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A Canadian Perspective on Indigenous Peoples and Accounting Research: Using a Systematic Literature Review to Promote Inquiry and Inclusion †
Abstract
This study uses a systematic literature review to explore academic research at the intersection of accounting and Indigenous peoples, focusing on the Canadian context. We systematically identified 15 English-language, peer-reviewed articles published in the review period of 1979 to 2019. We conducted detailed content and thematic analysis of the articles. Overall, we noted that research in this area is based upon archival documents or reviews of prior literature rather than qualitative or survey research methods. We found that much of the research has been driven by a small network of scholars, focusing primarily on themes of governmentality, imperialism, and accountability and control. Also, research on Indigenous peoples and accounting in Canada has slowed over the past decade, which is inconsistent with global trends. Based on the systematic literature review, we offer specific, actionable recommendations to support inquiry and inclusion in the area of accounting and Indigenous peoples to move both research and society forward toward reconciliation. Our detailed recommendations aim to advance our understanding of the relationship between accounting and Indigenous peoples, foster an understanding of accountability issues relevant to Indigenous peoples in the Canadian accounting context, enhance support for Indigenous peoples studying business and accounting, and encourage Indigenous peoples to consider careers in accounting.
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... We adopted an SLR to address our research questions as it allowed us to gauge the alignment between the accounting literature and Foresight's central themes (Alhojailan, 2012;Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). SLRs are commonly adopted in accounting research (e.g., Hoque, 2014;Lento et al., 2021;Massaro et al., 2016;Wick, 2021). As with all SLRs, our SLR started with well-defined research questions, employed a methodical article search, selection, and data extraction process, and presented the results of quantitative data analysis (Kitchenham et al., 2009). ...
This empirically grounded commentary explores the impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the strategic direction of Canada's accounting profession and highlights opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in the post‐pandemic era. We undertake a systematic literature review using deductive and inductive approaches within both the academic accounting literature and a selection of publications targeting accounting practitioners. Our deductive framework uses Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada's (CPA Canada) Foresight initiative, while our inductive approach identifies themes that do not fit within the Foresight initiative. We conclude that the accounting profession will be challenged to balance the pursuit of new opportunities arising from disruptive technologies, real‐time data, and new organizational value drivers while simultaneously reflecting its roots in financial reporting, auditing, and taxation. Our findings also suggest that the profession should pay more attention to the human aspects of the profound changes that are underway. Specifically, the profession focuses heavily on how accountants' work will change due to disruptive forces but not enough on how these changes impact accountants from a broader human resource management perspective (e.g., mental health challenges, alternative work arrangements, retraining, and upskilling). Our work differs from prior reviews as we incorporate both academic accounting and accounting practitioner‐focused publications to propose a research agenda intended to encourage more practically relevant accounting research.
... For instance, within the context of the United States of America, studies on underrepresentation reference students from racial minorities Smith et al., 2023), while studies in the Global South consider post-colonial contexts (Filgueiras Sauerbronn et al., 2023). In other instances, underrepresented student populations are those from indigenous groupings located in previously colonised contexts (Lento et al., 2021;Safkaur et al., 2023) and extend to include students who migrate for purposes of study to ultimately form part of the 'foreign minority' in their host nations (Annisette & Prasad, 2017;Olwig & Valentin, 2015). In any given context, underrepresentation denotes the minority demographic emphasised within that specific setting, typically influenced by cultural, gender-related, and racial factors (Filgueiras Sauerbronn et al., 2023). ...
Purpose
This study explores citizen activism in the articulation of a politicised counter-account of Aboriginal rights. It aims to uncover the enabling factors for a successful challenge to established political norms and the obstacles to the fullest expression of a radical imagining.
Design/methodology/approach
Laclau and Mouffe's theory of hegemony and discourse is used to frame the movement's success in challenging the prevailing system of urbanised healthcare delivery. Empirical materials were collected through extensive ethnographic fieldwork.
Findings
The findings from this longitudinal study identify the factors that predominantly influence the transformational success of an Yaṉangu social movement, such as the institutionalisation of group identity, articulation of a discourse connected to Aboriginal rights to self-determination, demonstration of an alternative imaginary and creation of strong external alliances.
Originality/value
This study offers a rich empirical analysis of counter-accounting in action, drawing on Aboriginal governance traditions of non-confrontational discourse and collective accountability to conceptualise agonistic engagement. These findings contribute to the practical and theoretical construction of democratic accounting and successful citizen activism.
