Crawford Spence

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at King's College London

Established professional occupations can become the preserve of elites when fitting in is driven by class-based criteria. In contrast, digital entrepreneurship has been proposed as a means by which people may emancipate themselves from societal constraints. We interrogate digital entrepreneurship’s meritocratic foundations by way of a 36-month ethn...

The government sector has started adopting big data analytics capability (BDAC) to enhance its service delivery. This study examines the relationship between BDAC and decision-making capability (DMC) in the government sector. It investigates the mediation role of the cognitive style of decision makers and organizational culture in the relationship...

Previous research on calculative intermediaries shows how these effectively challenge, distort, and disrupt accounting practices in ways that policy‐makers might not anticipate. The promises of surveillance capitalism—with its attendant data architectures, datafication processes, and technological sophistication—are different, supposing more accura...

Discourse proclaiming the advent of a fourth industrial revolution predicts significant disruption to various work domains in the near future. Auditing is one of the domains where bold claims about the potential of technology are being made, with technology expected to augment auditors' judgments and, in time, possibly automate them. Drawing on 44...

Literature on equity analysts presents a conundrum: analysts are seen as influential market participants, yet researchers widely criticize them for their bias and inaccuracy. Studies drawing from economic frames struggle to explain this. Therefore, we develop a new conceptualization that positions analysts as actors operating in a social field. Dra...

Financial markets have witnessed a dramatic shift in financial flows in recent years from Active fund management where professional investors attempt to beat the market (generate ‘alpha’) to Passive investment where portfolios are assembled that follow existing market indicators (track ‘beta’). This transition has important implications for both co...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the structure of the accounting field in a post-Soviet context – Latvia. This study also aims to generate insights into the extent to which professionalization processes are shaped by national particularities and to demonstrate how self-styled professional fields change over time. Design/methodology/approach Draw...

Purpose This paper aims to show how The Audit Society was oriented towards, not just accounting scholars but also towards social scientific enquiry more broadly. Design/methodology/approach This is a reflective review of the impact that Mike Power’s The Audit Society has had on social science. Findings The authors find that The Audit Society succ...

Accounting research on tax has primarily focused on documenting the income shifting strategies of multinational corporations. However, no studies, as far as we are aware, have hitherto explored how large accountancy firms manage their own tax affairs despite being huge economic entities in their own right. Using a unique private firm dataset of Big...

Literature examining dynamics between the state and self-styled professional fields is well established and points towards the crucial interrelations between the two. However, this literature evinces an occidental orientation, largely privileging the notion of a state characterised by self-limiting, liberal ideology and that is captured by dominant...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the outcome of an interdisciplinary discussion on the concepts of profit and profitability and various ways in which we could potentially problematize these concepts. It is our hope that a much greater attention or reconsideration of the problematization of profit and related accounting numbers will be...

Previous research has highlighted the crucial roles that accounting plays in both the construction and development of the State. However, only limited attention has been paid to how accounting is both conceived and implemented as a technology of government. Taking a historical perspective, and through extensive archival analysis of the Canadian exp...

This article argues that universities currently privilege an instrumental ethos of measurement in the management of academic work. Such an ethos has deleterious consequences, both for knowledge production and knowledge transfer to students. Specifically, evidence points towards the production of increasingly well-crafted and ever more numerous rese...

This chapter argues that while Organization and Management Theory (OMT) appears in good health it stands on the precipice of a crisis of its own making. This stems from an overly self-referential and narrow focus on theoretical contribution, at the expense of a broader set of societal commitments. Paradoxically, this is particularly the case if a r...

Strategic change in public sector organizations has been well documented. This article suggests that public management research would benefit from a greater appreciation of how calculative practices are deeply imbricated with, and constitutive of, organizational life. In turn, the article argues that the field of interdisciplinary accounting has mu...

This paper explores the ways in which sell‐side financial analysts seek to position themselves advantageously within the wider field of investment advice in spite of widespread skepticism over the value that their forecasts and recommendations add to investment decisions. The field of investment advice has been characterized in recent years by a nu...

Forthcoming at Contemporary Accounting Research

This chapter argues that while Organization and Management Theory (OMT) appears in good health it stands on the precipice of a crisis of its own making. This stems from an overly self-referential and narrow focus on theoretical contribution, at the expense of a broader set of societal commitments. Paradoxically, this is particularly the case if a r...

Recent claims assert that the transnational has displaced the national in importance vis-à-vis the governance of international professional organizations. Crucial to such claims are assumptions about rising geographical mobility and the emergence of cosmopolitan professionals who are increasingly detached from national professional regimes and cont...

Recent work has called for more research to be carried out exploring how professional projects develop in conjunction with wider processes of institutional change. We respond to these calls here by analysing the way in which tax professionals have responded to a major disruption at the field level. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Dev...

Corporate social responsibility is often framed in terms of opposing constructions of the firm. These reflect, respectively, different accounts of its obligations: either to shareholders or to stakeholders (who include shareholders). Although these opposing constructions of corporate responsibility are diametrically opposed, they are also much more...

