Stop accounting myopia: – think globally: a polemic

Purpose The paper covers issues raised in my plenary address to the Journal of Accounting and Organizational Network Conference held in Melbourne in November 2017. This called for accountants, whether professionals in practice or in academia, to broaden their vision of accounting and accountability beyond the financial accountability of organisations, and serving corporate and capital market interests, to consider how it can help achieve sustainable development goals. Design/methodology/approach The discussion is based on personal experience, cognate literature, and policies of major global institutions. Findings Whilst the need for financial reporting will remain, there is a pressing need for reporting to measure, monitor and make accountable organisations’ obligations to help achieve sustainable development goals established by global institutions such as the United Nations. Areas of importance discussed are accounting for human rights, mitigation of climate change, securing decent work, increasing accountability - especially civil society democratic participation, and a greater and more equal partnership with stakeholders and developing countries to address their needs. Research limitations/implications The article is a personal polemic intended to provoke reflection and reform amongst accountants. Practical implications The paper outlines areas where accounting could and has addressed human rights and sustainability issues, and the implications for reforming accounting practice and education. Social Implications The social implications are vast for they extend to major issues concerning the preserving the planet, its species, humankind, and enhanced democratic processes for civil society and developing countries

Government accounting reform in an ex-French African colony: the international political economy of neo-colonialism

This paper examines the political economy of introducing a computerised accounting system in a former French colony in Africa with little government accounting and few financial statistics. The reforms were a condition of structural adjustment programmes imposed by the World Bank to improve governance, decision making and government accountability in a country with a turbulent political history since independence, and weak and often corrupt governance. The reform was unusual in that indigenous civil servants had considerable discretion over the choice and development of the system. Thus the local capability in developing government accounting technology suited to the local context and derived from learning by experience was created. The system was widely regarded as effective but it was abandoned for a French system which ultimately proved problematic. The decision to change the system and its ensuing problems are attributed to North-South relations, indigenous neopatrimonial leadership, and neocolonialism, especially by France in Francophone Africa

[Review] Chris Hunt and Carolyn Fowler (2009) Management accounting: strategic decision making, performance and risk

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Accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies: taking multiple perspectives seriously

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to synthesize work in the emerging field of how accounting and accountability can be reoriented to better promote pluralistic democracy which recognizes and addresses differentials in power, beliefs and desires of constituencies. An agenda for future research and engagement is outlined, drawing on this and insights fromother papers in this special issue of the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) aimed at taking multiple perspectives seriously. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews and synthesizes the central themes associated with accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies, especially with respect to the research studies in this AAAJ special issue, and it identifies possibilities for future research and engagement. Findings – Three central themes are identified: the challenges of achieving critical, pluralistic engagement in and through mainstream institutions; the possibilities of taking multiple perspectives seriously through decentred understandings of governance and democracy; and the value of an agonistic ethos of engagement in accounting. The articles in this issue contribute to these themes, albeit differently, and in combination with the extant social science literature reviewed here, open up pathways for future research and engagement. Practical implications – This work seeks to encourage the development of pluralistic accounting and accountability systems drawing on conceptual and practice-based resources across disciplines and by considering the standpoints of diverse interested constituencies, including academics, policymakers, business leaders and social movements. Originality/value – How accounting can reflect and enact pluralistic democracy, not least to involve civil society, and how problems related to power differentials and seemingly incompatible aims can be addressed has been largely neglected. This issue provides empirical, practical and theoretical material to advance further work in the area. Paper type Research pape

Accounting signifiers, political discourse, popular resistance and legal identity during Pakistan Steel Mills attempted privatization

Using the privatization of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) as an empirical site and drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory, this paper traces the discursive struggle between two discourses on the valuation and privatization of PSM. Specific signifiers were articulated and re-articulated into different chains of equivalence to create an appeal for each discourse surrounding the steel mill’s valuation. The anti-privatization discourse’s ‘success’ derived from its ‘interdiscursivity’ i.e. drawing on disparate signifiers from different meta-discourses; accounting, nationalism, state corruption and ‘informal’ signifiers such as ‘family silver’, ‘market value’ and ‘throw away price’. In contrast, the pro-privatization discourse drew on a homogenous (financial) economics discourse using more formal and technical signifiers such as ‘going concern’ and ‘sensitivity adjusted discounted cash flow value’. The anti-privatization discourse, with its diverse and informal (accounting) signifiers gained ‘empirical validity’, ‘narrative fidelity’, ‘and experiential commensurability’, appealed more to the masses, the media, and the judiciary. It convinced them selling PSM was a grave injustice, which must be prevented. Hence the Supreme Court reversed the privatization decision, which soured executive-judiciary relations, and led the military government to suspend the Chief Justice of Pakistan, and later the judiciary, media outlets, and the Constitution, which precipitated a successful social movement for an independent judiciary and the restoration of democracy. Events were shaped by the various interests of parties concerned and created new identities for them. The paper concludes by reflecting on how the findings contribute to, and add new issues for accounting research using discourse analysis