This research champions indigenous voices and epistemes in accounting history. It corrects the hegemony of the coloniser’s voice in the archive and fills the archival vacuum with indigenous voices. This research presents the case of rice accounting in Cambodia. Cambodia was devastated by half a millennium of warfare and coups destroying written archives. The archives of the French coloniser are all that survive. That archive tells the coloniser’s version of rice accounting. To challenge that version of rice accounting, this research examines the story of rice accounting found in a traditional form of Cambodian entertainment: circus performance. Circus performance is a form of archive that captures collective memory, providing an indigenous voice and episteme. This research examines how, in preserving collective memory, traditional forms of entertainment can facilitate a richer understanding of accounting history when the written indigenous archive is impaired, destroyed or has failed to recognise the indigenous voice.
This paper presents a comparative evaluation of Google Scholar and 11 other bibliographic databases (Academic Search Elite, AgeLine, ArticleFirst, EconLit, GEOBASE, MEDLINE, PAIS International, POPLINE, Social Sciences Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, and SocINDEX), focusing on search performance within the multidisciplinary field of later-life migration. The results of simple keyword searches are evaluated with reference to a set of 155 relevant articles identified in advance. In terms of both recall and precision, Google Scholar performs better than most of the subscription databases. This finding, based on a rigorous evaluation procedure, is contrary to the impressions of many early reviewers. The paper concludes with a discussion of a new approach to document relevance in educational settings—an approach that accounts for the instructors' goals as well as the students' assessments of relevance.
We assess the research publication productivity of Canadian-based accounting researchers in highly ranked accounting journals for the 2001–13 period. Our research provides important benchmarks for use by individual researchers and universities for matters such as promotion and tenure decisions. For example, each Canadian-based faculty member had approximately 0.50 of a weighted article for the 13-year period, and 45 percent of all accounting faculty members published at least once in a top-10 accounting journal. We also provide an overview of the type of research being published by Canadian-based researchers in each of the top-10 journals (financial accounting, managerial, audit, tax or other) and we assess how productivity at top-10 journals has changed over time. In supplemental analysis, we compare and contrast the productivity of the 15 male and 15 female academics that publish most in top-10 accounting journals to assess the breadth of outlets being used beyond top-10 outlets (including FT 45 journals, accounting journals ranked “A”, “B”, and “non-A/B”; non-accounting peer-reviewed journals, non-peer-reviewed outlets). The supplemental analysis also helps to shed light on the finding from this paper, and prior research, that women are less likely to be represented on lists of those with most publications in highly ranked accounting journals, by comparing the two groups of researchers across a variety of institutional and other factors.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to present a method for a structured literature review (SLR). An SLR is a method for examining a corpus of scholarly literature, to develop insights, critical reflections, future research paths and research questions. SLRs are common in scientific disciplines dominated by quantitative approaches, but they can be adapted in accounting studies since quantitative and qualitative approaches are commonly accepted.
Design/methodology/approach
– A literature review, as a piece of academic writing, must have a logical, planned structure. The authors also argue it requires tests based on qualitative and quantitative methods. Therefore, the authors describe ten steps for developing an SLR.
Findings
– The SLR method is a way that scholars can stand “on the shoulders of giants” and provide insightful and impactful research that is different to the traditional authorship approaches to literature reviews.
Research limitations/implications
– Traditional literature reviews can have varied results because of a lack of rigour. SLRs use a process that, through a set of rules, potentially offers less bias and more transparency of the execution and measures and techniques of validation and reliability.
Practical implications
– SLRs provide an approach that can help academics to discover under-investigated topics and methods, nurturing, therefore, the development of new knowledge areas and research approaches.
Originality/value
– The paper presents accounting researchers with an opportunity to develop insightful and publishable studies, and also serves as a basis for developing future research agendas in the accounting field. The authors advocate the SLR method especially to higher degree research students and emerging scholars as a way of potentially developing robust and defensible research agendas and questions.
Public housing in Nunavut is a critical service that has been plagued by overcrowding, health and safety issues, and in recent years, significant cost overruns. Accountability is an integral part of public service delivery and democratic governance. In this paper, an investigative framework for examining accountability for the delivery of public housing in Nunavut is proposed. A model of accountability relationships is used to provoke a critical examination of the mechanisms fostering, examining and reporting on accountability. A simplified illustration is provided that examines the issue of reporting requirements and accountability between the Government of Nunavut, the Nunavut Housing Corporation and a Local Housing Organization.