Class analysis has undergone a ‘cultural turn’ in recent years, driven most notably by the growing influence of the work of Pierre Bourdieu. We seek to connect this perspective with organization studies via an analysis of the political, economic and cultural cleavages that exist within a sample of professionals, managers and executives – summarily,...

Research on professional service firms describes these organizations as having been increasingly colonized by commercial imperatives over the last 30 years. Extant studies contrast this now dominant 'commercial logic' - which privileges revenue generation - with a 'professional logic' - which privileges public service. There are two problems with t...

Prior research generally presents work‒family decisions as an individual's rational choice between alternatives, downplaying the crucial role that upbringing plays in shaping work and parenting decisions. This paper emphasises how habitus – historically constituted and embodied dispositions – structures perceptions about what is 'right' and 'normal...

Dominant theorisations of investment decision making remain firmly wedded to the notion of economic rationality, either as a postulate of how financial actors actually behave or as a normative ideal to which financial actors should strive. However, such frameworks have been developed largely without engaging financial market participants themselves...

The vast majority of research on sell-side analysts tends to conceptualize financial markets, following neo-classical economic thinking, as populated by atomistic actors and mechanistic institutions. Extant research in this domain tends to reduce sell-side analyst activity to the recommendations, price targets or earnings forecasts that they routin...

Purpose- This article explores the work practices of Big 4 firms in Bangladesh with the aim of exploring the extent to which Global Professional Service Firms can be thought of as being genuinely ‘global’. Methodology/Approach- Interviews were undertaken with the vast majority of Big 4 partners in Bangladesh. These interviews explored a number of t...

Purpose- This article explores the work practices of Big 4 firms in Bangladesh with the aim of exploring the extent to which Global Professional Service Firms can be thought of as being genuinely ‘global’. Methodology/Approach- Interviews were undertaken with the vast majority of Big 4 partners in Bangladesh. These interviews explored a number of t...

This paper explores the role of accounting in the attempted reform of the corporation during the “progressive era” in the United States. Focusing on the activities of three institutional bodies in the early twentieth century, the paper documents how their repeated recourse to “publicity,” which relied crucially on accounting technologies, failed to...

Social accounting denotes the enhanced accountability of corporations vis‐à‐vis their social and environmental impact. It has grown significantly as an academic project in recent years, just as corporate social responsibility has become enshrined institutionally in the business world. A number of critiques of social accounting have been made from s...

Recent literature suggests that elites are increasingly fragmented and divided. Yet there is very little empirical research that maps the distinctions between different elite groups. This article explores the cultural divisions that pertain to elite factions in two distinct but proximate Strategic Action Fields. A key insight from the article is th...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the nature of the work that financial analysts actually do in the context of the market for information and to further open up research in this area to qualitative and sociological inquiry. Design/methodology/approach – A field study with 49 financial analysts (both buy-side and sell-side) wa...

The sociology of the professions has shied away from cross-national comparative work. Yet research in different professional jurisdictions emphasises the transnational nature of professional fields. Further work is therefore needed that explores the extent to which transnational professional fields are characterised by unity or heterogeneity. To th...

Purpose – This paper is premised on the understanding that professions remain central means of institutionalising expertise in society. A summary of major issues that are prominent in recent studies of the professions is presented in order to inform the paper’s central objective which is to scope out an agenda for future research in the area. The p...

An expanding institutionalist literature on professional service firms (PSFs) emphasizes that these are ridden by contradictions, paradoxes and conflicting logics. More specifically, literature looking at PSFs in a global context has highlighted how these contradictions prevent firms from becoming truly global in nature. What it takes to make partn...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the nature of the work that financial analysts actually do in the context of the market for information and to further open up research in this area to qualitative and sociological inquiry. Design/methodology/approach: A field study with 49 financial analysts (both buy-side and sell-side) was...

The meaning of professionalism is changing, with the commercial pressures of globalization exerting dramatic pressures on the nature of professional work and the skill sets required of professionals. This article engages with this debate by reporting on a qualitative, empirical study undertaken in a domain that has been largely neglected by sociolo...

Extant literature on professional services firms in general, and on the Big 4 accounting firms in particular, consistently shows that these firms are in a state of institutional flux. In turn, it has been argued that new types of professionals are emerging within this context. Adopting a sociological perspective inspired by the work of Pierre Bourd...

An expanding institutionalist literature on professional service firms (PSFs) emphasizes that these are ridden by contradictions, paradoxes and conflicting logics. More specifically, literature looking at PSFs in a global context has highlighted how these contradictions prevent firms from becoming truly global in nature. What it takes to make partn...

O objetivo deste ensaio é oferecer uma autocrítica reflexiva sobre a ‘comunidade da contabilidade social’. O público-alvo é a comunidade acadêmica dos contadores com atividades na área de contabilidade social. O principal enfoque desta ‘comunidade’ é nas revistas contábeis de língua inglesa e nas práticas sociais e ambientais das maiores organizaçõ...

