Showing papers in "Accounting Organizations and Society in 1993"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the development of our conceptions of the roles of ability, knowledge, motivation, and environment as determinants of decision performance in accounting settings, and provide a synthesis of the basic constructs, conceptual relations, and methodological guidelines that can be inferred from this diverse literature.
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to trace the development of our conceptions of the roles of ability, knowledge, motivation, and environment as determinants of decision performance in accounting settings, and provide a synthesis of the basic constructs, conceptual relations, and methodological guidelines that can be inferred from this diverse literature. We first outline the key characteristics of accounting settings and research principles appropriate for examining the characteristics. The primary emphasis is on identifying interactions between determinants of performance, specifying underlying cognitive processes, and abstraction based on theory and task analysis. We then demonstrate how selected studies which follow these basic principles have greatly enhanced our understanding of accounting-related decisions. Finally, suggestions for future research are presented.
596 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a genealogies of calculation, in contrast to traditional accounting history, focusing on the outcomes of the past, rather than a quest for the origins of the present.
Abstract: This paper calls firstly for genealogies of calculation, in contrast to traditional accounting history. The term genealogy conveys a focus on the outcomes of the past, rather than a quest for the origins of the present. It is intended to avoid an a priori limiting of the field of study to accounting as it currently exists, or to a particular accounting technique such as double-entry bookkeeping. And it entails an emphasis on the historical contingency of contemporary practices, a concern with the multiple and dispersed surfaces of emergence of disparate practices of economic calculation. Secondly, the paper emphasizes the discursive nature of calculation, the language and vocabularies in which a particular practice is articulated, the ideals attached to certain calculative technologies. Thirdly, the paper stresses the importance of attending to ensembles of practices and rationales that are assembled at various collective levels, rather than with isolated instances of this or that way of accounting. The delineation of the domain of traditional accounting history is illustrated by reference to three sets of issues: the links between double-entry bookkeeping and capitalism in the writings of Weber and Sombart; the links between bookkeeping practice and decision making in the writings of Yamey; and the quest for examples of “early management accounting” in the writings of those such as Edwards and Fleischman & Parker. In contrast to such concerns of accounting history, four genealogies are presented: the promotion of discounted cash-flow techniques for investment decisions in the U.K. in the 1960s; the emergence of costs in the late eighteenth century; the accounting for value added event in Britain in the late 1970s; and the construction of standard costing in the early decades of the twentieth century.
460 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use the institutional perspective to extend the conceptualization of case-mix accounting systems and propose that many elements of organizational structure reflect as much a need to conform to societal expectations of acceptable practice as the technical imperative of fostering rationality.
Abstract: Case-mix accounting systems have been advanced as both reflecting the economic reality that underlies a hospital's various “product lines”, as defined by DRG prospective payment categories, and facilitating rational decision making regarding resource acquisition, deployment and use. This article uses the institutional perspective to extend this conceptualization of case-mix accounting systems. The institutional perspective proposes that many elements of organizational structure, like case-mix accounting systems, reflect as much a need to conform to societal expectations of acceptable practice as the technical imperative of fostering rationality. This article also extends institutional theory regarding the issues of power and decoupling by considering institutionalization to be an unfinished process in the health-care context, wherein the active agency of individuals and organizations is subjected to systematic examination. In this specific context, case-mix accounting may play a significant role in establishing and perpetuating — not merely supporting — the very social structure of legitimacy, and may consequently be considered an interest-oriented activity having the potential to penetrate and alter the internal operating processes of financially strained hospitals.
407 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that large U.S. manufacturing companies with better reputations for social responsibility outperformed companies with poorer reputations during the six-year period 1982-1987, and provided investors better stock market returns and lower risk.
Abstract: During the 1980s there was a rapid growth in the United States of ethical, or socially responsible, investing Popular wisdom suggests that investors following this strategy may be trading off economic returns for psychic utility. However, in this paper we show that large U.S. manufacturing companies with better reputations for social responsibility outperformed companies with poorer reputations during the six-year period 1982–1987, and provided investors better stock market returns and lower risk. The implications of these findings for the information content of accounting systems in a social welfare context, and for prescriptions in the business policy literature advocating a proactive social policy, are discussed.
362 citations
TL;DR: This paper used field observations of two audit engagements to interpret auditing as a ritual which transforms the financial statements of corporate management from an inherently untrustworthy state into a form that the auditors and the public can be comfortable with.
Abstract: Field observations of two audit engagements are used to interpret auditing as a ritual which transforms the financial statements of corporate management from an inherently untrustworthy state into a form that the auditors and the public can be comfortable with. The analysis draws on Collins' theory of interaction ritual chains (American Journal of Sociology, 1981, pp. 984–1014) to create an interpretative theory of auditing which offers insights into both the micro-level interactions within the audit team and the macro-level role of auditing in the economic order.
361 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how these processes were closely linked and reveal the important part played by gender, by which they mean "knowledge about sexual difference" in the development of the occupation of accountant in relation to that of clerk.
Abstract: In the period from 1870 to 1930, accountancy in England and Wales emerged from being an ill-defined commercial occupation into an established profession During the same period, the occupation of clerk was progressively downgraded and feminized Whilst previous studies have examined these processes in detail, they have examined them separately In this paper, we show how these processes were closely linked and reveal the important part played by gender, by which we mean “knowledge about sexual difference” (Scott, 1988, p 2), in the development of the occupation of accountant in relation to that of clerk A particular focus of the paper is the ways in which gendered discourses of professionalism were deployed by the early accountancy bodies to establish and legitimate the difference between, not simply accountants and women, but between accountants and men in related occupations, such as clerks and bookkeepers We argue that establishing this difference was crucial to the construction of the “professional accountant” and the “success” of the professionalization project We conclude that by 1930, the “professional accountant” had come to be constituted, in part, as something that is “not a clerk or a bookkeeper” and, in part, as “something that is “not a woman”
324 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the influence of culture and personality on the relation between reliance on accounting performance measures in the evaluative style of superiors and work-related attitudes of subordinates was examined.