Australian Indigenous people are under-represented in accounting studies and in the accounting profession. As part of an investigation of the cause of this situation such that it can be overcome, this project addresses the relevant study choices of high-school students in Darwin. Through semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, it is found that diverse cultural issues have significant impact on Indigenous students' study options and study success, that there are important differences between urban Indigenous students and remote Indigenous students, and that addressing merely attendance, literacy and numeracy issues is unlikely to make an impact on students' study choices as they relate to accounting.
The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software solutions ‘Leximancer’, ‘Crawdad’, and ‘Wordle’, and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed-method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three-step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results.
The current study starts from the premise that accounting techniques and calculations have been, and continue to be, implicated in the colonization and genocide of Canada’s first nations. Relying upon previous literature concerned with governmentality, colonialism and genocide, it is proposed that accounting techniques helped to translate (neo)-colonial policies into practice with (un)intended genocidal outcomes. Through an examination of historical examples, the analyses highlight how accounting techniques helped to translate policies of conquest, annihilation, containment and assimilation into practice, with the resultant outcomes of reproductive genocide, cultural genocide and ecocide.
This paper explores the accountability relationship between the Government of Canada and First Nations Bands arising from Program Devolution. Reporting requirements associated with this relationship have been characterized in a 2002 Report of the Auditor General of Canada as burdensome and of little use to many of the First Nations communities that are compelled to meet them. This study examines the reporting requirements used in the Auditor General ’s report and drawing on institutional theory and accountability literature develops a theoretically informed argument positioning Program Devolution, as it was practiced, as a colonizing undertaking that undermines self-government.
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BackgroundIn 2004 the concept of evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) was introduced at the ICSE04 conference.AimsThis study assesses the impact of systematic literature reviews (SLRs) which are the recommended EBSE method for aggregating evidence.MethodWe used the standard systematic literature review method employing a manual search of 10 journals and 4 conference proceedings.ResultsOf 20 relevant studies, eight addressed research trends rather than technique evaluation. Seven SLRs addressed cost estimation. The quality of SLRs was fair with only three scoring less than 2 out of 4.ConclusionsCurrently, the topic areas covered by SLRs are limited. European researchers, particularly those at the Simula Laboratory appear to be the leading exponents of systematic literature reviews. The series of cost estimation SLRs demonstrate the potential value of EBSE for synthesising evidence and making it available to practitioners.
This paper provides one review of the social accounting literature of the last 25 years or so with particular attention to the role played by Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) in its development. The principal theme of the essay is that social accounting, at its best, is designed to open up a space for new accountings between the ‘conventional' accounting literature and practice and the ‘alternative' critiques and theorising. It seeks to do this, as the title suggests, through privileging — even demanding — engagement and imaginings of new accountings that — it seems inevitable — owe at least as much to pragmatism as to critique. Despite many poor beginnings and a heavy weight of substantive critique, the social accounting project(s) are advancing and are increasingly informed by the alternative/critical projects. The way forward proposed is for social accounting to both draw more from the wealth of theorising and, simultaneously, to take more confidence in itself and learn how to write up — and publish — the extensive experience of engagement which is so central to social accounting.
This paper explores the role of systematic reviews of research literature and considers what they have to offer research in science education. The origins of systematic reviews are described, together with the reasons why they are currently attracting considerable attention in the research literature. An overview is presented of the key features of systematic review methods, illustrating with examples from two systematic reviews undertaken in science education — one on aspects of small-group work in science lessons, and the other on the effects on pupils of context-based and Science-Technology-Society approaches. Issues raised by systematic reviews in terms of characterizing research studies and making judgements about their quality are then discussed. Finally, systematic reviews are compared with more traditional narrative reviews to identify ways in which they can contribute to the undertaking of research studies in a science education.
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines have become the most relevant institution in sustainability reporting standards, highly adopted by organizations worldwide. However, much criticism has been raised about these standards’ ability to further sustainable development within organizations and render their sustainability performance more accountable and transparent. Using a case study of Hydro-Québec, an important hydro-electricity provider in Quebec, Canada, and its relationship with the Cree, an Indigenous community, the purpose of this study is to provide theoretical and empirical insights on the subject by showing how GRI guidelines, legitimized and reinforced through their institutionalization, tend to create a limited scope and an incomplete picture of the organization’s sustainability performance reporting. More specifically, this paper highlights two main problems arising from the use of these standards. First, drawing on the ideology of numbers of Chelli and Gendron (2013), this paper examines how GRI technocratic guidelines frame the sustainability reporting discourse, thereby contributing to leaving aspects of organizational sustainability performance in the shadows. Second, drawing on the ontological typology of Descola (2013), this study examines how these guidelines are ontologically driven by a Western view of nature. This contributes to silencing alternative ontologies in organizational sustainability performance reporting.