Accounting for the General Intellect This article argues that the autonomist celebration of immaterial labour might be premature. Highlighting the ways in which calculations permeate social life and continue to organise systematic expropriations of the general intellect, it is shown that there are real obstacles to the transcendence of capitalist d...

This paper reports on an in-depth empirical study into recent government-led Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives in Spain. It is found, based on interviews and document analysis, that processes of stakeholder consultation relating to these initiatives are characterised by debate and a plurality of different viewpoints. However, this polypho...

1This paper draws on Bourdieu's sociolinguistic theory to interpret the overrepresentation of Anglophone accountants vis-a-vis Francophone comptables in the formative years of North America's first professional accounting association. In a linguistic market, where English was taken for granted as the official language of commerce, we find that the...

The paper offered by Molisa is an ambitious and hugely stimulating attempt to introduce love more explicitly into critical accounting discourse. His text covers a vast range of disciplines from spirituality, religion, politics and philosophy through to the esoteric world of critical accounting. Numerous readings are therefore possible of his work,...

With the decline of the fordist production model immaterial labour is increasingly recognised as the principal source of value in the contemporary economy. Yet this creates a crisis of measurement which capital has struggled to respond to. This paper analyses the attempts of various accounting technologies to respond to the emergence of immaterial...

La reconnaissance du travail comme catégorie sociale irréductible engendre une perte de traction des conventions sociales de l’exploitation. Ainsi que le fait remarquer Slavoj Zizek, autonomiste à l’occasion lorsqu’il se prête à l’analyse du concept de travail immatériel, « l’exploitation, au sens marxiste classique du terme, n’est plus possible »...

This chapter analyzes the dynamics of U.S. political action committees (PACs) in the oil and gas industry. We find that PACs were used strategically in order to try and influence legislators to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to hydrocarbon exploration. Drawing from a revised political economy theory, we contend that PACs are thu...

Building upon the insights of socio-historical accounting research this paper attempts to show accounting's centrality to major historical events. In this context, accounting is viewed as a technology which was employed in order to implement a particular political programme - the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707. Accounting is...

We present here an extensive literature review delineating the main theoretical parameters that have shaped the discursive field of Social Accounting/Social and Environmental Reporting (SER). In doing so, we reflect upon the way in which theory is used in SER focusing particularly on its political character. We show that SER theories have been deve...

Building upon the insights of socio-historical accounting research this paper attempts to show accounting’s centrality to major historical events. In this context, accounting is viewed as a technology which was employed in order to implement a particular political programme – the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707. Accounting is...

Purpose The principal objective of this paper is to expand the scope of legitimacy theory (LT) through a detailed analysis of the links that exist between the legitimising strategies of firms and the characteristics of the political environment in which they are developed. Designs/methodology/approach A discourse analysis was performed on the soci...

This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52...

This essay is intended as a self-reflective, auto-critique of the ‘social accounting community’. The essay is directed at the academic community of accountants concerned with social accounting. This `community' is predominantly concerned with English language accounting journals and is preoccupied with the social and environmental practices of the...

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative exploration into the target audiences for social and environmental reporting (SER). In spite of the wealth of literature on SER motivations, relatively few studies have sought to ascertain who the key target or actual audiences are for SER. The results of this study, based on interviews with UK SER...

At the heart of the social accounting project lies a radical and emancipatory intent. Yet social accounting practice, in the form of corporate self reporting, has systematically failed to open up organisations to substantive critique. Rather than rendering transparent the contradictions within capitalism, corporate social accounting primarily obfus...

This paper explores organisational resistance to more comprehensive sustainability reporting in the form of ecological footprinting. On the basis of a series of interviews with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Managers in the UK, a number of barriers were identified for ecological footprinting at the organisational level: the cost and resource...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to consider the role of mass mobilisations against international business in Bolivia and analyse their wider implications for the structure of the state, relating this to recent studies looking at the scope of resistance to international business. Design/methodology/approach The analysis draws from a series of form...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the construction/reproduction of capitalist discourse through social and environmental reporting (SER) and, from this, to consider the implications that this may have for the function that SER serves. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe to frame SER...

Recent accounting scandals such as Enron, Parmalat, and WorldCom have concentrated attention on the accountability and governance of corporations. Social accounting has been described and critiqued from a variety of positions, ranging from right‐wing neoliberal critiques all the way through to Marxist and deep green critiques. The different positio...

This paper employs the lens of Hegemony in order to present the Social Accounting (SER) literature as a political field. It is argued that within this poltical field a certain hegemony in explanations of SER practice can be discerned. The dominant thoeretical paramaters are provided primarily by the reference points of Stakeholder, Legitimacy and M...

The aim of this paper is to outline and critique the dominant political economy perspectives which have guided the Social and Environmental Reporting literature in recent years. The majority of socio-political theorisations of SER have adopted a Bourgeois political economy perspective (Gray et al, 1995a). The Bourgeois level of analysis problematic...