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Critical Perspectives on Accounting 21 (2010) 171–182
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Critical Perspectives on Accounting
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The contours of critical accounting
1. Introduction
The majority of papers in this special issue were first presented at the European Critical Accounting Symposium (ECAS)convened at the University of York in July 2006. The objective of ECAS is to create a polyphonic space (Kornberger et al.,2006) that brings together critical researchers from the sub-disciplines of critical accounting, management, organizationtheory, as well as the social sciences more generally. The publication of this collection of papers provides an opportunity toreview the contribution of critical accounting to the emergence of accounting as a scholarly discipline. Such an opportunityis apposite since not only do the collection of papers in this issue reprise some key debates covered by this journal andothers over a number of years and decades, but they also signal new entrances and expanding directions. They exemplifythe lenses through which accounting opens dialogues with a wide range of other disciplines, from organization theory,strategy, micro-economics and history. Connections to these strands of social theory and organization remain as importantas they were 25 years ago when Hopwood (1983) seminally pointed out that accounting cannot be understood merely as aset of techniques, nor in the context just of the organizational, but must also connect with social theory (see Cooper et al.,2009).
Accounting is also maturing as an academic discipline, such that along with the other social sciences it can offer informedcomment on crucial issues. Long an importer of social theory, work by accounting scholars, such as Peter Miller, Ted O’Learyand Mike Power, is now widely exported to the broader social sciences. In the UK, where both the guest editors live and work,influential thinktanks, such as DEMOS, have picked up on research conducted by accounting scholars (see Power, 2004);accounting researchers feature regularly in national newspapers; while others have appeared before House of CommonsSelect Committees; or on television. For critically oriented accounting scholars these constitute important developments,both increasing the prominence of critical accounting but also opening up the possibility of engaging in public debate(Burawoy, 2005; Said, 1994), thus taking accounting concerns out of the academy and into the public sphere. Themeslong pursued in accounting – such as critiques of capitalism, concern that orthodox accounting practice contributes to theenvironmental crisis, scepticism about the power and role of the accountancy profession, social justice, the ideological impactof accounting tools – have an added salience, given many of the problems currently facing society. Moreover, understandinghow accounting operates in such contexts offers the opportunity for greater understanding and, ultimately, for effectingsocial change. Given the hegemony of corporations, critical accountants are well placed to mount carefully researchedcritiques.
The papers in this issue provide fascinating examples of how critical accounting is developing. The areas of engagement arereviewed below: these comprise of an accounting contribution to understanding the concept of strategic management andcompetitive advantage (Bowman and Toms, 2010); an analysis of the historical and political processes promoting progressiveand regressive taxation (Cooper et al., 2010); a perspective on how expert knowledge, such as accounting, is implicated insocial theories of risk (Hanlon, 2010); an innovative discussion of oral history as a methodology for studying accountants(Haynes, 2010); an exploration of social theorist Judith Butler’s radical perspective on identity and performativity (McKinlay,2010); and, an actor-network theory analysis of the translation of management accounting into the Italian public sector(Pipan and Czarniawska, 2010).
2. Strategy, value and competitive advantage
As Klamer and McCloskey (1991) have pointed out, accounting is the master metaphor of economics. The fundamentalproblems of economics are therefore also problems of accounting. For an economist, super-normal profits are explained by
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172 The contours of critical accounting / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 21 (2010) 171–182
the theory of rent; to an accountant, such profits imply the existence of goodwill and the problem of its valuation. Economistslong since abandoned the search for a theory of value and with it the ideologically inconvenient concepts of productive labourand the labour theory of value. Value instead comes from capital itself. Rejecting the labour theory of value, Böhm-Bawerk(1891) disputed Marx’s notion of exploitation, pointing out that capitalists paid workers in advance of the realisation ofprofits.1 Such time differences formed the basis of a value model based on time preference alone (Bohm Bawerk, 1898).Whilst Bohm Bawerk and others began leading economics up the path of grand theory and neat equilibrium equations, atthis point history is abandoned, together with the irksome task of explaining the origins of capital. The last thirty years hasseen mainstream economics abandon any remnant of political and social concern, becoming little more than a branch ofmathematics, albeit with considerable performative power (MacKenzie, 2006).
Meanwhile, management as a discipline is in a dilemma. Mainstream management theory wishes to be the enforcer ofneo-liberal economic values. At the same time, the managerial gurus need to offer people transformative ideas in order tojustify their fees. So the one-minute manager, who has learned what they do not teach you at Harvard Business School,is catapulted centre stage of the knowledge-based organisation (Mueller and Carter, 2007). Serious management scholarstoo are looking for theories that place managerial activity at the centre of the model, and by corollary, as the people whodeliver value to the shareholders. However, they have gone looking for a theory of value without consulting the accountantsor history and without wishing to risk a messy divorce with neo-classical economics have opted for a theory of Ricardianrents.2 Unfortunately, such rents are just as easily available to the lucky manager as to the talented, so a complete theory ofhuman resource based competitive advantage continues to elude the discipline of management.
In proffering a labour based theory of value, accounting suggests a way forward for economics, the managementdisciplines, and indeed anyone else dependent upon the world-view assumptions of neo-liberal economics. Strategic man-agement in particular, which has neither an open dialogue with accounting, engagement with history, nor even much criticalawareness (see Carter et al., 2008; Clegg et al., 2004), potentially has a great deal to learn from critical accounting. This isthe premise of Cliff Bowman and Steve Toms’s (2010) article. It is left to accounting therefore not merely to respond to therather loose treatment of profit and value in the strategic management literature, but also to respond to the dominance ofmainstream economics. Of course the latter point has formed a strong component of the critical accounting research agendaover a long period.
Accounting meanwhile has devoted considerable attention to theories of value and problems of valuation (for exampleOhlson, 2001).3 The issue of the valuation of heterogeneous capital assets has attracted some interest from more criticalperspectives (Bryer, 2006; Toms, 2006). As the problem is also a major one for strategic management and its resource basedtheory of the firm, and the problem can be tackled from the starting point of heterogeneous labour (see Toms, 2010) andembedded capital (Bowman and Swart, 2007; Bowman and Toms, 2010), it is sensible to take the Cambridge controversiesforward again in the form of new theories of accounting valuation.
3. Taxation, social justice and the politics of critical accounting
Taxation offers an illustration of the role of expert knowledge in transferring wealth between social groups. Tax practi-tioners are a significant portion of professional accounting institutions and create a considerable portion of the accountingfirms’ revenue.4 As experts in this context, accountants are implicated in wealth transfers and the defence of wealth throughtax avoidance advice. At the same time, accountants are in a good position to use their expert power to propose schemes inresponse to the major problems facing society such as environmental degradation, social injustice and inequality. As such,taxation also represents the use of accounting to regulate behaviour (Bush and Maltby, 2004, p. 5). Christine Cooper, MikeDanson, Geoff Whittam and Tommy Sheridan (2010) address an important issue raised by Spence (2009) that there are toofew studies that ground accounting work within actual social struggles. In their paper, Cooper et al. (2010) chart the rise ofregressive taxation as a component of the neo-liberal project and its effect of reinforcing wealth transfers from the poor infavour of the rich. David Harvey’s (2005) recent work on neo-liberalism provides an intellectual backdrop to their analysis.In their paper, Cooper et al. (2010) do us a great service by reminding us just how far politics in the UK has shifted to theeconomically liberal right: proposals advocated by them in their article would, in effect, be returning top marginal rates oftax to where they were under Mrs Thatcher in her first two administrations.5
1 ‘It is only because the labourers cannot wait till the roundabout process . . . delivers up its products ready for consumption, that they becomeeconomically dependent on the capitalists’ (Böhm-Bawerk, 1891, p. 83).
2 Bowman and Toms (2010) review the strategic management literature, which by its own admission, lacks a theory of value, relying instead on thenotion of Ricardian rents to measure the outcomes of sustained competitive advantage.
3 For example Ohlson’s model which reconciles accounting book value to market based values (Feltham and Ohlson, 1995; Ohlson, 2001).4 The British accountancy magazine, Accountancy Age, produces an annual report on the turnover of the top 50 accounting firms in the UK. In 2009 Price
Waterhouse Coopers posted earnings of £675 million, Deloitte – £567 million, and KPMG – £423 million from their respective tax operations (figures wereunavailable for Ernst and Young). The report is accessible at: http://ivory.vnunet.com/assets/binaries/accountancy-age/pdf/top-50-2009.pdf.
5 The website hosted by Political Compass provides a fascinating insight into how the central ground of British politics has shifted to a far greateracceptance of economic liberalism over the last four decades. It provides similar analyses for American, Australian, Canadian, German, Irish and NewZealand politics. It can accessed at: http://www.politicalcompass.org/.
The contours of critical accounting / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 21 (2010) 171–182 173
In Britain households pay a property tax, the council tax, which is based on the nominal value of the property (calculatedin 1991) lived in by a household. The tax, save for a few exceptions such as the unemployed, does not take into accounta household’s income. The corollary is that the tax is deeply regressive, with low earners being hit disproportionally. Forinstance, a couple with a high family income would pay the same as a low income family who lived in similar housing.Cooper et al. (2010) highlight the attempt by the Scottish Socialist Party6 to introduce a progressive local tax in the devolvedScottish Parliament. An essential feature of a countervailing progressive tax, such as the proposed Scottish Service Tax, is toensure it is difficult to avoid. Accounting expertise is accordingly a crucial ingredient in setting up new taxes if the expertiseof the tax avoidance industry is to be effectively overcome. Cooper et al’s (2010) importance rests on the interplay betweentheory and political action. One of the co-authors, Tommy Sheridan, was a Scottish Socialist Party Member of the ScottishParliament, and took the lead in trying to get the tax bill passed in the Scottish Parliament. While the bill failed to make itonto the legislative books, it was highly effective in demonstrating the regressive nature of the council tax. That there arecurrently on-going discussions within Scottish political circles about the council tax is due, in no small part, to this bill. Inthe era of armchair radicalism this paper offers an important example of how progressive politicians and critical academicscan work together and develop well thought out, properly costed policy proposals. In an era when relevant knowledge alltoo often means the provision of business consultancy, Cooper et al. (2010) provide us with a timely reminder of the radicalpotential of critical accounting. Their work is theoretically important, timely and practically relevant to boot. As they put it:‘freedom is more than a word, it has to be fought for.’
4. Knowledge, expertise and the risk society
Whichever of these functions it performs, accounting faces challenge. To the extent that accounting is implicated inwealth and risk transfers, it faces increasing distrust in its expert power from those affected (Hanlon et al., 2006). To theextent that it becomes associated with greater emphasis on sustainability and accountability it faces censure from vestedinterest groups.7 An abiding concern of Gerard Hanlon’s scholarship has been to explore issues of expertise, knowledge and,particularly, middle class professions. An enduring hallmark of Hanlon’s approach to research has been to take a meta-themein sociology and investigate it empirically, especially in relation to professional labour. This approach has yielded impressiveresults. Empirical work conducted by Hanlon in the last decade investigated the establishment of NHS Direct in the BritishNational Health Service. For those not familiar with the British health system, NHS Direct8 is a call centre staffed by nurses,who provide medical advice over the phone. Hailed by policy-makers and government officials as an important innovation,Hanlon carried out a comprehensive and insightful study of professional work mediated through telephony. Ulrich Beck’sinfluential Risk Society thesis was an important intellectual anchor for Hanlon during this phase of his research career.
Risk in general has received considerable critical attention from accounting scholars, especially through research con-ducted by members of the influential Centre for Risk and Regulation (Power, 2004; Power, 2007; Power et al., 2006; Milleret al., 2008), based at the London of School of Economics. The Risk Society, developed by Ulrich Beck, and part of the moregeneral reflexive modernization project (see Beck, 1992; Beck et al., 1994) was one of the most important sociology booksto be published in the 1990s.
In the four years that have elapsed since Hanlon first published on the topic of the Risk Society in the pages of CriticalPerspectives on Accounting (see Hanlon et al., 2006), it is clear that the ardour of his close intellectual embrace of Beckhas cooled. While Hanlon evidently continues to take Beck seriously, any residual appreciation for the Risk Society thesisis overshadowed by critique. Early in his article the reader is pointedly told that ‘Beck’s understanding of experts andknowledge is incorrect’. Hanlon rehearses the main features of Beck’s these before dismantling them. From an erroneousstarting point, for Hanlon, Beck compounds this by committing further calumnies. Hanlon’s charge sheet relates to ‘itsinterpretation of our relationship to expertise, how we interact with experts and the organizations they work for, and, finally,how we relate these to risk’. Well versed in autonomist Marxism, Hanlon’s repudiation of the Risk Society thesis echoessome of the preoccupations of the autonomists (see Harney, 2002), especially in his claim that to understand knowledge andexpertise, one needs to understand sociality. The concept of sociality refers to the lived experience, networks and practicesof a community. Sociality creates consciousness which, inter alia, endows a group with the possibility to exercise agency.
The first problem identified by Hanlon (2010) relates to Beck’s conceptualisation of trust and expertise. Characterisingthe western world as having shifted from an era of modernity to one of reflexive modernism, Beck regards this as havingfar-reaching ramifications for society’s relationship with experts. Whereas in the modern era experts were trusted, with
6 The Scottish Socialist Party brought together an alliance of feminists, Trotskyites neither leftist party holds, militants and for nearly a decade was asignificant minority force within Scottish politics. They won seats in the Scottish Parliament in the 1999 (one seat) and 2003 (six seats) elections. Unlikeother parts of the UK, the hard left has long been a player in Scottish politics. For instance, the Independent Labour Party was very influential in Scotlandand it was the only part of the UK where communist politicians achieved any long term electoral success (for instance, Willie Gallacher was a CommunistMP for East Fife between 1935 and 1950. Other than that, Shapryi Sakalatvala, was briefly a MP for North Battersea, elected in the 1922 and 1924 GeneralElections, and Phil Paratin, was elected as MP for Stepney between 1945–1950). The Scottish Socialist Party splintered in 2006, following a leadershipdispute, and hard left politics are now represented by the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity. At the time of writing seats in the Scottish Parliament.
7 For example in the form of ‘flak’ from corporate lobby groups fearing loss of control of the technical and publicity agenda (cf. Herman and Chomsky,1988).
8 For further details see: http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/.
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the laity genuflecting to the expert’s knowledge base, reflexive modernity ushered in a new sensibility in which an expert’sknowledge is treated with far more scepticism and suspicion. The historical characterisation of experts in the era of modernityis for Hanlon (2010) idealised. As a means of refuting Beck, Hanlon (2010) invokes the example of the South Wales Miners’federation. Militant, well organized and politically powerful, in the 1930s, they challenged the expert opinions of companydoctors, and also succeeded in getting ‘new’ health conditions, such as miners’ lung, recognised. Hanlon uses the exampleto alert us to the way in which expertise was often challenged and, importantly, was seen as being bound up in a web ofpower relationships. The corollary is that the laity’s suspicion of experts is nothing new.
The second objection to Beck’s Risk Society centres on the shaping of expertise. Beck (1992) sees expertise as increas-ingly being shaped by political processes. Once again, Hanlon fails to see anything new in these assertions, and insteadregards politics and expertise as being inextricably linked. Once again discussing the case of the Welsh mining union,Hanlon (2010) argues that the miners’ challenge to the medical profession, in part, led to its re-construction and re-organization into the National Health Service. Aneurin Bevan,9 a miner who became a senior Labour politician, was theMinister of Health who was responsible for establishing the National Health Service, and drew on the experience ofthe miners in the 1930s. As Hanlon (2010) puts it ‘lay being and knowledge could and did force expert, organizational,management and social change. Knowledge was at least partly collective and not individual nor was the expert sepa-rate from the non-expert; lay people recognised the politicisation of knowledge and hence challenged (and supported)expertise’.
Beck’s characterisation of the world as comprising of different and competing knowledge fields forms the substance ofHanlon’s third line of critique. Hanlon (2010) finds Beck’s conceptualisation of knowledge wanting. More specifically, Beck’streatment of expert knowledge as being locked in a rational competition with other forms of knowledge, thus ignoring boththe relational and political nature of knowledge, is argued to be problematic. What Hanlon means is that an expert – andtheir knowledge base – is not an a priori given but rather is an outcome of politics and community action. What counts asknowledge and who is regarded as an expert is, for Hanlon, an ineluctably social process. Whilst arguing that lay knowledgeand experience is also essential to an ontologically grounded theory of knowledge, absent from Beck (1992), Hanlon arguesthat such knowledge is being systematically undermined by the decline of its collective material base. Beck is therefore rightto conclude about the prominence of expert power, but for the wrong reasons.
For Hanlon (2010) the interpenetration of both lay and expert knowledge and ontology are crucial to understanding thenature of expertise. For this endeavour, Hanlon contends that Beck has nothing to offer. Instead Hanlon (2010) advocateslooking at lay experience and struggle to understand expertise. He concludes that ‘organizationally this politicisation ofknowledge is important because it blurs the boundary of the organization and has a direct impact on the legitimacy, produc-tion and delivery of services such as health and science and the designation of risk positions’. It is here that Hanlon bringshis argument back to risk: today’s decisions about risk and risk positions are informed by the knowledge struggles of thepast. Hanlon (2010) points out, for instance, that it was struggles in the past that give us the accountancy organizations,institutions and body of knowledge we possess today. Here, in the main, Hanlon (2010) is less sanguine. Acknowledgingthat the less privileged and poor are, arguably, less organized and, perhaps, less capable of organizing collectively than 20thcentury groups, such as the Welsh miners used in the example above. Consequently, following the Frankfurt School, Hanlonargues that the very expertise people have struggled to bring to life can often come to be both controlling and emasculating.Knowledge and expertise will therefore be geared towards minimizing risks for the privileged in the West. Hanlon pointsout that, counter to Beck, risk is unlikely to be distributed evenly, but instead will fall disproportionately on the poor, weakand marginalized.
5. Oral history, gender and accountants
While Hanlon’s (2010) interest lay with risk and expert knowledge, understanding the role of experts, especially accoun-tants, has long been a concern of critical accounting. As a means of institutionalizing expertise, the accountancy professionhas proved remarkably adept at commercializing itself and accruing ever greater power (Armstrong, 1985; Hanlon, 1994;Cooper and Robson, 2006). It is said that the law profession possesses ‘an amazing trick’ (Van Krieken, 2006, p. 574) wherebyby controlling the rules of its own application it can ‘rebuild itself in mid-air without ever touching down’ (Fish, 1973, quotedby Van Krieken, 2006, p. 574). Accountancy, now far removed from the dull stereotype (Jeacle, 2008) of yore, has assumedsimilar powers for itself. When a self-induced crisis ensues, the large accountancy firms generally emerge both richer andmore political powerful than ever before. While sociology has consigned accounting to a form of academic purgatory, soci-ologically minded accountants have more than made up for this oversight. Important work has told us much about howmanagement control is exerted in audit firms (Covaleski et al., 1998), how accountants are socialized (Anderson-Gough, Greyand Robson, 1998, 2000, 2005), the practice of management accounting (Ahrens and Chapman, 2000), the accounting pro-fession and post-colonialism (Anisette, 2000) and the footloose, global nature of accounting firms (Cooper and Catchpowle,2009). In this issue, Kathryn Haynes (2010) extends our understanding of accountants by reporting on her research study
9 Michael Foot’s (1973) classic biography of Aneurin Bevan provides an authoritative account of the establishment of the NHS. In particular, he chroniclesthe long stand-off between the British Medical Association and Bevan. Irvine Lapsley and Jill Schofield’s (2009) recent account of the 60th anniversary ofthe NHS also provides a fascinating reminder of its painful birth.
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into accountants and motherhood. While the findings of this research have been reported elsewhere (Haynes, 2006, 2008),this article is an important reflection on the conditions of knowledge production.
That positivism exerts an iron grip on mainstream capital markets research is well established. Such methodologicalcertainty often breeds myopia and, on occasion, can descend into dogma. For instance, some followers of positivism expressgenuine bewilderment towards theoretical developments such as the social studies of finance. In the face of the intellectualimperialism practiced by capital markets research, it is of little surprise that critical accounting has championed both theo-retical and methodological pluralism. Consequently, case studies, archival work, textual analysis, and ethnographic studiesare all well established methodologies within the discourse of critical accounting. Oral history, save for a few exceptions, hasmade little impact on critical accounting. Haynes’s (2010) article redresses this gap in the literature and provides a thoroughanalysis of methodological issues relating to oral history.
Oral history is primarily concerned with giving voice to people – most particularly those in marginal or oppressedpositions – through eliciting insights into the lives of those being interviewed. Haynes (2010) conducted oral histories with15 female accountants, a project whose motivation was ‘to explore women’s identity in the accounting profession in theinterests of understanding, exposing or improving the position of women’. She acknowledges that her respondents arerelatively privileged, as white, middle class, reasonably well educated and materially comfortable, but nonetheless viewsoral history as a means of empowering her respondents: ‘my project was searching for meaning and perceptions amongstthe participants rather than simply facts about their lives’. Haynes (2010) identifies the research as feminist in its orientationand sensibilities. As a mother, sometime accountant and academic researcher, oral history also possesses reflexive promisefor Haynes (2010). It is a vehicle with which she can explore the complexities of her ‘own identity in conjunction with theidentities of others’. Reflexivity is inscribed into oral history and Haynes (2010) discusses the need ‘for oral historians to takeresponsibility for the narratives they present to the world, their own position within society as well as the research processshould be continually questioned and integrated into the analysis’.
Haynes’s (2010) article proceeds with a very useful discussion of how she conducted her oral history research, whichcould serve as a template for any critical accounting scholar looking to use an oral history methodology. She highlights thevery open nature of questioning (such as: how did you get into accounting?) adopted in the approach. The narratives elicitedby the approach were interwoven within a broader set of political, social and economic issues. Haynes (2010) summarisedthe life story of each of her respondents and followed this with a thematic analysis of the interviews, an analytical processthat translates ‘particular stories into examples of larger social phenomena’. For Haynes (2010) this presented a tensionbetween giving voice to the women she interviewed and exploring wider phenomena.
Ethics moves to centre stage of Haynes’s (2010) discussion. This concerns confidentiality – does she put two researchrespondents in touch with each other because they are facing similar issues – or is such an endeavour deeply problematic?Similarly, after a fairly corporate beginning to an interview, where Haynes (2010) felt she was treated to the company line,one of the respondents unburdened herself and was close to tears. This raises, as Haynes (2010) acknowledges, issues as tothe extent that very personal and probing questions which elicit emotional responses can ever be said to fall under the rubricof ‘full informed consent.’ The paper continues this line of inquiry with a fascinating discussion of the potential unintendedconsequences of the research. Ultimately, Haynes (2010) notes the contradiction that: ‘while we may strive to overcomeboundaries in the research relationship through the establishment of a level of trust and empathy, and by showing thatthe relationship matters, the researcher largely holds the interpretative authority. She is also subject to her own emotionalresponses to the participants, including irritation or dislike, which are as much a part of the research process as empathyand tenderness but may be more difficult to acknowledge’.
Haynes’s (2010) paper extends the methodological range of critical accounting by furthering our knowledge about thecomplexities of undertaking oral history research. The in-depth and deeply personal nature of the oral history process raisemany ethical dilemmas – be they voyeurism or exploiting a relationship premised on reciprocation and trust. Despite thecriticisms levelled against it, not least the danger and vulnerability it poses for research respondents, Haynes concludes thatoral history has rich potential for studying accounting. In particular, it is a powerful tool for gaining insights into lives, orparts of peoples’ lives, that generally go undocumented. Moreover, it highlights the interplay between the domestic andpersonal with the professional and public. It can help challenge ‘conceptions of accounting history, who it privileges, andwho it serves’. The advocacy and discussion of oral history in this paper will be of great interest for those interested inqualitative methodologies that seek to gain a richer and fuller understanding of a phenomenon. That it is a methodologyassociated with improving social justice will recommend it to all associated with critical accounting.
6. Politics of identity
While Haynes (2010) adopts an expressly feminist position, McKinlay (2010) engages with the provocative ideas ofa celebrated feminist theorist: Judith Butler. It is well established that Butler is a leading contemporary feminist theorist,though her popularity has not yet reached the shores of critical accounting, save for a paltry brace of citations (Haynes, 2008;and Messner, 2009) in the three core critical accounting journals (Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal; Accounting,Organizations and Society; and Critical Perspectives on Accounting, respectively). Given accounting’s general enthusiasm for allthings post-structural, this is surprising. McKinlay’s (2010) interest in Judith Butler is not as a feminist but as a foucauldianfellow traveller (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998; McKinlay, 2002, 2006; McKinlay and Wilson, 2006). Foucault, of course, needslittle introduction to readers of this journal (Hoskin, 1994; Grey, 1994) or to critical accounting (Burchell et al., 1991;
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Hopwood, 1987; Walsh and Jeacle, 2003), or for that matter organization theory (Burrell, 1988; Clegg, 1989; Knights andWillmott, 1989). That the late professor of the history of ideas has become one of the major figures in late 20th/early 21stcentury European Business School is a remarkable story in its own right (Carter, 2008; Clegg et al., 2006; Knights, 2002).Incidentally, McKinlay and his co-author Pezet have an article forthcoming in Critical Perspectives on Accounting (Mckinlayand Pezet, 2010) which addresses the very issue of the appropriation of Foucault in accounting. While Foucault has travelledto a number of the management sciences, accounting scholars got their first and arguably did it best.
Both McKinlay and Butler are immaculately attired in foucauldian couture, but they wear it lightly. Rather than slavishlytreating Foucault as an end-point or an ultimate truth, both McKinlay and Butler share an interest in using Foucault asa starting point for their scholarly work. McKinlay (2010) commences his article with a discussion of Judith Butler as aninterlocutor of Foucault. More specifically, he compares their textual strategy, and understanding of power and resistance.
McKinlay (2010) sets out by assessing the textual strategy deployed by both Butler and Foucault. He reminds us thatFoucault’s writing deploys vivid and shocking imagery – such as the lengthy description of the execution of Damien, theregicide, in the opening pages of Discipline and Punish – as a means of capturing the rationalities of the pre-modern world.Foucault famously sets these in sharp contrast to the dull, grey disciplinary procedures that characterise the modern. Fou-cault’s style of writing attempts to unsettle the reader, it makes them confront the differences between the two historicalepochs. Butler’s prose is different. Densely written, her texts are assembled through the close readings of Hegel, Lacan andFoucault, among others. Butler’s writing makes great demands of the reader. Her argumentation proceeds, as if speakingin tongues, through the discourses of others. Ambiguity it seems is always privileged over the simple pleasures of clarity.The point of her textual strategy, according to McKinlay (2010), is to unsettle and ‘make the reader suspicious of their ownidentities.’
That Foucault’s conceptualisation of power concentrates on mundane, commonplace practices is well established. Whileone of Foucault’s most striking observations relates to his assertion of the productive capacity of power – noting that it neednot, indeed, cannot always be repressive – his treatment of resistance is shrouded in paradox. Casting power and resistanceas coterminous, one always being the shadow of the other, tells us little of the forms resistance might take. The dystopiainscribed in Foucault’s writings has been frequently commented on. In place of Foucault’s miserabalist sensibilities JudithButler serves up far more optimistic fare. Instead of disciplinary practices being little more than an on-going siege against thesoul, Butler regards them as opening up possibilities for transgression and resistance. Butler is interested in the possibilitiesof living outside of the disciplinary gaze, in developing alternatives, however ephemeral, to hegemonic identities and images.This is her starting point. McKinlay (2010) makes the fascinating observation that Butler’s political theorisation is very closeto Foucault’s practices as an activist, such as campaigns relating to prisoners’ rights.
Butler’s conceptualisation of identity is situated within a broader constructivist and post-structural theory. As a corol-lary, identity is seen as an on-going process, with it never being fixed or stable but always in a process of becoming. Thisunderstanding of identity – in part derived from Foucault – has been a useful weapon for radical feminists, allowing them todeconstruct essentialist categories. Of course, by unravelling the notion of an essentialist identity it follows that identities arecultural fictions. Here McKinlay (2010) points us to a fascinating aspect of Butler’s position on identity “It is not, emphatically,that a particular identity causes a set of acts, language, and gestures of, say, the ‘empowered associate’. Quite the reverseis the case: identity is produced through acts, language and gestures that together form the hegemonic ideal of, in the caseof Butler’s work, gender. Gender is of course, along with race and class, a master sociological concept. Whether Butler’sinsights work for other identities is a moot point in need of further discussion and careful deliberation. If we accept thatButler’s work can be used to study work identity or professional identity in such a way it would explore how, for instance,the ‘empowered’ associate, or, for that matter, the ‘class conscious proletarian’ were produced through acts, language andgestures. In relation to accounting, using Butler to look at, for example, professional accountants, would entail studyinghow the professional identity was produced (see Jeacle, 2008). Rather than professional accounting being a pre-ordained,self-evident professional identity, instead it would constantly be in the process of becoming. This line of research wouldmake for a fascinating addition to the important contribution made by Fiona Anderson-Gough, Chris Grey and Keith Robson(1998, 2000, 2005) in their studies of the socialization of accountants in a large accounting firm in the North of England.
Performativity is a pivotal concept for Butler. It concentrates on process and, for many, offers a way out of the analyticalimbroglio of structure versus agency. For Butler, performativity brings into being that which it names, sharing a resonancewith Ruth Hines’ (1988) work in Accounting, Organizations and Society, and Donald MacKenzie’s (2005) current research intothe sociology of finance. Performative statements are not new or definitive, rather they form part of a continuing processof iterating and consolidating authority. To talk of a particular discourse, such as the importance of pleasing the financialmarkets or cutting costs is to help to iterate and consolidate such a discourse.
McKinlay (2010) concentrates on two mechanisms of performativity identified by Butler: mimicry and citation. Mimicryis characterised as ‘a form of reiteration that signifies the inherent instability of established language and identity’ and isbest thought of as a dominant discourse – say that of finance capitalism – being reproduced. Of course, by reproducinga dominant discourse this silences other possibilities. Mimicry highlights that the reproduction of a discourse – such asprofessional accountancy – sits ‘uneasily and ambiguously between identificatory collusion and the subversion of a given,ascribed identity’. Citation is best understood as a wider community or tradition – such as that of a craft or professionalhabitus – being invoked in the process of enacting an identity.
Given these forms of performativity, how, then, does Butler imagine resistance taking place? McKinlay (2010) sees theradical potential of Butler’s performativity in its ‘refusal to accept essentialism in any form,’ and, ‘it points not just to the
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resilience of hegemonic identities but also to their fragility.’ These two points allow for resistance and the potential over-turning of a dominant, hegemonic discourse. Butler identifies two prime means of resistance, the first is simply to refuse toparticipate in reproducing the dominant discourse, through not performing ‘a specific behaviour that instantiates a particularrepresentation or identity’; the second, and potentially more radical, is to participate in the dominant discourse but to subverta particular identity from within. The subversion may take the form of parody, characterised by McKinlay (2010), as follows:
‘Parody plays on the integrity of that which is parodied and signals its fragility (Evans, 1995: 134). The gesture isephemeral, is not necessarily cumulative or disruptive, but can be tolerated within an existing power/knowledgeregime. On quite another level, however, there is the suggestion that resistance brings the complete power/knowledgeregime into question’.
McKinlay (2010) turns his attention to the contemporary workplace to explore some of Butler’s ideas. Addressing someof the influential empirical work of Catherine Casey (1995), Stan Deetz (1998) and David Knights (see Knights and MacCabe,1998), respectively, McKinlay (2010) roundly criticises them as overly pessimistic. McKinlay asserts that we are told preciouslittle about the identities of the respondents in these studies, other than through the hegemonic discourse of corporateculture. For McKinlay (2010) a disappointing feature of this research is that it does not explore the workers’ ‘other identities’:their gender, class, race, or place from which they come from. According to McKinlay (2010), these oversights emasculate theworkers of cultural and linguistic registers with which they can mount an effective resistance to managerialism/corporateculture in the workplace. For Butler, the changeable nature of identity was a characteristic that offered radical potential.In practice, McKinlay (2010) argues that the corollary of abandoning the notion of fixed identities – such as class, gender,race or place – has all too often been deeply debilitating. The danger is that resistance is rendered as little more than ironicdisengagement.
McKinlay’s (2010) article is, to our knowledge, the first detailed reading of Judith Butler’s work in accounting. Whilehe notes the difficulties attached to Butler’s work – endless abstraction, wilful obscurantism, empirical allusion and lapsesinto tautology – within it McKinlay (2010) sees the possibility of going beyond Foucault. More specifically, Butler offersan important means of developing further the relations between power and identity. Given McKinlay’s (2010) frequentexasperation at Butler – especially her obscurantism – it is of little surprise that he regards detailed empirical study as theprime means for taking her ideas forward. The empirics would then lend themselves to an elaboration of theory. What, then,would the application of Butler’s ideas mean in the context of critical accounting research? Sketching out an agenda – forinstance, exploring how discourses of financial accounting sustain their primacy through mimicry and citation, and how thiscan be challenged – is clearly the next task for critical accounting if it is to respond to McKinlay’s (2010) call to put Butler towork.
7. Actor-Network theory, translation and management accounting
Broadbent and Guthrie (2008) in a review of the literature for the 1992–2006 period find that management accountingis the dominant theme for public sector research, but also note the recent emergence of several new areas of interest,including, PPP/PFI; social and environmental accounting, governance and intellectual capital. Transformations of publicsector organizations and the accounting consequences have been theorized before (e.g. Jones and Mellett, 2007). For Asenovaand Beck (2010), the development of PFI represents a deliberate attempt by global capital to impose and exploit low riskprofit opportunities. Tatiana Pipan and Barbara Czarniawska’s (2010) contribution to this special issue is to explore theintroduction of management accounting in the Italian public sector.
Pipan and Czarniawska’s (2010) work is concerned with the travel of ideas. More particularly, they explore the introduc-tion of management accounting into the Italian Ministry of Finance, the Municipality of Genoa and the province of Perugia. Toexplore these innovations they employ Actor-Network-Theory (ANT)10. ANT is, of course, no stranger to critical accounting(see Jeacle, 2003; Lowe, 2001; Mouritsen and Thrane, 2006; Robson, 1992; Rose and Miller, 2008; Skærbæk, 2005; Skærbækand Tryggestad, 2010), and as such requires little introduction. In looking at the implementation of an initiative, ANT rejectsthe orthodox diffusion model of innovation (Rogers, 1995), whereby an idea diffuses out from a central point to the periph-ery. Instead, it argues for a sociology of translation: ‘The moment any new idea arrives at a place where it was not knownbefore, a process of translation begins, in which A, a translator, transforms B, a thing to translate by defining it, or even byexplaining it to itself. . .Thus A transforms B during the course of the translation, but this very process transforms A itself’(Pipan and Czarniawska, 2010). The process of translation is never complete but always prone to reverse, renegotiation orsubversion. Actor-networks form – at which point they seem to be a unified entity – but they also disentangle or fracture.It is at the point of disintegration – whereby what seemed to be a unified entity collapses – that an actor-network is mostreadily visible in its constituent parts.
The first case introduced in the article is that of the Ministry of Finance in Italy. Public sector legislation obliged the ministryto introduce managerialist reforms. The executives at the helm of the Ministry were strongly supportive of the reforms
10 Czarniawska is an important figure within Actor-Network-Theory circles and is arguably the key interlocutor for ANT within the organization theorycommunity, and, more recently, her work has attracted attention within critical accounting journals (Czarniawska, 2008a,b; Czarniawska and Mouritsen,2009).
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and sought to enrol allies. An information systems company and two consultancies embarked on translating managementaccounting from an abstract ideal into an innovation called ‘uniform control’. Uniform control was then stabilized througha process of signification – naming things – and through producing artefacts – such as organization charts and processdiagrams. The initiative started to attract resistance, being seen as a system of managerial control. Various alliances, bothfor and against management accounting, formed at this juncture. The paper tells us that the Actor-Network froze for a yearbefore stabilising, once again, translating, this time into a more qualitative phenomenon. The original financial intent ofthe management accounting initiative had translated into being more concerned with the design and governance of theorganization.
One of the unique, not to mention controversial, facets of ANT is that agency is not only possessed by human actors, butcan also be exercised by machines, documents and so on: these are termed actants. In the case of the finance ministry, adocument – ‘General Directives for Administrative Action at the Ministry of Finance’ – was an actant, which led to variousnew forms of governance being introduced in the organization. Management accounting separated political decision makingand administrative responsibility. However, the information system caused problems for the finance ministry – it was unableto cope with the demands placed upon it – and soon became the weak link in the actor network. At the close of their study,the translation of management accounting continued, which was, in turn, problematizing the role of various actants: ‘whatwill the relationship between the Ministry and the agencies be? What will it mean for management accounting? Will therelationship between the politicians and officials change? If the reorganization reinforced the legitimacy of managementaccounting, it might become not only an accounting device, but also an instrument for the division of responsibility, anda strategic support for policy formulation’. There was, therefore, much that was undecided in the case of managementaccounting translating into the finance ministry.
Their second case, the municipality of Genoa, saw an actor-network form around pre-existing artefacts, which includedan old cost accounting system and an investment committee. Pipan and Czarniawska (2010) make the argument that anysuccessful translation involves actors redefining their identities – ‘translating themselves’ – and in the case of Genoa they didthis by decree: embarking on a re-organization. During this re-organization management accounting was translated froma rather prosaic means of control into an dynamic, cutting edge initiative, which ‘included a set of old artefacts togetherwith new gadgets’. As the translation of management accounting took place it constructed an ever larger network –‘morethe merrier’ as the authors put it – which assembled together a dazzling array of artefacts. This was, in time, pared downdramatically into a methodology revolving around measures of efficiency, effectiveness and quality. Pipan and Czarniawska(2010) report that by the end of their field study the process of translation was still going on in the organization but thatthe initiative was broadly successful. They make the very interesting point that while a network – promoting managementaccounting – was evident the individual parts of it were still visible, thus not constituting a fully formed actor-network: ‘Theactor-network had its head, arms and feet, but its body had yet to completely materialize’.
The final case presented by Pipan and Czarniawska (2010) concerns the introduction of management accounting into theprovince of Perugia. Management accounting suffered from a faltering start and seemed to have been abandoned. Followinglegislation it was re-introduced in the 1990s and was headed-up by a highly skilled accountant. The local politicians weresuspicious of management accounting, not fully understanding what it entailed. This lack of understanding mediated againstit being translated into practice. Supporters of the initiative advocated inventing a new language and new artefacts to helppromote the initiative. This led to the transformation of the internal information system. In the wake of this change theirremained problems with the way in which management accounting was viewed. A further re-organization ensued, whichsaw the information system being used to create the executive plan in the province of Perugia. Along with the annualbudget, the introduction of cost centres and three year plans, there were several actants supporting the introduction ofmanagement accounting, although this support was not accompanied by human actors. Consequently, it was decided thatinstead of embracing management accounting Perugia would, instead, revert to its previous mode of ‘internal control’, withmanagement accounting being relegated to a technical function within the financial control department. The corollary wasthat management accounting did not become an actor-network in Perugia, instead it became an artefact present in severalother networks.
Pipan and Czarniawska (2010) conclude by commenting on the common themes running between the three cases: first,information technology was always closely associated with the translation of management accounting; second, at the earlystages accountants were always involved, though, in time, management accounting was translated by those that were notaccountants proper (see Burns and Baldvinsdottir, 2005), producing a hybridised form of knowledge (see Kurunmaki, 2004);third, the process of translation was aided or destabilized by political action. They provide a succinct summary of ANT:
‘Actors who take upon themselves the task of translating will inevitably try to materialize the idea by converting it intoartefacts and practices. This process is supported and furthered by the creation of a network, which requires recruitingallies, ascribing to them identities and stabilizing them through the creation of further artefacts and routines. In caseswhere such a process is successfully completed, a veritable actor-network emerges, a MA [management accountingprogramme] whose separate parts act in coordination and successfully leave an impression of unity and substance’.
Pipan and Czarniawska (2010) note that while there are idiosyncratic features of Italian public administration, the expe-riences reported in this article are unlikely to be unique to Italy. Indeed, a common leitmotif across the western world hasbeen the re-making of the public sector, almost always with a private sector model in mind. This Orwellian ‘private good,public bad’ style mantra has long been part of public discourse. Even in the wake of the recent collapse of the banks, this
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discourse has an apparently unshakeable grip on the public imagination. There is much to learn, therefore, from the threecases Pipan and Czarniawska report on. More specifically, the article shows that:
‘The past is always important, but can always be retranslated to suit current needs. There are always some translatorswho are more active than others and some whose translations carry more weight than others. External allies areconsidered a resource, although they often produce trouble and complicate the process’.
While managerialism (see Carter and Mueller, 2002; Mueller and Carter, 2005) has travelled far, Pipan and Czarniawska(2010) remind us that this should not be seen as being synonymous with standardization. Instead, their article highlights thatglobal standards – such as management accounting – get translated locally, with diverse and variegated results. Pipan andCzarniawska’s paper is important for those who are serious about ANT and, in addition, will provide an important resourcefor those researchers investigating organizational change and management accounting.
8. Making critical accounting matter
Uncertainty as to the state of the world and human condition forms a backdrop to these debates, with alternate charac-terizations of late modernity (Hanlon, 2010) and post-modernity. Ideas from Karl Marx, Ulrich Beck, Actor Network Theory,Judith Butler and David Harvey have informed this special issue. They are used to further our understanding of businessstrategy, tax policy, professional expertise, oral history, identity and performativity, and management accounting. This seem-ingly eclectic range of interests derives from the 2006 ECAS meeting at the University of York. The articles in this issue areunderpinned by a broader theme of how we understand knowledge and politics, a central concern for critical accounting.
The achievements of critical accounting to date have been impressive. It has, at least in the UK, Australia, parts of Europeand parts of Canada, established an effective counterweight to the dull, arid and quintessentially conservative fare on offerfrom the mainstream. It is noteworthy that, other than organization theory, this critical orientation has not been matched inany meaningful way in other Business School subjects, such as marketing, strategic management or international business11.Part of critical accounting’s vitality stems from a certain methodological and theoretical plurality. These polyphonic pleasuresdo not, of course, mean that anything goes. Far from it, but it does signify there are many critical and socially progressive waysof trying to explore and understand the, often hidden, role accounting plays in society. Moreover, an inability to experimentwith theory and empirics will lead to the ossification of the discipline, which, at best, means that a small number of thesame people meeting up at the same conferences, discussing the same points ad infinitum! Arguments would be utterlypredictable and irrelevant to all but those taking part.
In 1998, Peter Miller argued that interesting ideas are often found at the margins of accounting. We agree. Accountingrisks marginalisation if it fails to participate in wider debates and address bigger societal issues. This special issue showcasessix papers that in their own very different ways are innovative and offer a way forward for critical accounting. The papers byBowman and Toms (2010) and Hanlon (2010), respectively, take well established theories and attempt to radicalise them;Cooper et al. (2010) engage in a practical attempt to make society fairer through tackling a regressive form of taxation; Haynes(2010) provides a detailed exploration of a potentially emancipatory research methodology; McKinlay (2010) provides anin-depth discussion of the work of Judith Butler; while Pipan and Czarniawska (2010) show how Actor-Network Theorycan be used to examine the introduction of accounting technologies. To understand how they are translated provides thepotential to disrupt or support them, as appropriate.
The role critical accounting wants to play within the Business School, the University and Society at large is an importantquestion for our community to discuss. To borrow from Edward Said (1994), what social function do critical accounting intel-lectuals fulfil in society? A similar discussion is on-going in sociology, particularly under the direction of Michael Burawoy(2005) at the University of California, Berkeley. Burawoy (2005) delineates sociological research into four categories: pro-fessional (represented by work in appearing in prestigious journals such as the American Journal of Sociology), policy (fundedwork oriented to solving particular problems for a client, often government or a corporation), critical (aimed at breaking newtheoretical ground and providing critiques of mainstream ‘professional’ sociology) and public (being much more concernedwith engaging with civil society). Burawoy (2005) stresses that while the different sociologies are not necessarily mutuallyexclusive, there is often an antagonistic relationship between them (for instance, he cites the example of professional soci-ology showing disdain for critical sociology, charging it with bringing the legitimacy of the whole discipline into question).Though, in other cases, such as Diane Vaughan’s (1996) seminal account of the Space Challenger disaster, a piece of publicsociology can turn into policy sociology, when the research findings were taken up and turned into recommendations in agovernment report. It would be an interesting exercise to map accounting research onto Burawoy’s (2005) categories: wouldthey work for accounting? If not, how would accounting research be categorised?
11 There are, of course, notable exceptions to this rule. In Strategy authors such as Stephen Cummings (Canterbury University, NZ), Keith Hoskin (WarwickBusiness School, UK) and David C Wilson (Warwick Business School, UK) have provided important critiques. The Critical Perspectives on International Businessjournal, edited by George Cairns (RMIT, Australia) and Joanne Roberts (Durham University, UK), marks a concerted effort to make International Businesscritical. Marketing has benefitted from contributions such as those from Stephen Brown (University of Ulster, UK), Gavin Jack (La Trobe University, Australia)and the Critical Marketing group at the University of Leicester (UK). The University of Oxford (UK) has made marketing more critical by employing highprofile sociologists, such as Stephen Woolgar, to engage in marketing research.
180 The contours of critical accounting / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 21 (2010) 171–182
Burawoy (2005) in his Presidential address to the American Sociological Association argued strongly for public sociology.His contention is that sociology needs to develop the capacity to engage multiple publics in multiple ways. He notes thatprofessional academia in the social sciences, by the very nature of its professionalization (PhDs, publishing in the rightjournals, promotion processes) often divorces scholars from the passions that brought them into academia in the first place.High minded ideals about environmentalism, economic equality, gender equality, social justice can founder on the rocks ofbuilding a career. Similarly, policy sociology can be reduced to a narrow set of techniques that seek to solve problems set byfunders, meaning ever greater data collection at the expense of thought. The difficulty of critical sociology is that it runs thedanger of being little more than a self-indulgent parlour game, divorced from civil society and the major sources of symboliccapital within the profession.
There is a strong resonance between the challenges sociology faces and the ones we encounter in critical accounting. In hisAmerican Sociological Association address Burawoy (2005) revisits classic sociology questions: Sociology for whom? Sociologyfor what? These are useful questions for the critical accounting community to ask of ourselves. As a way forward Burawoy(2005) strongly advocates public sociology, as the ‘endeavor to bring sociology into dialogue with audiences beyond theacademy, an open dialogue in which both sides deepen their understanding of public issues’ 12. In an era of corporate failure,financial crisis, environmental degradation, large democratic deficits, and poverty for large swathes of the world’s population,public debate is restricted to, or orients around, lame old neo-liberal shibboleths. The recent failure of the Copenhagenclimate talks is an illustration of this. Accounts by investigative journalists – such as George Monbiot, John Pilger and NaomiKlein – have proved immensely popular, they highlight the appetite among the public for well informed critiques of thestatus quo. The potential of critical accounting is to reach beyond the academy and provide cogently researched analyses ofcontemporary issues that provide the basis for a broader dialogue with civil society. This is the promise of critical accounting.
Acknowledgements
This special issue is derived from the European Critical Accounting Symposium that was convened at the University of Yorkin July 2006. We are grateful to the financial support that the University of York provided to help host the event. ProfessorMatthias Beck also merits a special mention for his assistance in organizing the symposium. This special issue has reliedheavily on the hard work (and free labour) of the reviewers of papers. We would like to thank Stephen Ackroyd (LancasterUniversity), Peter Armstrong (University of Leicester), Matthias Beck (University of York), Andrew Brown (University of Bath),Christine Coupland (University of Hull), Stewart Clegg (University of Technology, Sydney), Christine Cooper (University ofStrathclyde), Anne Fearfull (University of Dundee), Colin Haslam (University of Hertfordshire), Jim Haslam (University ofDundee), Stefano Harney (Queen Mary, University of London), Ingrid Jeacle (University of Edinburgh), Silvia Jordan (LondonSchool of Economics), Martin Kornberger (University of Technology, Sydney), Liisa Kurunmaki (London School of Economics),Irvine Lapsley, (University of Edinburgh), R. Bradley MacKay (University of Edinburgh), Martin Messner (HEC, Paris), SvenModell (University of Manchester), Frank Mueller (University of St Andrews), Alison Pullen (University of Technology, Sydneyand University of Swansea, Wales), Crawford Spence (Concordia University) and Eamonn Walsh (University College Dublin)for writing comprehensive and insightful reviews. The editors of Critical Perspectives on Accounting journal – Marcia Annisette,Christine Cooper, and Dean Neu – provided wonderful support, warm collegiality and have been endlessly patient in theproduction of this special issue. Thanks are also due to Sonia Gill, at Elsevier Press, for her assistance in translating variousword documents into the material artefact that is this special issue.
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Chris Carter 1
School of Management, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, KY16 9SS, United Kingdom
Steve Toms 2
School of Management, Sally Baldwin Building, University of York, York, United KingdomE-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Carter), [email protected] (S. Toms)
1 Tel.: +44 1 334 462800; fax: +44 1 334 462812.2 Tel: +44 1 904 434122; fax: +44 1 904 434163.
