‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; an issue which embraces themes associated with social and environmental reporting (SAR) and its role in maintaining or creating organisational legitimacy. In an effort to place this research in context the paper begins by making reference to contemporary trends occurring in social and environmental accounting research generally, and this is then followed by an overview of some of the many research questions which are currently being addressed in the area. Understanding motivations for disclosure is shown to be one of the issues attracting considerable research attention, and the desire to legitimise an organisation’s operations is in turn shown to be one of the many possible motivations. The role of legitimacy theory in explaining managers’ decisions is then discussed and it is emphasised that legitimacy theory, as it is currently used, must still be considered to be a relatively under‐developed theory of managerial behaviour. Nevertheless, it is argued that the theory provides useful insights. Finally, the paper indicates how the other papers in this issue of AAAJ contribute to the ongoing development of legitimacy theory in SAR research.

Introduction: The legitimising effect of social and environmental disclosures – a theoretical foundation

Truth and method

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

This essay critically analyses modern social and environmental accounting. First, I argue that modern social and environmental accounting models have been developed based on procedural liberal frameworks that limit the proposals for reform. Second, social and environmental accounting focuses on the corporation as the accounting entity and mistakenly claims to be able to influence it. In developing another way to think and act about the environmental and social role of accounting, I consider whether modern communitarian thought can enrich the democratic process. The aim is to foster debate and dialogue concerning the role of corporations and their impact on nature. I argue that implicit in communitarian theory is a democratic model through which language acts as a means to critically focus on the direction of accounting as an institution in the public sphere.

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/A/Accounting,%20Organizations%20and%20Society/Vol24.Issue3.April1999/255.pdf

Disclosing new worlds: a role for social and environmental accounting and auditing

Environmental reporting in a developing country: a case study on status and implementation in Malaysia

A Legitimate Concern for Environmental Accounting

This article encourages accountants to consider their role in the debates concerning social and environmental accounting. It outlines a placement ethic which provides a framework to explore various schools of thought on social and environmental accounting. A placement ethic uses ideas central to Habermas and Rawls to provide a continuum model to explore whether an arbitrated political consensus concerning social and environmental accounting is a possibility. It also advances some ideas to overcome the procedural limitations of the Rawls-Habermas debate that have been used by accounting reformers. In this context, it is possible to move beyond the usual deadlock between procedure and critique to combine insights from different traditions to construct new critical and democratic social and environmental pathways.

Glen Lehman

Papers

Disclosing new worlds: a role for social and environmental accounting and auditing

Environmental reporting in a developing country: a case study on status and implementation in Malaysia

A Legitimate Concern for Environmental Accounting

Reclaiming the Public Sphere: Problems and Prospects for Corporate Social and Environmental Accounting

A critical perspective on the harmonisation of accounting in a globalising world