Changing control and accounting regimes in an african gold mine: emergence of new despotic control

Purpose – To examine whether the framework of management accounting transformations in Hopper et al. (2009) applies to accounting changes in the Ashanti Gold Corporation (AGC) in Ghana over 120 years from pre-colonialism to recent times. Design/methodology/approach – Mixed data sources are used, namely interviews, observations of practices, historical documentation, company reports, and research papers and theses. The results are categorized within the periods and contextual factors in the Hopper et al. framework. Findings –The Hopper et al. model was robust. Despotic controls with minimal management accounting but stewardship accounting to the head office in London prevailed under colonialism. Upon independence state capitalist policies descended into politicized state capitalism. Under nationalization the performance of mines deteriorated and accounting became decoupled from operations. However, AGC remained privately owned, it embraced profit centres and budgeting, and was relatively successful commercially. In the early 1980s fiscal crises forced Ghana’s government to turn to the World Bank and IMF for loans. Their conditions precipitated market capitalism embracing widespread privatisations. This marked a gradual transformation of AGC into a foreign multinational, organized along divisional lines that today exercises despotic control through supply chain management that renders labour precarious, and neglects corporate social accounting. Practical implications – The work challenges neo-classical economic prescriptions and analyses of accounting in developing countries by indicating its neglect of the interests of other stakeholders, especially labour and civil society. Originality/value – The paper tests and extends the Hopper et al. framework with respect to a large private multinational in the commodity sector over an extended period

[Editorial] Accounting scholarship and management by numbers

There is a plethora of indices ranking universities, departments, and individual researchers based on a variety of indices. These invariably include a measurement of research, usually based on a combination of quantity and quality of journal publications. Informal discussions with accounting researchers invariably turns to the question of journal rankings and performance management indicators. Why is this so

Precariousness, gender, resistance and consent in the face of global production network’s ‘Reforms’ of Pakistan’s garment manufacturing industry

This case study of the restructuring of Pakistan’s garment manufacturing industry explores how attempts to increase capital’s control over the labour process intersect with local patriarchal structures and trigger workers’ reflexivity and agency causing unanticipated consequences. Using Archer’s notion of agency, the article examines the theoretical space where capitalism meets patriarchy, and both are reproduced. The focus on reflexivity, anchored between objective contexts and agents’ personal concerns, helps theorize capital–labour–gender relations in global supply chains and explains workers’ impactful resistance to protect a supposedly precarious work regime. Our findings challenge the notion that globalization reduces workers’ agency and their potential for impactful resistance

ACCOUNTING FOR PRIVATISATION IN BANGLADESH: TESTING WORLD BANK CLAIMS

The World Bank and the IMF have encouraged many less developed countries (LDCs) to pursue privatisation policies. Development economists and World Bank reports claim this facilitates development by improving controls within enterprises and external regulation of financial markets acting on external accounting reports. This paper questions these beliefs. It compares the post-privatisation performance of companies in Bangladesh examined in a World Bank report with the authors' own research on the same companies. The World Bank report reported that the success of the privatisations established the case for more. In the research reported here, only one of the privatised companies was judged a commercial success, though the unavailability and dubious accuracy of accounting reports prevented any definitive assessment. Above all, the paper questions the narrow criteria adopted by the World Bank report - namely profitability - and the neglect of employment conditions, trade union and individual rights; social returns; and financial transparency and accountability to external constituents. Our evidence suggested that privatisation has not increased returns to society: privatised companies' contributions to state revenue declined in real terms and as a proportion of value added. Transparent external reports failed to materialise as required by law and there was evidence of untoward transactions affecting minority shareholders, creditors, and tax collecting institutions. Internal controls may have become more commercial but at the cost of declining employment, wages, quality of working life, and employee rights. The World Bank claims rest upon efficiency benefits trickling down to all but the effects of privatisation may have been a redistribution of power and wealth to the new owners. This paper argues that the IMF, the World Bank, and Western capitalist states have not provided the technical infrastructure and organisational capacity to execute their neo-liberal privatisation agenda, which rests on dubious socio-economic assumptions. Our unfavourable evaluation of privatisation in Bangladesh is not unique. It has been happening again and again around the world. © 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd