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It doesn’t matter what you teach?
Abstract
There has been from time to time [see, for example, Adv. Public Interest Acc. 2 (1988) 71; Acc. Org. Society 16 (1991) 333; Acc. Educ. 3 (1994) 51; Acc. Aud. Accountability J. 8 (1995) 97; Crit. Perspect. Acc. 10 (1999) 833; Crit. Perspect. Acc. 12 (2001) 471] concern expressed about the state of accounting education and its potential link to the broader critical accounting project. This special issue revisits this theme focusing on the managerial undercurrent of accounting undergraduate education. This paper seeks to contribute to this debate by posing the suggestion/question that how one teaches is equally important as considering what you teach. In exploring the ‘how’ of teaching approaches, two educational theorists are drawn from Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire. In particular, we develop the idea that the ‘hidden curriculum’ [Deschooling Society, Calder & Boyars, London, 1971] of accounting education may be uncovered and problematized if one uses a dialogical approach to education [Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pelican, London, 1996]. In seeking to expound our thesis, we draw from a number of teaching experiments which have explicitly sought to introduce more dialogical approaches to UK undergraduate accounting education.
... The theoretical contribution lies in the implementation of contemplative pedagogy through mindfulness intervention, thereby enhancing the discourse within the literature on sustainability education in accounting (e.g. Bebbington et al., 2007;Brown & Dillard, 2019;Gray, 2013;Gray, 2019;Thomson & Bebbington, 2004). This study highlights the processes and outcomes of mindfulness intervention into ESD in accounting. ...
... In addition, there are various professional-related accreditation requirements that must be met within accounting degrees. Although alternative ways of meeting the accreditation requirements are allowed, there is a 'myth' that accreditation is a major oppressive force and is often used as justification to preserve the status quo in accounting education (Thomson & Bebbington, 2004). To our knowledge, growing numbers of articles have been addressing innovation in accounting education for sustainability. ...
... The dialogical approach is a combination of action and reflection directed at structures and issues that enable teacher and students experience a self transformation in the learning processes (Coulson & Thomson, 2006;Manochin & Cooper, 2015). The approach emphasises the significance of open and respectful dialogue among individuals or groups to foster the understanding of multiple perspectives and collaboration in tackling sustainability challenges (Thomson & Bebbington, 2004). This involves a critical examination of sustainability issues, encompassing conflicts, hegemonic claims, business representation, and false assumptions (Gray, 2013). ...
ABSTRACT
This interpretive case study is a reflection on the introduction of a mindfulness intervention to facilitate education for sustainable development in an accounting programme. We adopt contemplative pedagogy, mindfulness, and education for sustainable development in our theoretical framework with the aim of fostering mindset transformation. The study used interviews, observation and documentary analysis as data collection methods. Triangulation was used to analyse the data and sharpen the findings. The adoption of mindfulness practices in accounting education indicates a mindset transformation of the students. There have been changes in their core self-perception, values and beliefs, views on business, society and the environment. The findings contribute to the development of contemplative pedagogy in accounting education.
KEYWORDS: Mindfulness, sustainable development, accountability, interbeing, Indonesia
... Nous mobilisons la théorie du dialogue notamment les travaux sur l'apprentissage dialogique (Freire 1972) et l'engagement dialogique (Thomson & Bebbington 2004Bebbington et al. 2007a ;b ;Bebbington & Dillard 2007). Une enquête qualitative est menée auprès de seize (16) grandes entreprises françaises, de secteurs d'activité variés, qui sont engagées dans un processus dialogique avec leurs parties prenantes. ...
... We mobilize dialogue theory, including work on dialogical learning (Freire 1972) and dialogical engagement (Thomson & Bebbington 2004Bebbington et al. 2007a;b ;Bebbington & Dillard 2007). A qualitative survey is conducted among sixteen (16) French companies, from various sectors of activity, which are engaged in a dialogical process with their stakeholders. ...
... Nous allons tenter de répondre à ces deux questions en mobilisant comme cadre théorique la théorie du dialogue et particulièrement les travaux de (Freire 1972) qui abordent le dialogue comme un « apprentissage » puis les travaux de (Thomson & Bebbington 2004Bebbington et al. 2007a ;b ;Bebbington & Dillard 2007) sur le « déploiement de l'engagement dialogique » et la capacité à fournir des outils, une philosophie aidant à ouvrir puis à poursuivre les conversations. La combinaison de ces deux approches de la théorie du dialogue nous offre des éléments facilitant la compréhension des mécanismes de mise en oeuvre et d'implication des parties prenantes dans le dialogue en RSE. ...
Depuis les travaux de Freeman (1984), le dialogue avec les parties prenantes est devenu un thème central dans le champ de la responsabilité sociale de l’entreprise (RSE) (Bonnafous-Boucher & Pesqueux 2006; Brown & Dillard 2015; Brown et al. 2020). Ce dialogue est fortement encouragé par les référentiels internationaux (norme ISO 26000, GRI, IIRC, AA1000SES, Principes de l’OCDE), qui le décrivent comme un outil visant à éclairer les décisions des organisations et devant permettre aux parties prenantes de faire entendre leur point de vue.Si le concept de dialogue est omniprésent dans la littérature, le recours au dialogue comme dispositif de gestion est pourtant peu questionné et documenté dans les études scientifiques. Comment le dialogue est-il organisé par les entreprises ? Quels sont les rôles des parties prenantes ? En effet, les types de dialogue et les rôles des acteurs dans les processus décisionnels sont rarement traités par les auteurs en gestion. Or ces éléments sont nécessaires pour comprendre et rendre compte de l’exercice de la RSE. Pour combler ce manque, cette thèse vise à enrichir la littérature en mettant en lumière les modalités du déploiement du dialogue avec les parties prenantes dans les démarches de responsabilité sociale des entreprises.Pour ce faire, nous mobilisons la théorie du dialogue notamment les travaux sur l’apprentissage dialogique (Freire 1972) et l’engagement dialogique (Thomson & Bebbington 2004, 2005; Bebbington et al. 2007a,b; Bebbington & Dillard 2007).Une enquête qualitative est menée auprès de 16 grandes entreprises françaises, de secteurs d’activité variés, qui sont engagées dans un processus dialogique avec leurs parties prenantes. Elle repose sur 20 entretiens semi-directifs (menés avec des responsables RSE et leurs parties prenantes externes) et 370 documents collectés sur une période de 5 ans de 2015 à 2020 (dont 170 rapports RSE et rapports intégrés d’environ 200 pages chacun). Ce corpus de données a été analysé avec les logiciels NVIVO11 (analyse de contenu) et IRAMUTEQ 0.7 alpha 2 (analyse des données textuelles).Les résultats de la recherche mettent en exergue une diversité de modalités de dialogue et des rôles plus ou moins importants attribués aux parties prenantes dans les processus de décisions des entreprises. Il en découle dès lors une typologie de dialogue (dialogue collaboratif, discussion libre, regroupement d’experts et enquête de satisfaction) et des rôles spécifiques des parties prenantes (rôles de conseiller, d’expert et de collaborateur). Ces résultats montrent également que des initiatives collaboratives sont fortement influencées par l’engagement du dirigeant.Ils permettent in fine de tirer des enseignements d’ordre théorique et managérial sur le déploiement de la RSE.
... The contributions that constitute the seminal phase of the DA literature had the added value of discussing the application of dialogic and polyvocal principles of interaction derived from other disciplines, such as political and pedagogical sciences, to accounting. It is important to consider, for instance, the roles played by Habermas's ideas of the "ideal speech situation" in the "public sphere" according to his deliberative approach and, conversely, by Freire's pedagogical studies on the first seminal articles published by Thomson and Bebbington (2004) and Bebbington et al. (2007a, b). Furthermore, Gray et al. (1997) previously discussed the significance of a "polyvocal citizenship perspective" and its adoption in social, environmental and sustainability accounting studies as an approach that is built around stakeholder dialog and that provides each of the stakeholders with a "voice" in the organization. ...
... We summarize and discuss the most influential contributions below. Building on the works by Freire and adopting a pedagogic perspective, Thomson and Bebbington (2004) reflect on the features and issues of a dialogic approach to accounting education and explore how social and environmental reporting may be evaluated from a pedagogic perspective. Solomon and Darby (2005) also draw from a pedagogic perspective to show that "good" private social and environmental disclosure should take on the characteristics of dialogic, problem-posing, educative processes. ...
... Freire, Habermas and Mouffe). However, in a further phase, DA starts to develop as an autonomous theory based on the contributions of a group of authors (see Thomson and Bebbington, 2004;Bebbington et al., 2007a, b;Brown, 2009;Dillard and Roslender, 2011;etc.). These contributions form the theoretical framework of DA and serve as the reference point for the most recent papers identified in the sample for exploring topics related to DA. ...
Purpose
This article aims to contribute to the critical accounting literature by reviewing how previous studies have addressed the topic of dialogic accounting (DA), examining the main themes investigated and discussing potential further developments of the DA research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study builds on a systematic literature review of 186 research products indexed on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar that were published between 2004 and 2019 in 55 accounting or non-accounting scientific journals and 14 books.
Findings
First, a content analysis of each contribution informs a classification in terms of research design, methodology, geographical setting and sector of analysis. Second, a bibliometric analysis provides several visual representations of the network of research products included in our review using bibliographic coupling, cooccurrence and coauthorship analyses. Third, and most importantly, the main narrative review discusses the development of the research strand on DA from the seminal works that introduced the topic, through the core of critical contributions inspired by the struggle between democracy and agonism, to the most recent contributions, in which new topics emerge and innovative methodologies are applied to the study of DA.
Originality/value
The main contribution of this manuscript is twofold. In addition to providing a systematic, bibliometric and narrative review of the evolution of nearly two decades of literature on DA, the present study is intended to collect ideas for further research and to discuss how the advent of new technologies and the peculiarities of various institutional contexts can shape the future research agenda on this critical form of accounting.
... Thus, in accordance with the critical accounting research programme, the NGOs in our case study recognize the ability to control the educational process and the "hidden agenda" behind controlling it as a crucial component of power and highlight the importance of accounting literacy and its transformative role for users. However, the critical role of teaching accounting has been fulfilled so far primarily by educational institutions, such as schools and universities (McPhail, 2001, Contrafatto, Thomson, & Monk, 2015Thomson & Bebbington, 2004). In contrast, here we describe a case of developing a critical educational process at the interface of NGOs, local governments, universities and the civic public, in which a specific type of advocacy NGO functions as an informational surrogate. ...
... In accordance with critical finance and accounting studies and the New Literacy Studies, we consider financial literacy to be an important pre-condition for critical thinking (Brown, 2009) and for effective social involvement, which requires "numerate and calculating citizens" (Rose, 1991). Importantly, Thomson and Bebbington (2004; argue that accounting education might require a specific pedagogical approach that helps to realise the emancipatory potential of accounting. They call for dialogical (transformative) education, as propagated by Freire (1996). ...
... For instance, Gallhofer et al. (2006) look at the potential of counter-accounting via the internet without discussing the emancipatory potential of education through the internet. Thomson & Bebbington (2004 explore dialogic critical accounting education solely in the official formats provided by schools and higher education, without paying attention to the education of diverse groups of the civic public. In this paper, we highlight the need to look at a specific type of accounting education, for instance by exploring the emancipatory potential of surrogates (e.g., NGOs) who blend internet tools and various critical accounting education formats to enhance standard accountability relationships. ...
Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to provide theoretical and empirical insights into NGO accountability in the context of public sector accounting. We present a case study of two advocacy Italian NGOs which act as informational surrogates in the accountability relationship between local governments and the civic public. We extend the concept of surrogate accountability by integrating accounting education as one of its features. Alongside making data accessible, NGOs in our case explain accounting terms and organise educational events. By doing so, they aim to “repair” the weak information link in the accountability mechanism of local governments.
... The accounting literature has a long engagement and concern with educational issues: not least because of the critical tensions that seem inevitable in any approach to studying accounting. These tensions arise as a consequence of accounting's apparently procedural, technical and "neutral" nature which is so frequently reinforced through an emphasis on rote learning, on getting answers "correct" and, broadly, in not encouraging a questioning approach to the subject, (Lucas, 2000;McPhail, 2004;Thomson and Bebbington, 2004;. In more recent years, these tensions have been thrown into relief as a result of pedagogic studies which have found that accounting students are inclined to emphasise shallow rather than deep learning (Gray et al, 1994; Thomson and Bebbington, 2004) 1 . ...
... These tensions arise as a consequence of accounting's apparently procedural, technical and "neutral" nature which is so frequently reinforced through an emphasis on rote learning, on getting answers "correct" and, broadly, in not encouraging a questioning approach to the subject, (Lucas, 2000;McPhail, 2004;Thomson and Bebbington, 2004;. In more recent years, these tensions have been thrown into relief as a result of pedagogic studies which have found that accounting students are inclined to emphasise shallow rather than deep learning (Gray et al, 1994; Thomson and Bebbington, 2004) 1 . ...
... It seems likely that each of these themes could take us closer to what an "accounting for sustainability" might actually look like but it is highly contestable whether current practice in any of these areas actually tells one anything at all about whether or not the organisation has contributed to or detracted from its own un-sustainability, (Milne and Gray, 2013). It is not insignificant to note that, as Thomson and Bebbington (2004), tell us: it is not what you teach but how you teach it. Each of these methods can be subsumed within a weak sustainability framework and can be treated as if it were compatible with current means of organising. ...
Accounting education has a long history of successfully resisting ideas and innovations which may fundamentally challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. Whilst it is just about possible to adopt an understanding of sustainability which does not challenge fundamental assumptions about economy, capitalism and accounting, it is arguably the duty of education to encourage the exploration of such challenges. This chapter briefly reviews these contentions and then, having offered a review of approaches to sustainability accounting, suggests how educators might approach the question of how disruptive a sustainability accounting education might be. The underlying theme of the chapter is that if the educator and the student are not feeling uncomfortable and fundamentally challenged, then we are probably not looking at either sustainability or education.
... The need for a more holistic form of accounting education is well recognised in the literature (Fleming, 1996;Gebreiter, 2021;Gebreiter et al., 2018;Gray and Collison, 2002;Helliar, 2013;Yates and De Loo, 2021). Against a backdrop of increasing corporatisation and public policy changes that priories economic rationality (Al Mahameed et al., 2023;Boyce, 2004;Thomson and Bebbington, 2004), perhaps accounting education, with its associated accountability implications, is a potential vehicle where challenges against this narrative can be levied (Dyball and Thomson, 2013). In doing so, accounting education may be a vehicle for academics to transcend disciplinary boundaries and instead focus on the socio-historical contexts of accounting practice (Boyce, 2004). ...
... Indeed, invoking accountability-related issues within teaching (and not as an afterthought) offers alternative conceptions of accounting to be realised on the part of students and therefore situates the educational offering much more within the realm of the social (Chabrak and Craig, 2013;Dillard, 1991;James, 2007;Lewis et al., 1992). This element of shifting pedagogical approaches refers to content of courses, and although a vital element of a response to otherwise capitalist realist approaches to accounting education, addresses the "what" question of pedagogy, as opposed to the arguably more (or at least as) important question of "how?" (Buckmaster and Craig, 2000;Thomson and Bebbington, 2004). ...