Introduction Business ethics as an academic field is a relatively young discipline. The well-established journals in the field, Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Business Ethics: A European Review, were founded as recently as the 1980s. Early research focused primarily on philosophical discussions of moral values, thereby relying heavily on its origins, namely ethics and philosophy, not so much on business and management studies. Today, the picture has changed, which is due to new emerging subdisciplines such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) or sustainability that are subsumed under the umbrella of business ethics. As these concepts are rooted in business studies, the normative and conceptual approach with which the discipline started is slowly being challenged by empirical, positivist paths. As one of the major concepts in business ethics (Ma et al. 2012), CSR accounts for 86% of the current empirical research (Taneja et al. 2011). Some researchers see this as a process of maturation of the field (Calabretta et al. 2011), while others speak of a marginalization of the theoretical approaches (van Liedekerke & Dubbink 2008). A trend toward more quantification of the research area, however, is not deniable, as the book Empirically Informed Ethics (Christen et al. 2014) describes. Although in the Journal of Business Ethics, the percentage of empirical articles rose from 2.9% in 1982 to 35% in 2008 (Robertson 1993; Calabretta et al. 2011), the use of research methods is not very systematic – to say the least. The bulk of quantitative studies over the past 30 years consisted of survey methods, be it questionnaires or any type of interviews (Randall & Gibson 1990; Crane 1999). Qualitative research, on the other hand, was conducted using predominantly case studies. Those case studies were usually kept open and unstructured, with a low level of standardization (e.g. Brigley 1995). Thus, empirical studies in the field of business ethics borrowed either from ethics using case studies or from organizational research relying heavily on survey data. This rather limited application of research methods leaves the field vulnerable to criticism from other, more empirically oriented disciplines, and also restrains the gaining of intersubjectively comparable insights into business ethics questions.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chain management (SCM) has gained an increasing research attention in recent years. Extant studies have discussed stakeholder interests, performance evaluation, ethical sourcing, and sustainable production. The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic study quantitatively depicting the knowledge structure and the intellectual progress of CSR for SCM. This research adopts bibliometric analysis in conjunction with network analysis to systematically evaluate the CSR-related publications for SCM. The analysis involves 628 peer-reviewed articles identified with careful selection of influential work. Data analytic techniques including citation analysis, co-citation analysis and co-word analysis are used. Key findings for researchers include (1) an analytical discussion of the five sub-fields that constitute the intellectual structure of CSR for SCM; (2) Theoretical and conceptual research significantly dominate in this field; (3) The topics of sustainable development and economic and social effects are more frequently discussed among scholars; (4) Key research gaps include lacking of practical and normative modeling research, and considering from the supplier perspectives in emerging economies. The findings suggests that future research would emerge a greater depth of practical and modeling analysis to enrich the theories.
Public housing in Nunavut is a critical service that has been plagued by overcrowding, health and safety issues, and in recent years, significant cost overruns. Accountability is an integral part of public service delivery and democratic governance. In this paper, an investigative framework for examining accountability for the delivery of public housing in Nunavut is proposed. A model of accountability relationships is used to provoke a critical examination of the mechanisms fostering, examining and reporting on accountability. A simplified illustration is provided that examines the issue of reporting requirements and accountability between the Government of Nunavut, the Nunavut Housing Corporation and a local housing organisation.
This study examines the historical usage of accounting as a technology of government within the domain of government-indigenous peoples relations in Canada. Our thesis is that accounting was salient within the chain of circumstances that influenced the discovery/identification of indigenous peoples as a governable population. By the 1830s, accounting techniques had come to occupy a central place in the military machinery of empire. When the cost-cutting and reformist sentiments prevalent in Britain during the early 1800s encouraged the reconsideration of the military costs of empire, accounting techniques were one of the methods used in the attempt to interrogate military expenditures. Partially as a result of these interrogations, indigenous peoples came to be identified as a site for cost cutting by British bureaucrats. However, it was at the level of the colonial administration in the Upper and Lower Canadas that the competing demands of “government” encouraged indigenous peoples to be viewed as a potential site for government. And it was once this “discovery” was made that accounting and other techniques were utilized in the attempt to turn indigenous peoples into a governable population. This study contributes to our understanding of accounting by documenting the ways in which techniques such as accounting were central to the military machinery of empire and British imperialism. The study also contributes to our understanding of the historical antecedents that shape current-day usages of accounting as a technology of government within the domain of government-First Nations relations.
This paper is concerned with building a descriptive model of the relationship between First Nations bands and the Federal Government of Canada that has emerged as a result of programme devolution. By unpacking and reconstructing the components of the accountability relationship we identify incompatibilities between notions of the relationship espoused by both parties (and others). The model depicts a relationship that contrasts First Nations views of what the accountability relationship should be and the views of the Canadian Government regarding what programme devolution actually is. This model will be useful for understanding the complexity of accountability between the Government of Canada and First Nations and can inform efforts to improve the relationship between them.
This article explores how to search and critique the research literature. This involves explaining how to generate a robust literature review question, search databases in the most effective manner and produce a robust analysis of the literature. The article also outlines how a novice literature reviewer might develop the skills required to undertake a critical analysis of the available evidence. In this manner, the reader is able to present a coherent debate on the state of the literature and how this might be used to construct a comprehensive rationale for why further research or analysis of clinical practice may be needed in relation to a particular topic of interest.
First Nations people have both a Constitutional and a Treaty right to education; however, the Crown's jurisdictional obligations to provide educational services have not lead to similar educational opportunities and attainment achievement for First Nations students as compared to Canadian students in provincial schools. Canada's Auditor General, in 2000, stated that Indian and Northern Affairs Canada could not demonstrate that it reached the objective to assist First Nations students on reserve in achieving their educational needs and aspirations. In 2004, the Auditor General noted a widening achievement gap.. Using statistical information from the Department of Indian Affairs and the Auditor General to consider educational financial accountability, the author argues that equitable financial resources are required to support First Nations students in band-managed schools.
We compile and analyze the reference lists from papers published in nine accounting journals over the period 1996-2011 to identify the individual antecedent works that have been cited the most often by accounting research. We conduct our analyses separately for different topical areas (audit, financial, managerial, tax, other) and research methodologies (archival, experimental, theoretical, other). We then present and discuss lists of the individual works that are most heavily cited by each category. Our results should be useful to Ph.D. students and those who train them in identifying important prior work that continues to motivate and provide a foundation for contemporary accounting research.
There is a recent body of accounting literature that articulates a role for accounting in enabling the dispossession and devastation of Indigenous peoples in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand. This literature covers the events of several hundred years and informs an understanding of the transformation of Indigenous lifestyles under colonization. In so doing, the literature largely focuses on accounting “for” Indigenous peoples rather than accounting “by” Indigenous peoples. This article urges a change that emphasizes and encourages new directions for the literature. The article begins with a discussion of relevant publications and their themes, including some discussion on the genesis of this literature. From there, the article articulates the need for multiple perspectives and a more nuanced accounting history that acknowledges Indigenous peoples as subjects with agency rather than disempowered objects. Then, by way of illustration, the article provides a description of four potential research projects in the Canadian context.
Historical research in accounting has recently expanded to include studies of race, gender, and class and their impact on accounting. Building on Lehman's gender research (1992), recent work includes studies of the exclusion of Spanish women, African Americans, Maori women, and black South Africans from the practice of public accountancy and the marginalisation and deskilling of working-class accounting positions in the UK. Analyses have been conducted examining the role of the British profession in forestalling indigenisation in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Kenya. This research on the accounting profession, in turn, has led to research on the impact of accounting practices on oppressed groups. While this widening of research areas is a welcome change, this article calls for more explicitly political motivations for historical accounting research and an ever-present focus on how this research can help ameliorate current oppressive conditions in which accounting plays a role.
Reviews 25 years of social and environmental accounting literature in an attempt to evaluate the position and answer the question posed in the title, as well as to provide a structure or classification for others to use. In order to structure the task, uses three time periods: 1971-1980; 1981-1990; and 1991-1995, and classifies the literature into several sub-groups including empirical studies, normative statements, philosophical discussion, non-accounting literature, teaching programmes and textbooks, regulatory frameworks, and other reviews. Attempts, after the classification, to synthesize an overall chronological position. Concludes that there is something to celebrate after 25 years. However, the continued success of this field is dependent on a relatively small number of researchers, writers, and specialized journals without which there would be the danger of a collapse of interest and a loss of what has been gained so far. Consequently, the provision of a place in the advanced undergraduate and graduate curriculum is a major task for the next decade. Argues that appropriately qualified and motivated professionals are needed to contribute to environmental policy and management in both the public and private sectors. However, appropriate educational programmes have not been evident to date.
The current study explores the ambiguity of accounting technique in the context of a historical study of the Canadian Indian Department under the direction of Deputy Superintendent D.C. Scott at the beginning of the 20th century. Starting from the work of Bauman and his commentators, we argue that modernity viewed as a set of practices and thought patterns, facilitates bureaucratic constructions of the “Indian problem” In turn, this cultural milieu and bureaucratic construction operated as an ideological circle, encouraging the use of accounting techniques of governance that permitted both the distancing of bureaucrats from indigenous peoples and the downplaying of other vantage points. However, as our analysis highlights, numerical re-presentations also provided the tools and rhetorical spaces for challenges to government policy.
The 1860–1900 period was both the “birth” of Canada but also the birth and institutionalization of a specific set of social relations between the federal government and First Nations peoples. This study examines the roles played by accounting and funding relations within the process of nation building. Throughout this formative period in Canada’s history, governance was attempted via the introduction of financial legislation and enacted by the Indian Department and agents in the field. As our analysis highlights, legislative initiatives, Indian Department pronouncements and the activities of agents imposed, enlisted and implied a variety of accounting technologies. This study not only explores how the federal government has used accounting/funding mechanisms in the attempt to translate government policy regarding indigenous peoples into practice but also provides a history of the present by examining the historical consequences of these interventions.
In the seventeenth century, the Haudenosaunee League of Five Nations introduced wampum belts as part of an elaborate set of political proceedings, which strictly regulated political protocol between First Nations and Europeans. Serving as mnemonic aids to recall political agreements and guaranteeing the authenticity and sincerity of these diplomatic promises, some wampum belts paralleled European written treaties in their ability to record and preserve agreements. Today, the Haudenosaunee consider the Friendship Belt and the Two Row Wampum, repatriated to the Six Nations community at Grand River, Ontario, from the Museum of the American Indian-Heye Foundation (mai-hf) in 1988, to be two of the most important treaties of Haudenosaunee-European diplomatic relations.
North American academics and the Haudenosaunee agree that the Friendship Belt represents the Covenant Chain alliance, established between the Haudenosaunee and the English in 1677 to guarantee an everlasting peace between brothers. Both the Haudenosaunee and the Europeans presented a number of these white wampum belts with two purple figures, united by the metaphorical chain, at many conferences in order to remind each other of their steadfast friendship. According to contemporary Haudenosaunee oral tradition, a related treaty that also encompasses Haudenosaunee-European relations, the Two Row Wampum, predates the Covenant Chain alliance as the oldest treaty ratified between the League and the Europeans in the early seventeenth century. Cayuga Chief Jake Thomas, one of the foremost authorities in Haudenosaunee culture, described how the Two Row Wampum outlines a guarantee of independence in its structure and metaphors. The
wampum's parallel purple lines represent the Haudenosaunee canoe and the European ship, comprising the laws, traditions, and customs of their respective people. Each vessel travels down the river of life, represented by the white wampum background, never interfering with the other. The underlying principles of both these relationships flow from the Haudenosaunee epic of the Great Peace, in which the Peacemaker Deganawidah united the warring Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations in a League of perpetual brotherhood.
Today evidence of a treaty relationship incarnated by the Two Row Wampum and the Friendship Belt helps provide the foundation for assertions of sovereignty and self-government, as the Haudenosaunee call upon the Canadian and American governments to respect their historic pledges. The Friendship Belt and the Two Row Wampum repatriated to Grand River in 1988, however, possessed entirely different meanings, according to T. R. Roddy, a private collector who bought them at the end of the nineteenth century along with nine other belts that eventually wound up in the mai-hf. As will be shown, the Friendship Belt seems to represent the ancient Covenant Chain alliance, while the provenance of the Two Row Wampum's meaning seems to be much more recent, having verbalized an ancient assumption of autonomy towards the end of the nineteenth century, when Haudenosaunee sovereignty and survival was most threatened. Although the message of autonomy today incarnated by the Two Row Wampum undoubtedly dates from the early contact era, the more modern association of this innate understanding with a physical belt renders the official ratification of the Two Row Wampum with European parties unlikely. This examination of the historic origins of the ambiguous Two Row Wampum and of the better-established Friendship Belt is crucial because the Haudenosaunee base political demands upon their contemporary interpretations.
Much like a detective novel, this article will explore the evolution of the custodianship and meaning of these two belts, by examining four points of exchange in their histories. First, although it is impossible to trace the exact historical moment at which the Haudenosaunee and the English first exchanged the Grand River Friendship and Two Row belts, early diplomatic exchanges demonstrate the protocol and symbolism necessary to forge relationships by wampum. Secondly, the controversial acquisition of the Friendship Belt and the Two Row Wampum (along with nine other belts) by T. R. Roddy illustrates another exchange in the life of these objects, from revered indigenous recording systems to simple commodities in the eyes of the collectors. Thirdly, George G. Heye...
The view is taken that the study of diverse cultures can contribute to the development of environmental accounting and reporting. The focus is upon seeking to articulate insights from three indigenous cultures: the Australian Aboriginal, the Maori and the Native American. These cultures, alive today, provide relevant insights for those concerned with challenging mainstream and Western practices and seeking to develop alternatives. Attention is focused on these insights and it is hoped that further research will be stimulated.
Traditionally, mainstream cross-cultural accounting research has applied a societal norms and values measure to the examination of differences in culture. This approach is limited, however, because it effectively disfranchises the culture of minority groups such as indigenous peoples within nations. Our paper provides evidence of cultural differences between indigenous Australian values and the Western capitalist values implicit in the language of accounting and accountability. Utilising an alternative yin/yang framework developed for accounting by Hines, we argue that the core indigenous yin values of sharing, relatedness and kinship obligations inherent in indigenous conceptions of work and land, are incompatible with the yang values of quantification, objectivity, efficiency, productivity, reason and logic imposed by accounting and accountability systems. This conflict of values then brings into question the impact of accounting and accountability systems on the indigenous peoples of Australia whose beliefs, norms and values are organised differently. The need to address such a conflict is critical for all of the world’s indigenous peoples. Perhaps even more so for the Australian indigenous peoples because of the insistence by governments, at both the state and federal levels, that the extreme social and economic disadvantages experienced by the Australian indigenous peoples can be dissipated by the imposition of strict financial accountability measures for all indigenous organisations and representative bodies. We argue that the demonstrated conflict of values is a significant reason for the inability of accounting and accountability systems to deliver such social and economic outcomes. The research findings of non-indigenous researchers are largely drawn on in this paper. The two authors of this paper are not indigenous people and therefore we are speaking “of” indigenous culture and not “speaking for” them.
Content analysis is a method for analysing the content of a variety of data, such as visual and verbal data. It enables the reduction of phenomena or events into defined categories so as to better analyse and interpret them. This paper provides an overview of content analysis from a marketing perspective. The basic concepts and techniques are presented for operationalising content analyses. As a methodology, it can be both qualitative, usually in developmental stages of research, and quantitative where it is applied to determine frequency of phenomena. Thus, it lends itself to the use of computers to analyse data and, therefore, some of the main packages currently available to researchers are mentioned. The benefits and limitations of adopting content analysis are discussed along with an introduction to sequential analysis, a complementary approach which may be used to enhance understanding and strengthen research design.
The primary purpose of the current study is to identify how human resource development (HRD) research has contributed to the knowledge base across social science disciplines during the past two decades. We identified the top 20 Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) journal articles that have been most frequently cited in research articles published in journals other than the four AHRD journals. With the use of content analysis of the most-cited articles, three key research themes were identified: (a) training transfer and evaluation, (b) learning in organizations, and (c) knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. The research contributions of HRD within the field of HRD and across disciplines are discussed.
Purpose
The paper aims to describe the construction of this AAAJ special issue as an exercise in creating and consolidating social space for innovative accounting research.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of prior literature and the events leading to this AAAJ issue are used to provide a context for the articles appearing in the issue.
Findings
The paper suggests that accounting research is implicated in subalternity in complex ways, both through its construction of the subject of research and in its attempts to reproduce accounting researchers habituated to Western academic norms and practices.
Research limitations/implications
The paper sets out some conditions for innovative accounting research on less developed countries and indigenous peoples.
Originality/value
This journal issue is an attempt to expand research space by bringing together authors from different areas of accounting research, as well as a consolidation of vibrant existing streams of research. The paper introduces the special issue.
The definitions of the term bibliometrics as used in the literature are examined and evaluated. Most such definitions are held to be too broad. A new definition is proposed; then its advantages and possible defects pointed out. A crucial question is whether Zipf's law of word occurrence should be considered a part of this particular sub-discipline.
This paper is concerned to articulate the experiences of Maori women in the accountancy profession of Aotearoa/New Zealand. It seeks to give Maori women accountants a ‘voice’, listen to their ‘stories’ and to offer some insights into the continuing impact of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s imperialist history in shaping their experiences. In doing so, our study contributes to an understanding of how the processes of colonisation within the context of the accountancy profession continue to impact on these women’s lives in particular, and Maori culture in general. We contend that the accountancy profession and its organisations need to acknowledge and begin to listen to Maori women’s experiences in order to address their concerns by working with Maori women. We also suggest that unless effective policies and strategies are developed to address the needs of Maori women, the similar needs of Maori clients might also not be met.
This paper responds to the call by Broadbent et al. [Acc. Aud. Acc. J. 10 (1997) 265] to provide more diverse views about the social reality for those ‘on the margins’ of accounting. It seeks to discuss Maori research methodologies, which encompass a ‘local’ theoretical perspective through which the emancipatory goal of critical theory can be practiced. We here argue that the Western tradition of research has not been sympathetic towards Maori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand, taking for granted the hegemony of its search for knowledge. As a result Maori researchers have sought to develop and promote appropriate methodologies for research for, by and with Maori, now referred to as Kaupapa Maori research. Kaupapa Maori (Maori practices and policies) may be considered a counter-hegemonic approach to Western forms of research. It seeks to ensure that research with indigenous peoples is more respectful, ethical, sympathetic and useful.
This study examines how techniques of governance have been used in the Chiapas and Oka contexts to translate abstract governmental polices pertaining to indigenous peoples into concrete administrative practices. Starting from the literatures on governmentality and subaltern studies, we examine how financial and monetary relations intersected with techniques of force in the attempted governance of indigenous peoples. The analysis demonstrates the eternally optimistic but perpetually failing nature of such technologies. It also illustrates the irony of financial relations in that such techniques are often “costly” when resistance occurs.
The Oka Crises, Gustafsen Lake, Ipperwash. This last decade of visible confrontations between the Canadian army/police and first nations people have been, and are, about land. Land that the First nations' people claim is rightfully theirs and which the government claims has been appropriately paid for. But what constitutes a purchase, were these exchanges ever completed, and what role(s) did accounting play in not only these particular exchanges but in the process of colonization itself? The current study returns to the 1830–1860 period in an attempt to answer these questions. Starting from a “governmentality” perspective, we argue that accounting discourses and techniques were located within the logic of imperialism and enmeshed within colonial systems of government. More specifically, we observe accounting discourses being used to rationalize colonial relations, and accounting techniques being used as both a general and specific mode of colonial government.
Undertaking a review of the literature is an important part of any research project. The researcher both maps and assesses the relevant intellectual territory in order to specify a research question which will further develop the knowledge base. However, traditional 'narrative' reviews frequently lack thoroughness, and in many cases are not undertaken as genuine pieces of investigatory science. Consequently they can lack a means for making sense of what the collection of studies is saying. These reviews can be biased by the researcher and often lack rigour. Furthermore, the use of reviews of the available evidence to provide insights and guidance for intervention into operational needs of practitioners and policymakers has largely been of secondary importance. For practitioners, making sense of a mass of often-contradictory evidence has become progressively harder. The quality of evidence underpinning decision-making and action has been questioned, for inadequate or incomplete evidence seriously impedes policy formulation and implementation. In exploring ways in which evidence-informed management reviews might be achieved, the authors evaluate the process of systematic review used in the medical sciences. Over the last fifteen years, medical science has attempted to improve the review process by synthesizing research in a systematic, transparent, and reproducible manner with the twin aims of enhancing the knowledge base and informing policymaking and practice. This paper evaluates the extent to which the process of systematic review can be applied to the management field in order to produce a reliable knowledge stock and enhanced practice by developing context-sensitive research. The paper highlights the challenges in developing an appropriate methodology.
The original title of this paper was “Power, Desire, Interest.”1 Indeed, whatever power these meditations command may have been earned by a politically interested refusal to push to the limit the founding presuppositions of my desires, as far as they are within my grasp. This vulgar three-stroke formula, applied both to the most resolutely committed and to the most ironic discourse, keeps track of what Althusser so aptly named “philosophies of denegation.”2 I have invoked my positionality in this awkward way so as to accentuate the fact that calling the place of the investigator into question remains a meaningless piety in many recent critiques of the sovereign subject. Thus, although I will attempt to foreground the precariousness of my position throughout, I know such gestures can never suffice.
Audit engagements in the context of Indigenous communities: Decoupling auditing standards from practice
- O L Couchoux
- Daoust
- Malsch
Couchoux, O., L. Daoust, and B. Malsch. 2020. Audit engagements in the context of Indigenous
communities: Decoupling auditing standards from practice. Working paper presented at the
2019 CPA Centre for Governance & Accountability, Queen's University.
Indigenous financial management: Finally finding balance
- Conference Board
- N Canada
Conference Board of Canada. n.d. Indigenous financial management: Finally finding balance.
https://www.conferenceboard.ca/focus-areas/indigenous-northern-communities/future-skills/
indigenous-financial-management, accessed December 11, 2020.