Critical Perspectives on Accounting最新文献

{"title":"On the juggernaut of artificial intelligence in organizations, research and society","authors":"Yves Gendron ,&nbsp;Jane Andrew ,&nbsp;Christine Cooper ,&nbsp;Helen Tregidga","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102759","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102759","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Capitalizing on what we currently know about artificial intelligence (AI), the editorial of this special issue, entitled “Artificial Intelligence in the Spotlight”, adds our voice to a call to order in the face of the unbridled enthusiasm we often encounter regarding the benefits of AI. In short, we maintain that there is a crucial need for skepticism about the all-out colonization project vigorously pursued by AI and its sustaining infrastructure. We draw on our own analysis and that of the contributors to this special issue to consider what we see as a bold agenda for colonizing our communities, our ways of doing, and our minds – so that we become fundamentally dependent on technologies whose reliability is dubious and whose algorithms are secretly maintained behind the safety of corporate walls. Our thesis is that the cacophony of aberrations, disorder, and worries that emerge in the wake of AI can be meaningfully viewed as a juggernaut, an inexorable force that is ready to unsettle all things in its tedious path. The juggernaut metaphor constitutes our way of putting “artificial intelligence in the spotlight”. We call for researchers from all disciplines to engage in the study of the AI juggernaut and speak out as much as they can, in public and in academic spheres, about its dangers.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102759"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141706147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A fatally efficient machine. Insights into the ‘banality’ of the research evaluation exercise in Italy","authors":"Rosanna Spanò ,&nbsp;Enrico Bracci ,&nbsp;Francesca Manes-Rossi ,&nbsp;Vincenzo Sforza","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102742","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study is framed in the debate concerning the measurement of academic performance, and particularly the strand of studies that explores the risks associated with the metrification of research. The objective, guided by the conceptual framework of the banality of evil (<span>Arendt, 1964</span>), is to delve into how research evaluation can shape banal and unoriginal evaluative practices. These practices, in turn, can trigger a fatally efficient machine within the academic system and institutions, and among researchers.</p><p>The paper focuses on examining the recently concluded Research Quality Assessment 2015–2019 (VQR3) exercise in Italy, using an autoethnographic approach. The results highlight the risks stemming from the growing dependence of research quality assessment on automatisms, which can cause its commodification at the cost of intellectual innovation and, eventually, force actors to conform to the <em>rules of the game</em>.</p><p>This work contributes to the ongoing academic debate by offering an innovative and multilevel (i.e. macro, meso and micro) theoretical perspective. Not only does this perspective conceptualise and present the dynamics, processes, instruments and actors at play in the phenomena under scrutiny but also provides a deeper understanding of the dynamics that promote the widespread application of research evaluation systems, despite their well-known weaknesses and potentially undesirable practical and ethical effects.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102742"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235424000418/pdfft?md5=782dcbfc164fe784dfe1a5e4b5c60de6&pid=1-s2.0-S1045235424000418-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141291569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The translation of an extraordinary event and the role of accounts: The covid-19 case","authors":"Massimo Contrafatto ,&nbsp;Laura Mazzola ,&nbsp;Caterina Pesci ,&nbsp;Domenico Nicolò","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102769","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102769","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines the dynamics through which an extraordinary event is conceptualized and governed, by focusing on the case of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and the decision to implement lockdown at the national level. The emergency generated by the extraordinary nature of the pandemic led various actors to debate and confront in the search for a course of action for containing and mitigating its devastating social and economic effects. The process by which legislative and regulative initiatives were identified and undertaken can be understood and interpreted as a translation of the pandemic, whose outcome led to specific governing decisions, in our case, the adoption of lockdown at the national level. This translation occurred within a decision-making arena, which emerged out of the emergency, where various actors used different resources to discuss and take decisions. In particular, the accounts and calculative practices related to the pandemic played a pivotal role. Through the case study of the first phase of the emergency in Italy, this article offers theoretical interpretations of the dynamics underlying the adoption of specific governing and government decisions and the role of accounts; thus, contributing to the accounting studies relating to the governing of extraordinary events.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102769"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142697222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Language was always a companion of the empire","authors":"Javier Husillos ,&nbsp;Carlos Larrinaga ,&nbsp;Daniel Martínez","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102753","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102753","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This editorial discusses how the hegemony of the English language in academic research shapes and perpetuates specific forms of power. This is a matter of both equity and justice—the additional effort faced by researchers to integrate themselves into the dominant language and the racial, economic, and social hierarchies that are often expressed and acknowledged through language. The aim of this special issue is to give the Spanish language a central position and in so doing, foster a space for contemplation that presents diverse viewpoints, research focuses, themes, and styles that have previously been overshadowed by the dominance of English. The special issue features five articles showcasing the diversity of critical accounting research in Spanish-speaking contexts. This editorial concludes with a note from the journal’s co-editors, reaffirming <em>Critical Perspective on Accounting</em>’s commitment to promoting multilingualism. This initiative aims to enrich academic dialogue and ensure that local contexts and perspectives are adequately represented in global discussions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102753"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235424000522/pdfft?md5=fc0a05af0b9d5fe170cfa004482262b9&pid=1-s2.0-S1045235424000522-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141950555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Too poor to get social housing: Accounting and structural stigmatisation of the poor","authors":"Aziza Laguecir ,&nbsp;Bryant Ashley Hudson","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102757","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper examines the role of accounting in a public social housing organisation, joining a conversation on how accounting participates in the stigmatisation of poverty. We draw upon the structural stigma approach, which considers stigmatisation within its broader political structures and temporal perspectives, to analyse the role accounting plays in the stigmatisation of the poorest applicants. Drawing upon Tyler’s approach, we conduct an upward and backward analysis of this stigmatisation, with the role of the Performance Measurement and Management Accounting Systems (PMS and MAS) as a central phenomenon. The analysis shows the importance of institutional housing policies (funding schemes, social mix, and social housing sector governance) in shaping the MAS, entrenching the poorest’s structural stigmatisation. It also reveals how the operations surrounding the PMS led to a classification of applicants, negatively labelling the poorest and thus denying them access to dwellings. This research contributes to the accounting literature on stigma by outlining the role of accounting in the structural stigmatisation of the poorest applicants, shedding light on the fact that accounting reproduces the stigmatisation of the poorest and is part of the machinery of inequality. We also contribute to the stigma literature by adopting a backward temporal perspective on the stigmatisation of the poorest. We finally add to the limited accounting literature on social housing by showing the impact (and negative outcomes) of New Public Management (NPM)-related PMS on the poorest beneficiaries.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102757"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104523542400056X/pdfft?md5=e0b3fefebdacfd8231b3a232adfaa667&pid=1-s2.0-S104523542400056X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141543645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond conventional financialization: Intersectional insights and Indigenous responses to financial inequality in the UK","authors":"Chaudhry Ghafran ,&nbsp;Sofia Yasmin","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102771","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102771","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study leverages Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and habitus, alongside an intersectionality framework, to examine the financialization of daily life within the British-Pakistani diaspora. Amidst the escalating pervasiveness of financialization in everyday life, we engage critically with the concept of the ’financial subject,’ particularly as it manifests within socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Specifically, we explore ‘<em>Kametis’</em>—informal, communal financial pools—as both economic and social institutions that foster trust and cooperation among largely working-class participants. These indigenous financial systems, primarily established in response to financial exclusion, enable participants to exercise agency and control over their financial lives. While ostensibly empowering, these systems often operate outside formal banking channels, which can exacerbate financial exclusion and perpetuate socio-economic disadvantages, a phenomenon that aligns with Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence. Additionally, the study also highlights gender dynamics and disparities within these financial practices which can perpetuate existing social inequalities. Through this exploration, we provide novel insight into the nuanced lived experiences of financially responsible individuals and the Indigenous practices employed by marginalized communities within Western financial ecosystems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102771"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142746826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“We don’t want to be accused of being feminists”. A gender equality measure for leadership positions and the perpetuation of patriarchal arrangements","authors":"Nathalie Clavijo ,&nbsp;Ludivine Perray-Redslob","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102754","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article seeks to understand the effects produced by a gender equality measure founded on a career-advancement approach to equality, by scrutinising a managerial control process introduced by the women’s network of a large SBF120 firm to promote women’s representation in leadership positions. Through a qualitative study, and drawing on the work of Acker, we uncover the mechanisms through which action designed to bring more women into leadership positions sustains, and masks, the perpetuation of the surrounding inegalitarian structure. We show that the assumptions underlying such processes – approaching equality through the ideas of career advancement and a better work/life balance for women, and as good for financial performance – reflect patriarchal arrangements – the male worker pursuing self-maximisation, women as complementary to men, women as the principal subjects of reproductive work. Those patriarchal arrangements are then perpetuated through the effects of the related managerial control process. We highlight how it is difficult for the women heading this process to escape the career-advancement view of equality, because it is entrenched in organisational and societal structures that place constraints on the design of the control system. We thus contribute to the accounting literature on gender equality measures 1/ by underlining that the measure studied cannot challenge the status quo because it is constructed by, and locked into, a patriarchal, elitist arrangement; 2/ by arguing that a managerial control process intended to advance women’s representation in leadership positions creates a “blind spot” in the gender equality measure; 3/ by uncovering the “destructive power” of a managerial control process, which lies in its tendency to sap any possibility of understanding the problem structurally, but also in its propensity to wipe out the ability to imagine alternative ways of living and working that differ from the patriarchal arrangements on which our social order is founded.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102754"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141323135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Diversity, dialogic pedagogy and intersubjectivity in the classroom: Contributions from the Global South","authors":"Tassiani Aparecida Dos Santos ,&nbsp;Iago França Lopes ,&nbsp;Nicholas McGuigan","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102770","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102770","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Diversity of voice is contentious in accounting education with marginalised groups remaining on the periphery. This study reflects on significant issues of diversity, dialogic pedagogy and intersubjective exchanges by investigating an unpleasant teaching experience between Miguel, a Black, gay early career accounting educator, and his students in a classroom in Brazil. The study draws on collective biography methodology to analyse Miguel’s memories of his teaching experiences. Three main findings emerged. First, the lack of institutional support and the feeling of not being recognised by the institution, peers and students impacted Miguel’s confidence, educational strategies, and ability to facilitate the learning process among his students. Second, Miguel’s educational changes had almost no impact on students’ motivation and willingness to engage in dialogue, where the students responded with silence and absence during the lectures and seminars. Finally, assessment emerged as a key point of resistance where students confronted the educator. Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, originating from the Global South, informs our analysis of intersubjective exchanges between the educator and students, dialogic pedagogy and emancipation in a diverse classroom. The results highlight the importance of institutional support for diverse faculty members, not only for their academic development but to enhance students’ learning and diverse experiences in the classroom. Drawing on Freire’s dialogue and intersubjectivity, we further reflect on how the lack of intersubjective exchanges between educator and students, due to diverse backgrounds, constrain dialogic pedagogical approaches, and argue for further consideration of this topic by accounting researchers advocating for more diverse accounting practices.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102770"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142552892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who speaks through the machine? Generative AI as discourse and implications for management","authors":"Gildas Agbon","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102761","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102761","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article draws on the Foucauldian concept of “discursive formation” to conceptualize generative artificial intelligence (GAI)’s potential influence on management. It shows how ChatGPT, a typical GAI, can affect practices, decision-making responsibility and the management disciplines through a dual discourse. The first one emanates from technological solutionism, a belief that any problem can be solved with the assistance of technology (<strong>the technosolutionist discourse</strong>), and the second one concerns the utterances generated by ChatGPT itself, which are shaped by various algorithmic, epistemic and linguistic influences (<strong>the generative discourse</strong>). In simpler terms, what ChatGPT can do to management appears to depend on “what is said about it” and “what it says”. In contrast to the existing literature on ChatGPT’s potential influence on organizations, this article, through its discursive approach, takes a non-normative position, to reveal the subtler influences of generative artificial intelligence, and highlight the individual and organizational responsibilities of actors interacting with these two discourses. The conclusions may be of interest to management readers in general, and of more particular interest to the accounting profession, as the conceptualization is based more broadly on examples taken from accounting, given the close link between the accounting profession and information technologies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102761"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235424000601/pdfft?md5=8114d0314389104f9b017e6f85dcba9e&pid=1-s2.0-S1045235424000601-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141944850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Director and shareholder interactions at shareholder meetings: Compromising accountability in the service of colonialism","authors":"Niamh M. Brennan ,&nbsp;Victoria C. Edgar ,&nbsp;Sean Bradley Power","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102763","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102763","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This research explores director and shareholder two-way face-to-face interactions at the shareholder meetings of Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company, as reflected in verbatim minutes of those meetings. Shareholder meetings are traditionally viewed as being for accountability. Alternatively, directors may engage in manipulative game-playing through skillful political maneuvering of shareholders, thereby compromising accountability. The research analyzes unique data, comprising 25 full sets of verbatim meeting minutes of 29 shareholder meetings over the period 1895–1925, using manual close-reading interpretive content analysis. Our unit of analysis is the interactions between directors and supportive/approving and dissenting shareholders. Our research question is how did the directors and shareholders interact at the shareholder meetings. We develop a typology of 16 types of interactions the directors and shareholders used in their exchanges. We complement our analysis with illustrations of types of interactions extracted from our verbatim minutes. We demonstrate how powerful directors mobilized supportive/approving shareholders to quash the dissenting shareholders’ voices. Our findings have implications for how modern-day shareholder meetings are conducted.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":"100 ","pages":"Article 102763"},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235424000625/pdfft?md5=886d7a5180635110a307ff7dffe729ac&pid=1-s2.0-S1045235424000625-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142161955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}