In this theoretically informed polemical paper, we express concerns for the future of accounting education within UK Higher Education (UKHE) and beyond. We adopt a theoretical position drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek and Mark Fisher, and their fusion of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxism. We reignite an old, but important debate: whether accounting graduates should be educated to be accountants, or receive a much more holistic, critical education.
We outline four observations from our time as early career researchers that we believe are detrimental to the education of accounting graduates in UKHE. These are: the narrowing of the curriculum, the dismantling of the traditional academic, generalising as to what employers desire, and the pursuit of student satisfaction. In addition, in a time where the global environment faces the grim prospect of greater and greater crises such as inter alia: climate change, covid-19, modern slavery etc. we assert that universities (and academics) now, more than ever, must focus on their societal duty to foster critical and dissenting viewpoints in their graduates, embracing the Lacanian Real, and must continually question the educational model and pedagogy.
Keywords: Accounting Education, Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher, Pedagogy, Žižek
... Pemahaman realitas tidak terjadi melalui hubungan mekanis antara tanda -kata tertulis, tetapi oleh interaksi dialektik subjek-realitas-subjek, di mana tanda-tanda dan hal-hal lainnya hanyalah sesuatu yang menghubungkan diri mereka dalam konteks politik, budaya dan ekonomi. Konsep pendidikan ala Freire memiliki setidaknya tiga peran kunci untuk pendidikan di masyarakat mana pun (Thompson dan Bebbington, 2004). Pertama, pendidikan memainkan peran konstitutif dalam proses berpengetahuan. ...
... Proses dialogis memiliki struktur yang mendasari yaitu tahapan determinasi isi dari program pendidikan, tahapan desain proses pendidikan, dan tahapan proses aksi yang terkait dengan pertemuan yang ada dalam proses pendidikan tersebut (Thompson dan Bebbington, 2004). Tiga tahap yang signifikan dan saling terkait dari proses pendidikan dialogis disajikan dalam Gambar 1 yang disajikan pada bagian akhir artikel ini. ...
This article is motivated by the awareness that education must give freedom to learners in the process of producing and reproducing knowledge through the learning process. Realizing that education can bring changes to social realities, the educational paradigm must be changed to lead to an innovative learning culture. Therefore, this paper provides inspiration from the thoughts of an educational philosopher, namely Paulo Freire. The focus is on how Paulo Freire's thoughts can be useful for developing accounting education and scholarship as an alternative to critical paradigms. Relevant literature review is used as a research approach to describe ideas of thought. Dialogic education will encourage the realization of emancipatory and transformative goals. This article can have at least two implications. First, accounting can be understood more broadly in the perspective used to see the social reality of accounting where a critical approach can be an alternative that strengthens the contribution of accounting as an active science. Second, to achieve the first goal, the conventional approach used for knowledge transfer must also be transformed into a liberating dialogical approach to give learners the courage to be more innovative and creative in seeing their social reality.Keywords: accounting education, critical accounting, dialogic education, Paulo Freire's thoughts AbstrakArtikel ini dilatarbelakangi oleh kesadaran bahwa pendidikan harus memberikan kebebasan kepada peserta didik dalam proses produksi dan reproduksi pengetahuan melalui proses pembelajaran. Menyadari bahwa pendidikan dapat membawa perubahan pada realitas sosial, maka pendekatan pendidikan konvensional tidak dapat lagi dijalankan. Paradigma pendidikan harus diubah untuk mengarah pada budaya belajar yang inovatif. Oleh karena itu, tulisan ini bertujuan untuk menyajikan pendekatan alternatif dalam pendidikan akuntansi yang terinspirasi dari pemikiran seorang filsuf pendidikan, yaitu Paulo Freire. Fokus artikel ini adalah bagaimana pemikiran-pemikiran Paulo Freire dapat bermanfaat untuk mengembangkan pendidikan dan keilmuan akuntansi sebagai alternatif dari paradigma kritis. Tinjauan pustaka yang relevan digunakan sebagai metode untuk mendeskripsikan ide-ide pemikiran. Pendidikan dialogis akan mendorong terwujudnya tujuan emansipatoris dan transformatif. Artikel ini setidaknya dapat memiliki dua implikasi. Pertama, akuntansi dapat dipahami secara lebih luas dalam perspektif yang digunakan untuk melihat realitas sosial akuntansi dimana pendekatan kritis dapat menjadi salah satu alternatif yang memperkuat kontribusi akuntansi sebagai ilmu yang aktif. Kedua, untuk mencapai tujuan pertama, pendekatan konvensional yang digunakan untuk transfer ilmu juga harus diubah menjadi pendekatan dialogis nan membebaskan untuk memberikan keberanian kepada pembelajar agar lebih inovatif dan kreatif dalam memandang realitas sosialnya.Kata Kunci: pendidikan akuntansi, akuntansi kritis, pendidikan dialogis, pemikiran-pemikiran Paulo Freire
... Educational encounters that allow for an interaction between knowledge (as per the particular discipline, such as accounting) and the lived reality of citizens, create the opportunity for students to be meaningfully challenged and enriched as reflexivity and compassion are provoked (Zipin 2017). Thomson and Bebbington (2004) reason that, through the introduction of research activities into an accounting undergraduate programme, reflexivity was cultivated in students participating in their research. The students had to identify research problems, which often related to societal or environmental problems they had encountered themselves (Thomson and Bebbington 2004). ...
... Thomson and Bebbington (2004) reason that, through the introduction of research activities into an accounting undergraduate programme, reflexivity was cultivated in students participating in their research. The students had to identify research problems, which often related to societal or environmental problems they had encountered themselves (Thomson and Bebbington 2004). Solving or an attempt to contribute to the improvement of this particular lived challenge, became real and important to the students as they were invested in their familiar identified research challenge. ...
In recent times, the chartered accountant profession was regularly in the news for reasons pertaining to the unethical and unprofessional behaviour of members. The profession has an important role to play in the South African economy, as members will often fulfil important decision-making roles in business. In a response to the dilemmas the profession is facing, we analysed the implications for the profession and society due to a resistance to include research as a pedagogical activity in the chartered accountancy educational landscape. Through deliberative research activities, students have the opportunity to engage with community members and with societal challenges that could foster reflexivity and humaneness in students. In addition, critical and problem-solving skills are cultivated. These are skills that are difficult to assess in the form of an examination, and the absence of research as pedagogical activity in this particular educational landscape, impacts the cultivation of these skills in future chartered accountants. This is so, as the chartered accountancy educational landscape is significantly influenced by the power that resonates within the profession and culminates into the disciplinary power mechanism of the examination. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) set an external examination, called the Initial test of Competence (ITC), which graduates need to write upon leaving institutes of higher learning. Success in this SAICA-examination therefore impacts on the teaching and learning pedagogy adopted by chartered accountants in academe. If chartered accounting students were instead primarily being exposed to technical content assessed via an examination, also being exposed and introduced to deliberative research, the possibility exists that students, through critical reflexivity, could move beyond the constraints of the self to that of the communal other in line with the African notion of ubuntu can be enhanced.
... Tensions between conventional accounting education and sustainability accounting are widely reported in the literature (e.g. Boulianne, Keddie & Postaire 2018; Gray 2013; Thomson & Bebbington 2004). However, studies that highlight areas of commonality in accounting education (such as curriculum and instruction, students' approaches to learning and their skills and characteristics [Apostolou et al. 2013[Apostolou et al. , 2015[Apostolou et al. , 2017) make little reference to sustainability accounting education. ...
