanka tea plantations as a case. It captures the changes in a chronological analysis, which identifies four regimes of governance: (a) pre-colonial, (b) colonial, (c) post-colonial and (d) neo-liberal. It shows how dialectics between political state, civil state and the economy affected changes in regimes of governance and accounting through evolving structures, processes and contents of governance. <p/>Methodology – It draws on the works of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi to articulate a political economy framework. It provides contextual accounts from the Sri Lankan political history and case data from its tea plantations for the above chronological analysis. <p/>Findings – The above four regimes of governance had produced four modes of accounting: (a) a system of rituals in the despotic kingship, (b) a system of monitoring and reporting to absentee Sterling capital in the despotic imperialism, (c) a system of ceremonial reporting to state capital in a politicised hegemony and (d) good governance attempts in a politicised hegemony conditioned by global capital. We argue that political processes and historical legacies rather than the assumed superiority of accounting measures gave shape to governance regimes. Governance did not operate in its ideal forms, but ‘good governance’ initiatives revitalised accounting roles across managerial agency to strengthening stewardship rather than penetrating it into the domain of labour controls. Managerial issues emerged from contradictions between political state, civil state and the economy (enterprise) constructed themselves a distinct political domain within which accounting had little role to play, despite the ambitious aims of good governance. <p/>Originality – Most accounting and governance research has used economic theories and provided ahistorical analysis. This paper provides a historically informed chronological analysis using a political economy framework relevant to LDC contexts, and empirically demonstrates how actual governance structures and processes lay in broader socio-political structures, and how the success of good governance depends on the social and political behaviour of these structural properties

Management Accounting Change: Approaches and Perspectives

The first student-centred text to bridge technical and theoretical aspects of management accounting change, this well-written, challenging and cutting-edge text skilfully covers all the major emerging topics

Theorising management accounting practices in less developed countries

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Performing civil society

No abstract available

Opening accounting: a Manifesto

Because accounting needs serious #change (it must go way beyond the narrow focus on capital markets but also let go of \u27old school\u27 traditions and gatekeeping, and embrace progressive mindsets)... watch and read our #Manifesto to #Open #Accounting below. #Decolonize #IndigenousPerspectives #Africa #LatinAmerica #Asia #DefenseIndustry #Feminism #Queering #Disability #Labour #PrefigurativePoliics #Engagement #Impact #EarlyCareerResearcher #PhDStudent #Journey #MakeChange Many thanks to all contributors listed here: www.openaccountingmanifesto.co