... Whilst the majority of participants perceived the PGDIR to have challenged their views, only a few of them reported that their own beliefs and values had fundamentally changed. It appears therefore as if these latter participants experienced the PGDIR as a transformative learning experience, resulting in re-invention of their belief systems (Mezirow 2003;Saravanamuthu 2015), and suggests that the PGDIR has the potential to be an emancipatory learning experience for them (Thomson & Bebbington 2004). The remaining participants, and particularly those from accounting backgrounds, could have perceived hegemonic domination as 'a closed world from which there is no exit' (Freire 2005). ...
Orientation: Conventional accounting education is presented from a business perspective that rationalises the prioritisation of shareholder interests. Such a paradigm, viewed as the hegemony of business, fails to deliver on the emancipatory intent of social and environmental justice.
Research purpose: To determine whether a postgraduate diploma in integrated reporting (PGDIR) (advancing the principles of social and environmental justice) offered participants an explicitly transformative experience.
Motivation for the study: As educators, first, the authors set out to determine whether graduates of the PGDIR achieved a critical awareness of the tension between sustainability and the hegemony of business, and second, they wanted to determine whether the PGDIR prepared students to deal with hegemonic domination in practice.
Research approach/design and method: In this qualitative study, the first 4 years PGDIR graduates were interviewed.
Main findings: Postgraduate diploma in integrated reporting graduates, after critical self-reflection, expressed a sense of disillusionment arising from having attempted to implement the theory presented in the PGDIR. Whilst prior studies have identified critical thinking skills as necessary components of critical accounting education, this study suggests the need for emotional intelligence, and skills in consultation and negotiation as equally important tools to empower graduates to deal with hegemonic tension in practice.
Practical/managerial implications: The findings of the study could inform accounting pedagogies, as it explains how integrated reporting, with its purpose of advancing the principles of social and environmental justice, was taught in the PGDIR.
Contribution/value-add: The PGDIR, the object of the study, is based on the principles of social and environmental justice and provides insights into the way that these concepts can be taught in a progressive way.
... The mid-2000s witnessed attempts at finding a dialogic mode of accounting education. Principles that Freire, 1972, 1985, Freire, 1994 proposed regarding the ''pedagogy of the oppressed", and the principles Illich (1971) outlined concerning the ''hidden curriculum" were employed to construct a dialogic framework for accounting education (see Thomson & Bebbington, 2004, Thomson, 2005. Emphasising how ''accounting is a process of education that can encourage critical reflection", Freire's pedagogical ''conscientization" 2 has been used herein to reconceptualise accountability as a reflexive process between different stakeholders that can enable them to become not only dialogically aware of social reality but also capable of exposing and reflecting on ''invisible" and ''silenced" factors that reproduce oppressive accountability regimes (Bebbington, Brown, Frame, & Thomson, 2007, 363; see also Thomson & Bebbington, 2004;Thomson, 2005). ...
... Principles that Freire, 1972, 1985, Freire, 1994 proposed regarding the ''pedagogy of the oppressed", and the principles Illich (1971) outlined concerning the ''hidden curriculum" were employed to construct a dialogic framework for accounting education (see Thomson & Bebbington, 2004, Thomson, 2005. Emphasising how ''accounting is a process of education that can encourage critical reflection", Freire's pedagogical ''conscientization" 2 has been used herein to reconceptualise accountability as a reflexive process between different stakeholders that can enable them to become not only dialogically aware of social reality but also capable of exposing and reflecting on ''invisible" and ''silenced" factors that reproduce oppressive accountability regimes (Bebbington, Brown, Frame, & Thomson, 2007, 363; see also Thomson & Bebbington, 2004;Thomson, 2005). For this, Thomson and Bebbington argue, accountability must be framed within numerous contextual parameters such as the institutional framework, epistemology, human agency, role of experts, language and discourse heterogeneity, community and identity, material context, and power dynamics. ...
Accountability has become integral to many African development reforms and permeated the World Bank's (WB) policy discourses, with “social accountability” as a major plank in its development orthodoxy. Since the 2004 Word Development Report, the Bank's leadership has been declaring its commitment to social accountability. This paper excavates what lies behind ringing declarations of commitment to social accountability in the context of Ghana's Public Financial Management Reform Programme. Empirically, it draws on four months’ fieldwork into the accountability practices this programme brought about and an extensive analysis of WB discourses on public sector reforms and social accountability. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucault's governmentality and the notion of agonistic democracy central to the recent democratic accountability debate in critical accounting circles. The paper argues that WB's social accountability crusade hinges on the neoliberal concerns of efficiency and fiscal discipline rather than creating a democratic social order, which then questions the very notion of social accountability that WB is propagating, especially its discursive and ideological “short-circuiting” of democratic processes. The paper finds that the dominant and dominating accountability forms that facilitate WB's financial hegemony are privileged over potentially emancipatory ones. The findings highlight that as the local governments become responsible to international development agencies through the “social accountabilities” that WB is promoting they become less socially and democratically accountable to their own populace – the very place where social accountability should truly rest.
... Moreover, accounting has been extended to the nexus of accountability issues beyond the borders of corporate entities, such as accountability issues in civil society and non-governmental organisations. The genesis of sustainability accounting and non-financial reporting has strengthened this pluralisation project towards what Thomson and Bebbington (2004) call a dialogic approach to accounting education. ...
... Despite these considerations, there continue to be problems related to power imbalances and the search for tools that can involve participants more closely in decision-making processes (Purdy, 2012). Accounting approaches can encourage democratic debate and consider the opposing positions of different groups and the information needs of all stakeholders (Thomson and Bebbington, 2004). In this vein, dialogic accounting allows the adoption of techniques that enable citizens to participate in defining and constructing reality rather than discussing what is already known (Aleksandrov et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
The research aims to provide a longitudinal case study to understand how digital transformation can be embedded in municipal reporting frameworks. The central role of such technology becomes increasingly evident as citizens demand greater transparency and engagement between them and governing institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilising a longitudinal case study methodology, the research focusses on Turin’s Integrated Popular Financial Report (IPFR) as a lens through which to evaluate the broader implications of digital transformation on governmental transparency and operational efficiency.
Findings
Digital tools, notably sentiment analysis, offer promising avenues for enhancing governmental efficacy and citizenry participation. However, persistent challenges highlight the inadequacy of traditional, inflexible reporting structures to cater to dynamic informational demands.
Practical implications
Embracing digital tools is an imperative for contemporary public administrators, promoting streamlined communication and dismantling bureaucratic obstructions, all while catering to the evolving demands of an informed citizenry.
Originality/value
Different from previous studies that primarily emphasised technology’s role within budgeting, this research uniquely positions itself by spotlighting the transformative implications of digital tools during the reporting phase. It champions the profound value of fostering bottom-up dialogues, heralding a paradigmatic shift towards co-creative public management dynamics.
... Critical pedagogy suggests that breaking free of colonial norms creates the need for the process of conscientization (i.e., the identification of previously ignored oppressive societal elements and subsequent action can be taken against them) to occur (Freire 1970). This process requires a dialogical approach to learning in which there is open discourse between both students and faculty who act as co-investigators through the learning process (Thomson and Bebbington 2004;Bebbington, Brown, Frame, and Thomson 2007). The use of case studies as a tool in the efforts to decolonize the accounting curriculum through transformative changes aligns with the Participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement with the above statements on a scale of 1 ¼ strongly disagree to 7 ¼ strongly agree. ...
This study explores the viability of case studies as a tool to help advance efforts toward decolonization of the accounting curriculum by incorporating the perspectives and experiences of underrepresented minorities (URMs). We evaluate the current level of representation in accounting case studies, and faculty willingness to use more representative case studies. We evaluate faculty responses using the Banks (2014) curriculum transformation framework. Hand-collected case study data for 2015–2021 reveal that only two of 351 case studies have URM representation. Survey responses indicate faculty are willing to make less disruptive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related curricular changes, but also provide evidence of barriers to changes which would require significant content modifications. We offer recommendations to increase URM representation in case studies and overcome these barriers, advancing toward a curriculum that better reflects URMs’ views and prepares students to better interact and collaborate effectively within a diverse workforce.
... 19. Also see Thomson and Bebbington (2004) for a dialogic approach to teaching social and environmental accounting. 20. ...
Given the urgent need for change that has become even more evident during the pandemic, it seems fitting to critically reflect on our responsibilities as scholars, educators and colleagues, individually and as members of a purposeful, supportive community, in facilitating a more sustainable world. We share a roundtable discussion that was part of the 13th Spanish CSEAR conference in hopes that the conversation will continue within the community regarding some of the perceived roles, opportunities and responsibilities post-pandemic. The perspectives shared are from a group of scholars at different stages in their careers, who have different profiles, and see their responsibilities differently. These individual and collective perspectives address personal and professional aspirations, the focus and purpose of research, and the role of CSEAR as we move into the future. Hopefully by sharing perspectives from different vantage points ranging from the beginning to the end of the ‘academic life cycle’, we can stimulate and facilitate meaningful dialogue and debate within, and about the future of, our community leading to a more resilient, active, caring, supportive, inspiring, encouraging and helpful environment and more effectively further the transition to a more sustainable world.
... Critical pedagogy and the critical thinking it promotes would then not come as a shocksuch as when it is suddenly introduced in a course at the end of a degree program. We are of the opinion that reflection just cannot be developed through a banking approach to teaching; instead, we need pedagogical approaches founded on critical thinking, centered on the examination of a range of complex organizational and social issues associated with the accounting profession (Drake, 2011;Grey, 2002;Thomson & Bebbington, 2004). ...
Several researchers have decried the marginalization of critical thought in accounting education programs. Initiatives have been taken to make students aware of standpoints other than the traditional, technocratic view of accounting, but of how students reacted to these, little is known. Inspired by the thinking of Paulo Freire and Stephen Brookfield, we investigate an initiative conducted with undergraduates who followed a mandatory course during the 2015–2016 academic year in which critical thinking, from the viewpoint of the critical pedagogy movement, was emphasized. The setting is the School of Accounting at Université Laval (Québec). The following question informed our case study: how do students experience the learning of accounting through critical pedagogy? Our analysis identifies three types of experiences in the learning of accounting through critical pedagogy: dedication (resonance with one's human aspirations), receptiveness (interest in broadening one's horizons), and discomfort (resistance to critical pedagogy on the ground of the field's performance imperatives). Our case study aims to contribute to the accounting education literature on critical thinking and critical pedagogy. Importantly, we found that dedication experiences often resonated with the belief that critical thinking (as articulated in the course) is marginal to the field of performance-based professional practice.
... Overcoming the idea of capitalism in Western countries has led to the development of new needs that are linked to a more complex reality. Accordingly, a new accounting approach is needed to encourage democratic debate and take into account the opposing positions of different groups and information needs of all involved actors (Thomson and Bebbington, 2004). Accounting has the power to interpret reality and solve possible social conflicts between groups of actors by ensuring transparency and providing more information (Biancone et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the usefulness of popular reporting (PR) in an Italian city as a dialogic accounting tool for promoting citizens’ engagement with digital platforms. This study aims to contribute to the debate on democratic accounting technologies with a focus on PR and digital platforms, using the theoretical lens of dialogic accounting.
Design/methodology/approach
A longitudinal case study is used to analyse the implementation and evolution of PR in the city of Turin, Italy and explore how the city involved its citizens with digital platforms.
Findings
This study contributes to the debate on public accountability through dialogic accounting tools.
Research limitations/implications
Multiple sources (surveys, interviews and interventionist workshops) are used to analyse Turin, Italy as a longitudinal case study.
Practical implications
This study offers practical reflections for legislators, politicians and public managers who need new knowledge and empirical analysis of the effective implementation of the PR as a tool for dialogue and empowering public accounting to hold continuous dialogue with the citizens.
Originality/value
PR can be considered a useful dialogic accounting tool for politicians, managers and government experts to encourage citizens’ engagement in a pluralistic society.
... Una de las expresiones más prominentes de la contabilidad exterior es la contabilidad dialógica. Esta perspectiva proviene inicialmente de asumir la educación dialógica, siguiendo a Freire, en la educación contable (Thomson y Bebbington, 2004). En el mismo ejercicio pedagógico, se lleva a cabo la construcción de una cuenta sombra (Coulson y Thomson, 2006) entre estudiantes y profesores alrededor de la empresa. ...
El presente documento se aproxima y discute la literatura sobre contabilidad exterior: contabilidad sobre las entidades, producida por entidades externas. Se argumenta que dicha contabilidad es necesaria ante la necesidad de mejorar las formas de control social y la rendición de cuentas. La literatura es clasificada en cuatro categorías provenientes tanto de la misma revisión como de la discusión con ella: Sistemáticas, Militantes, Dialógicas y Emancipadoras. Se concluye que son diversos los mecanismos y los objetivos por los cuales se puede llevar a cabo una contabilidad exterior. Se plantea la necesidad de llevar a cabo más revisiones sistemáticas de contabilidad exterior en Colombia, así como mayor investigación en las formas de contabilidad exterior existentes en el país.
... It evolves through a process of dialogue, based on mutual trust, active listening, discussion and representation of problems and solutions. The dialogic interactions set the framework for practical testing of shared solutions and feed into a re-examination of the initial problem (Thomson and Bebbington, 2004). The outcome of dialogic engagement extends beyond two-way communication, as it activates mutual and dynamic learning processes that stimulate changes in the expectations and ideas of dialoguing parties, shared solutions to problems and inform accountability relationships between entities and stakeholders (Bebbington et al., 2007;Bellucci et al., 2019). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate why and how public health agencies employed social media during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to foster public engagement and dialogic accounting.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analysed the official Facebook pages of the leading public agencies for health crisis in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand and they collected data on the number of posts, popularity, commitment and followers before and during the outbreak. The authors also performed a content analysis to identify the topics covered by the posts.
Findings
Empirical results suggest that social media has been extensively used as a public engagement tool in all three countries under analysis but – because of legitimacy threats and resource scarcity – it has also been used as a dialogic accounting tool only in New Zealand. Findings suggest that fake news developed more extensively in contexts where the public body did not foster dialogic accounting.
Practical implications
Public agencies may be interested in knowing the pros and cons of using social media as a public engagement and dialogic accounting tool. They may also leverage on dialogic accounting to limit fake news.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to look at the nature and role of social media as an accountability tool during public health crises. In many contexts, COVID-19 forced for the first time public health agencies to heavily engage with the public and to develop new skills, so this study paves the way for numerous future research ideas.
... Technical learning will lead to banking style 1 learning models (Thomson & Bebbington, 2004), that can kill critical awareness, even though Islam is a critical religion. Banking-style learning is therefore not in accordance with the spirit of Islam. ...
The aim of this study is to release students of Islamic accounting course from secularism and capitalism. This research uses dialogic approach to raise the awareness of criticalmuslim students. The philosophical values of the French movie entitled “Le Grand Voyage” were taken as method of analysis. The reality of Islamic accounting students who are secularist and capitalist was then metaphorized into this film. The results of this study showed that the students could find not only material values, but also emotional values and spiritual values in accounting. There are several values that can be seen from the students’ story telling: material value , altruism value, love value, and spiritual value. It is hoped that this article could give an overview to Islamic accounting educators to provide accounting course accompanied by Islamic substance of tawheed.
... Technical learning will lead to banking style 1 learning models (Thomson and Bebbington 2004), that can kill critical awareness, even though Islam is a critical religion. Banking-style learning is therefore not in accordance with the spirit of Islam. ...
The purpose of this study was to liberate or "hijrah" students of sharia accounting was allegedly secular and capitalist, in order to not stuck in the reality of sharia capitalist. To arouse Islamic-critical awareness, this study used analysis method with dialogic techniques metaphorized with film "Le Grand Voyage". The results of this study indicate that "hijrah" of secular and capitalist Islamic accounting students is they can find not only material values, but also emotional values and spiritual values in accounting. Hopefully this article can provide an overview to educators, especially Islamic accounting to provide accounting learning accompanied by Islamic substance to provide holistic awareness (Tawhid).
... Similar to Thomson and Bebbington, (2004, p. 614) limited diversity can also be referred to as "limited situations" which means "those things that oppress different" users of financial information in obtaining information to use as sufficient indicators of favourable financial performance. Thomson and Bebbington, (2004), noted that the best method of addressing a limited situation in teaching accounting is to design a holistic program that takes into account "the complexity of interacting forces which exist at a point in time" (p. 614). ...
Net-effect models assume that independent variables have a standalone impact on depended variables! As such the focus of net effect models is to examine the relationship between independent variables (causals) and dependent variables (outcome). I argue that this is not always true, independent variables may synergistically work together to bring impacts on a dependent variable, this allows researchers to examine if the independent variables are necessary or sufficient for an outcome of interest (dependent variable) to occur. This paper adopted a descriptive approach, I reviewed the literature on set-theoretic approach to understand how fuzzy set analysis can be viewed as a complementary approach to net-effect models in accounting and finance research. I note that Fuzzy set analysis has qualities that allow researchers to examine the necessity and sufficiency of independent variables to impacting dependent variables, this allows research to complement relationship studies with necessity and sufficiency studies. In addition, I note that the fuzzy set analysis allows researchers to identify core and supporting conditions for influencing an outcome of interest, this can complement examination of variables which have significant impact in the outcome of interest. In these contexts, I conclude that fuzzy set analysis complements examination of relationships and correlations between independent and dependent variables through examination of necessary and sufficient condition for an outcome of interest. This paper acknowledges that, although the proposed approach may lead to improved quality of the findings, the approach may suffer from subjectivity problems, especially when establishing the three benchmarks for scaling the original variables to fuzzy sets. It is suggested that substantial knowledge of the variables is highly required when determining the three benchmarks.
This article contributes to our understanding of the use of counter accounting in social movements, through consideration of Bakhtinian dialogics as a theoretical framing. We explore counter and dialogic accounting in a significant socio‐political conflict in the city of Sheffield, UK. Our case covers a public–private partnership (PPP) highway maintenance scheme entailing conflict over a tree‐felling scheme in the city. The city‐based case had an organized and focused campaign, aligning a plurality of interests in opposition to the tree‐felling. This coordinated campaign opposed local authority actions that sought ostensibly to save money. Our study shows how local activist groups produced dialogic counter‐accounts of the symbolic and ecological importance of street trees, elevating the environment and community concerns above Sheffield City Council's monologic focus on money and contracts. The campaign's success in halting the tree‐felling scheme also helped foster conditions for broader grassroots‐led democratic reform in the city. Research on the city context vis‐à‐vis counter and dialogic accounting is rare.
Placing beneficiaries at the center of governance and accountability arrangements in charities is widely acknowledged as critical, however, engaging these individuals in a meaningful way represents a fundamental challenge. Mechanisms to facilitate this remain underdeveloped and there is limited understanding of how this can be operationalized within the governance structures of charities, particularly in relation to marginalized groups. This paper contributes to filling this gap by undertaking a longitudinal case study of a Scottish human rights‐based charity working with individuals with learning difficulties, exploring how beneficiary participation can be operationalized in practice. A framework is developed which integrates critical dialogic accountability with coproduction principles, providing a unique perspective on how participatory governance can foster greater social inclusion of individuals with learning difficulties.
In October 2023, a group of accounting scholars interested in critical dialogic accounting and accountability (CDAA) gathered in Toulouse, France to attend a 2-day conference. Rather than presenting papers, the CDAA conference was designed around 3 workshops and 4 panel sessions to foster discussion on different topics in CDAA research. Looking to develop a collaborative atmosphere for dialogue and debate among attendees, the objective was to build their capacity to understand, engage with and perhaps even utilize CDAA in their own research interests. This commentary has been produced by the organizers of this conference to reflect on its design as a collaborative space, report back on insights that were developed, and avenues for research that were discussed.
Neste trabalho, investigamos a incorporação do pensamento de Paulo Freire na pesquisa em contabilidade. Realizamos um levantamento abrangente de pesquisas nacionais e internacionais, buscando identificar como os autores se apropriam da obra do autor. Analisamos 56 artigos, dos quais quase metade são de autores brasileiros. Entre as publicações internacionais, destacam-se a Austrália e o Reino Unido (em inglês) e a Colômbia (em espanhol). O uso das ideias de Paulo Freire se concentrou em quatro áreas: (i) princípios pedagógicos, (ii) saberes necessários à docência, (iii) contabilidade em contextos sociais e (iv) dialogicidade na prática contábil. A realização de pesquisas e debates sobre esses temas indica um potencial para aperfeiçoar o ensino e a prática contábil em prol da sustentabilidade. No entanto, como observado em alguns estudos, ainda há muito a ser feito para integrar efetivamente as ideias de Freire na prática: na estrutura básica de ensino, na relação em sala de aula e na concepção e elaboração dos relatos socioambientais.
While the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the higher education sector, it also provided opportunities for accounting academics to rethink their assessment strategy. This paper adds to the limited literature which has reported on how accounting academics responded to such an opportunity. Drawing on Freire’s dialogical education theory as the theoretical underpinning, we provide an autoethnographic account of an academic’s experience of championing a dialogical informed assessment. Focusing on assessment, this autoethnographic study contributes to the growing dialogic pedagogy accounting education literature and challenges accounting academics to consider engaging in an open-book portfolio assessment informed by the dialogical education approach.
Two U.S. accounting educators reflect on their experiences deploying resources in a manner that highlights human elements that have traditionally been downplayed in cost/management accounting pedagogy. Structured as a critical essay and a field report, the authors ground their discussion in perspectives from Freirean (1972) pedagogy and Hirschauer’s (2006) work on the “silences of the social.” Conventional assurance of learning protocols, content specification guidelines for certification programs, and statements from accounting professional bodies influence accounting educators to deliver “appropriate”, objectively measurable, and seemingly neutral information based on current rules and best practices. A limitation of this approach is that the most important issues in a society may be those where either (1) a consensus on best practice has not yet been determined or (2) positions favored by authorities are less than optimal for some members of society. The primary contribution of the paper is to render visible “silences of the social” that mask subjective human aspects embedded in management accounting pedagogy. The authors’ tentative recommendation is that critical thinking elements should be introduced early in the curriculum and not reserved for the masters’ level.
Whether corporations voluntarily reduce their negative impacts on the environment and society depends upon management advocacy. As future corporate leaders, accounting students will have a critical advocacy role, but they have been taught that shareholder value should not be sacrificed to reduce the externalized environmental and social costs caused by corporations. We believe accounting students are unable to break through the shareholder value maximization doctrine without understanding threshold concepts of corporate externalized costs and revised conceptualizations of corporate ownership and corporate governance. This paper proposes a new Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Learning Model that accounting instructors can employ to understand the threshold concepts. Threshold concepts are reconstitutive and fundamentally change students’ worldviews so that new understandings may emerge and advocating for ESG initiatives becomes possible. The paper concludes with instructional strategies aligned with three pedagogical modalities to help students absorb the ESG threshold concepts.
Conventional accounting pedagogies, certification structures, and publishing protocols are infused with biases that limit the parameters of discourse. Hirschauer’s (2006) ‘silence of the social’ and Bailey’s (2007) three characteristics of implicit religion―personal commitment, integrating foci, and intensive concerns with extensive effects―are used to give voice to structural elements in accounting pedagogy, certification programs, and publishing regimes that discourage ideological and demographic diversity. The author provides examples of how one might modify management accounting classes to 1) address demographic and ideological biases in conventional curriculum materials and 2) encourage critical thinking about issues that have do not have the objective answers favored within assurance of learning programs and certification exams. The paper concludes with seven suggestions for additional research and conversations that are needed to better understand and address indirect mechanisms that quietly perpetuate the profession’s problematic track record on diversity and inclusion.
We use the Theory of Orders of Worth (OW) espoused by Boltanski and his associates to understand how disputes emerge in situations and how such disputes themselves reach agreements in the context of community engagements by an NGO. Based on a nine-month period of fieldwork at an NGO river-care programme in Malaysia, we find that, in situations of disputes, coordinating acts are predicated upon moral justifications by social actors, making the programme accountable to multiple stakeholders. Moreover, these coordinating acts develop dialogic accounting and transform felt accountability forms into adaptive accountability forms. We conclude that NGO accountability in a developing country like Malaysia is a manifestation of the ability of moral justifications governed by multiple orders of worth and such adaptive accountability forms mediate to assimilate global development agendas into local policies and programmes.
Critical accounting scholars have long lamented the hegemony of a business case rationale in accounting and its impact on the representation of interests other than those of shareholders. However, relatively little prior research has considered the perspectives of the accountant, and what little there is raises concerns about their capacity to engage with ideological diversity and complexity. Q methodology (QM) is a research method that can help critical researchers explore individuals’ perspectives around politically contentious issues by identifying a plurality of perspectives, as well as surfacing the political frontiers between them. To demonstrate this utility, I present a Q methodological study (Q study) of accountants’ perspectives of social and environmental reporting (SER). Theoretically positioned from within critical dialogic accounting, the Q study includes 33 participants – practitioners, academics and students – from Aotearoa New Zealand. QM provides a means for identifying, articulating and analysing, in this case three divergent Factors, or shared perspectives, of SER. Further analysis demonstrates how QM can identify ‘seeds of hope’ and open ‘spaces of possibility’ that lead me to recharacterise accountants’ capacity to engage in SER.
Higher accounting education tends to be monologic and uphold a ‘hidden curriculum’ based on neoliberal and neoclassical economic assumptions that prioritise financial stakeholders’ concerns and profit maximisation. This informs what is regarded as teachable knowledge in accounting education, and how this is taught. Critical accounting researchers have urged educators/researchers to adopt dialogic pedagogical approaches to reimagine how accounting can facilitate democratic dialogue about the range of practices it covers; expose students to divergent socio-political perspectives on accountability; and promote critical reflection and transform their understandings of their lived realities. Our research is situated within the critical Social and Environmental Accounting (SEA) literature and the potential of a dialogic accounting pedagogy. Through student interviews and reflections from educators, we explore the design and implementation of a third-year accounting course containing a SEA component, and its potential for achieving the aspirations of dialogic pedagogy, and how this can be developed and implemented.
Chartered accountants are often business leaders who frequently need to make decisions. Consequently, it is of importance for the fractured democratic South Africa that citizens (especially business leaders, such as chartered accountants) develop a socially just consciousness. In this article, we provide the results of an analysis of one of Michel Foucault's genealogical works, and introduce some of Foucault's views pertaining to knowledge and power. Foucault (1995) identified three disciplinary power mechanisms, namely hierarchical observation, normalising judgement, and the examination. Consequently, we used this particular Foucauldian lens to analyse the disciplinary power mechanisms evident in the CA educational landscape. Lastly, we identified the consequences for education (and therefore ultimately society) as a result of the particular power relations in the chartered accountant educational landscape and profession.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explain how sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement processes serve as vehicles of dialogic accounting (DA), a form of critical accounting that creates opportunities for stakeholders to express their opinions, and the influence of dialogic interactions on the content of sustainability reports.
Design/methodology/approach
Content analysis is used to investigate reports published by 299 companies that have adopted Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. This paper studies how organizations engage stakeholders, the categories of stakeholders that are being addressed, the methods used to support stakeholder engagement, and other features of the stakeholder engagement process. Companies that disclose stakeholder perceptions, the difficulties met in engaging stakeholders, and actions aimed at creating opportunities for different groups of stakeholders to interact were subjects of discussion in a series of semi-structured interviews that focus on DA.
Findings
Companies often commit themselves to two-way dialogue with their stakeholders, but fully developed frameworks for DA are rare. However, signs of DA emerged in the analysis, thus confirming that sustainability reporting can become a platform for DA systems if stakeholder engagement is effective.
Originality/value
The findings contribute to the accounting literature by discussing if and how sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement can serve as vehicles of DA. This is accomplished via a research design that is based on in-depth interviews and content analysis of various sustainability reports.
This study addresses the role of social, environmental, or sustainability (SES) reporting as a tool and vehicle of dialogic accounting (DA), while also analyzing the role of stakeholder engagement in defining the contents of these reports. We empirically investigated the reports published in 2016 by a group of 299 companies that adopt the guidelines issued by Global Reporting Initiative. Through a content analysis, we investigated the role attributed by the organizations to the practice of engaging with stakeholders, the categories of stakeholders addressed, the stated methodologies for stakeholder engagement, and other features of the stakeholder engagement process. We then focused our attention on three particular aspects that could represent signals of DA practices: the disclosure of stakeholder perceptions, the disclosure of difficulties met in engaging with stakeholders and the communication of actions aimed at creating opportunities for different groups of stakeholders to interact. Companies showing these features have been the object of a deeper analysis, based on semi-structured interviews. Our results show that companies often actively commit themselves in a two-way dialogue with their stakeholders, despite a great variety of behaviours. Our study also shows that fully developed frameworks for DA are rare. However, potential signs of DA emerged from our analysis, confirming that SES reporting has the potential to become a platform where to develop DA systems if stakeholder engagement processes are effective.
This paper emerges from an invitation to reflect upon the achievements of social and environmental accounting as well as to identify the challenges that lie ahead as the field continues its engagement with the goal of sustainable development. Three perspectives are developed in pursuit of that aim, namely: exploring the nature of the issues and mode of academic inquiry that is ‘fit for purpose’ given the demands of sustainable development; considering if a de-centring of accounting and the embrace of more holistic versions of accountability would be productive for future scholarship; and an exploration of how we might conceptualise ‘engagement’ with practice in this context (and what is meant by practice and practitioner). Taken together, this paper seeks to provide points of provocation and encouragement to social and environmental accountants, critical accounting scholars and to those seeking to understand sustainable development scholarship and action.
Purpose – This paper explores how and why international advocacy NGOs use counter accounting as part of their campaigns against oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to reform problematic regulatory systems and make visible corporate practices that exploit governance and accountability gaps in relation to human rights violations and environmental damage.
Design/Methodology/Approach – This arena study draws on different sources of evidence, including interviews with 9 international advocacy NGOs representatives involved in campaigns in the Niger Delta. We mapped out the history of the conflict in order to locate and make sense of our interviewees’ views on counter accounting, campaigning strategies, accountability and governance gaps as well as their motivations and aspirations for change.
Findings – Our evidence revealed an inability of vulnerable communities to engage in relevant governance systems, due to unequal power relationships, corporate actions and ineffective governance practices. NGOs used counter accounts as part of their campaigns to change corporate practices, reform governance systems and address power imbalances. Counter accounts made visible problematic actions to those with power over those causing harm, gave voice to indigenous communities and pressured the Nigerian government to reform their governance processes.
Practical implications – Understanding the intentions, desired outcomes and limitations of NGO’s use of counter accounting could influence human rights accountability and governance reforms in political institutions, public sector organisations, NGOs and corporations, especially in developing countries.
Originality/Value –This paper seeks to contribute to accounting research that seeks to protect the wealth and natural endowments of indigenous communities to enhance their life experience.
Keywords – Counter Accounting, Governance, Dialogic Accountability, Advocacy NGOs, Human Rights, Sustainable Development, Nigeria.
Paper type – Research paper
Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution of land and water, land-use changes, lack of equality and other problems at local, national and global levels represent a challenge for economics as a social science. Mainstream neoclassical economics may be able to contribute to a more sustainable society but it has also played a dominant role in a period where problems have been aggravated. A pluralist and democratic view of economics is therefore very much warranted. This book presents a multidimensional and ideologically more open view of economics: understanding economics in multidimensional terms is in accordance with the 17 sustainable development goals recognized by nations at the UN-level in 2015. Accordingly, approaches to decision making and accounting at the national- and business levels have to be reconsidered. Neoclassical Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) with focus on the monetary dimension and an assumed consensus about a specific market ideology to be applied is not compatible with democratic societies where citizen and actors in other roles normally differ with respect to ideological orientation. Environmental Impact Statements and Multi-Criteria methods are used to some extent to broaden approaches to decision-making. In this book, Positional Analysis is advocated as a multidimensional and ideologically open approach. Positional Analysis is based on a political economic conceptual framework (as part of ecological economics) that differs from neoclassical ideas of individuals, firms and markets. And since approaches to decision-making and to accounting are closely connected, a new theoretical perspective in economics similarly raises issues of how national and business accounting can be opened up to meet present demands among various actors in society. This perspective raises also numerous ethical questions at the science and policy interface that need to be properly addressed for sustainability decision making. © 2017 Judy Brown, Peter Söderbaum and Malgorzata Dereniowska. All rights reserved.
This study contributes to the debate on sustainability in higher education through a project conducted in a single Scottish university that incorporated sustainability into undergraduate accounting education through the application of a real-world problem in the form of a social and environmental report. Data from study participants were collected through questionnaires, which were analysed and interpreted through the lens of knowledge creation. The results demonstrate an increase in awareness and positive response to sustainability issues from all parties. It further indicates that opportunities to shape and develop further sustainability initiatives are possible through a dialogical approach. Such an approach is shown to provide an opportunity for knowledge creation and the transfer of sustainability issues in a democratic and emancipatory way. It highlights the importance of developing spaces/opportunities for sustainability dialogue that not only transcend the boundaries of a specific graduate discipline but also the borders of higher education institutions.
In this phenomenon, the invaders penetrate the cultural context of another group, in disrespect of the latter’s potentialities; they impose their own view of the world upon those they invade and inhibit the creativity of the invaded by curbing their expression.
Contributes to a radical formulation of pedagogy through its revitalization of language, utopianism, and revolutionary message. . . . The book enlarges our vision with each reading, until the meanings become our own. Harvard Educational RevieWtextless/itextgreaterConstitutes the voice of a great teacher who has managed to replace the melancholic and despairing discourse of the post-modern Left with possibility and human compassion. Educational Theory
In this article, Part I of Cultural Action for Freedom, Paulo Freire rejects mechanistic conceptions of the adult literacy process, advocating instead a theory and practice based upon authentic dialogue between teachers and learners. Such dialogue, in Freire's approach, centers upon the learners' existential situations and leads not only to their acquisition of literacy skills, but also, and more importantly, to their awareness of their right as human beings to transform reality. Becoming literate, then, means far more than learning to decode the written representation of a sound system. It is truly an act of knowing, through which a person is able to look critically at the world he/she lives in, and to reflect and act upon it. (pp. 480-498)
In this article, Part II of Cultural Action for Freedom, Paulo Freire explains the process of conscientization as an intrinsic part of cultural action for freedom. He rejects the mechanistic and behaviorist understanding of consciousness as a passive copy of reality. Instead, he proposes the critical dimension of consciousness that recognizes human beings as active agents who transform their world. He makes specific reference to the political and social situation in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, discussing the need for cultural action in order to break the existing "culture of silence." (pp. 499-521)
Based on a series of interviews with academics interested in social and environmental accounting education, this paper reflects on the changing nature of British university accounting curricula and the processes encouraging or hindering change.Social and environmental accounting would appear to be a developing subject area, but one which remains peripheral to accounting degree schemes, despite its claimed pedagogic benefits. The paper explores the assumptions, motivations, constraints and pressures influencing what is taught on undergraduate accounting programs and thereby illustrates the questionable status of such programs.The paper concludes by calling for accounting academics to give greater attention to how accounting knowledge is constituted, and, more specifically, to liberate notions of “relevant” accounting education from their implicit, but still powerful, professional and institutional strangleholds.
Identifies critical accounting researchers' apparent indifference
to the transformatory needs, wants and entitlements of accounting
students. After expressing a lack of understanding about this
phenomenon, reconstructs a variety of responses from researchers, as
well as possible subtexts, to tease out a feminist ethical perspective.
Believes this perspective to be useful in exposing some of the silences,
inconsistencies and contradictions that need to be addressed in
accounting education and research. Offers an explanation for accounting
researchers' reticence in transferring their critical research skills to
their teaching – the superficial adoption of the tenets of
critical practice, which in turn reproduces phallocratic models of moral
philosophy. Students are seen as “generalized others”, and
“an ethic of care” necessarily regarding students as fully
sensate human beings as “concrete others” is silenced.
Concludes that this is consistent with the silencing of emotion exposed
by feminist theorists, and serves to perpetuate and reproduce
patriarchal and phallocentric discourses in university and accounting
education.
The following paper provides an account of a university course which attempts to emphasise the reflexive nature of accounting and society. To be more precise the course is designed to introduce students to notions of accounting and the social which may not be so apparent in other accounting courses which they have studied.This paper recounts the motivation for offering the course, the range of material covered, the way the course is conducted and the way it has progressed during the last 5 years. As justification for the existence of the course the pedagogical aims and benefits are interwoven and explained throughout the text.
This paper discusses six television programme formats which were self-selected by Australian university students to facilitate their group-based presentations of accounting subject matter to fellow students in seminar and tutorial classes. This paper is a reflection upon the experiences of these formats (news and current affairs, game shows, tabloid television, soap operas, children's programmes and situation comedies) using an evaluative framework comprising the student-as-consumer metaphor, notions of 'acculturation' and a model of 'critical engagement'. The television programme format appears to be beneficial in serving accounting students' psychological and emotional needs and in providing them with a shared cultural structure by which to address accounting issues. This shared structure facilitates students' critical and creative engagement with accounting.
Cultural action for freedom. London: Penguin Press; 1972. Freire P. The politics of education: culture, power and liberation Freire P. Pedagogy of the oppressed
- P Freire
Freire P. Cultural action for freedom. London: Penguin Press; 1972. Freire P. The politics of education: culture, power and liberation. London: Macmillan Press; 1985. Freire P. Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Pelican; 1996.
Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Pelican
- P Freire
Freire P. Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Pelican; 1996.
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