Abstract: This paper reports an examination of the influences of culture and personality on the relation between reliance on accounting performance measures in the evaluative style of superiors and work-related attitudes of subordinates. Hypotheses tests use survey data from respondents in Singapore and Australia. These nations proxy for high power distance and low individualism, and low power distance and high individualism cultures, respectively. Support is found for the influence of culture but not for personality. The results have implications for the design of management accounting systems.
224 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the complex of arguments, claims and strategies that have centered on the factory and manufacturing processes in American industry, and identify three dimensions: problematizations, programmes and technologies.
Abstract: The “rediscovery of the factory” has been one of the key events in American political and economic debates of the past decade. This paper addresses the complex of arguments, claims and strategies that have centered on the factory and manufacturing processes in American industry. These it terms the “politics of the product”. Accounting expertise, defined as a changing set of legitimated claims to competence, is fundamentally implicated in the politics of the product. For accounting expertise has been identified as an important part of the problem, rather than the solution. But the politics of the product is more than a set of claims and arguments. It also involves attempts to change the ways in which production processes are represented and acted upon. Three dimensions are identified: problematizations, programmes and technologies. Current attempts to reform the calculative technologies of accounting, through such mechanisms as activity based costing, are seen to be more than technical devices for better representing new manufacturing systems. Rather, they are considered to be an integral component of a significant shift in modes of corporate governance. Attempts to transform accountancy are held be intrinsically linked to attempts to foster a new form of economic citizenship. Changes in accounting expertise are thus seen to be centrally implicated in transformations in the government of economic life.
223 citations
TL;DR: The difficulty of achieving consistency and control can be partially overcome by combining ideas and actions in two other ways as discussed by the authors, one combination involves justification, and the other hypocrisy, which can be seen as a form of hypocrisy.
Abstract: Popular hierarchical models of organizations and societies contain two assumptions about the relation between the ideas of constituencies and leaders on the one hand and organizational, and societal actions on the other: that ideas and actions are consistent, and that ideas control actions. In this article some practical difficulties in achieving consistency and control are discussed. Consistency is difficult to achieve when what can be done cannot be said and vice versa, and control is difficult to combine with consistency when ideas change more rapidly than action. The difficulty of achieving consistency and control can be partially overcome by combining ideas and actions in two other ways. One combination involves justification, and the other hypocrisy.
220 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a hermeneutical and ethical examination of the activity of giving an account as basic to understanding the moral dimension of accounting practice and research is presented, where the identity of agents is displayed as intersubjective and constituted by fiduciary relations through time.
Abstract: This essay is a hermeneutical and ethical examination of the activity of giving an account as basic to understanding the moral dimension of accounting practice and research. The author argues that this discursive act is one in which the identity of agents is displayed as intersubjective and constituted by fiduciary relations through time. The essay seeks to show that by rendering an identity so conceived, accounting practice opens corporate forces to ethical evaluation regarding wider human purposes. Thus the essay raises to reflection the activity basic to accounting itself. In doing so, it unfolds the structure and significance of this activity for moral identity.
195 citations
TL;DR: A study of managers reading management accounting reports challenges that image, and shows managers to be more potent and inventive creators of meaning than Macintosh and Scapens would suggest as discussed by the authors, and managers draw from a wide range of interpretive schemes, facilities and norms in making their interpretations.
Abstract: The structuration theory of Anthony Giddens has been employed by Macintosh & Scapens (Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1990, pp. 455–477) to argue that management accounting systems are the interpretive schemes, facilities and norms used by managements to make plans, take actions and control others in organizations. A study of managers reading management accounting reports challenges that image, and shows managers to be more potent and inventive creators of meaning than Macintosh and Scapens would suggest. As readers of management accounting reports, managers draw from a wide range of interpretive schemes, facilities and norms in making their interpretations. Management accounting systems may mediate this interpretive process, but they can do so in surprising and unexpected ways.
TL;DR: In this article, an attempt by Victorian accountants to attain a Royal Charter from 1904 to 1906 and its antecedent world dating from 1885 to 1903 is analysed. And the authors argue that "professions" are the dynamic outcome of the mutual interaction of "state" and "profession".
Abstract: Historical analyses of specific professionalization projects and of the profession-state axis have been suggested as possible remedies for the “unexciting routine” into which the sociology of the professions has recently slipped. Accordingly, this essay analyses an attempt by Victorian accountants to attain a Royal Charter from 1904 to 1906 and its antecedent world dating from 1885 to 1903. It tracks the shifting constraints upon, and opportunities available to key players in state agencies and accounting associations. It thereby accounts for the shifts in the aims and strategies of those, the intended and unintended consequences of their actions, and the ultimate outcome of the charter attempt. In doing so it questions the assumption of a tightly defined concept of occupational “monopoly” or “closure” associated with a stable set of strategic imperatives. It also questions the tight coupling of action, interest, and outcome implied by “crude” Marxian analyses, and supports the contention that “professions” are the dynamic outcome of the mutual interaction of “state” and “profession”.
TL;DR: This article examined whether there are systematic offsetting differences in the manner in which initial decision makers and reviewers attend to information which ensure that evidence inconsistent with initial judgments is given adequate consideration. But the results suggest that the review process can act as an effective control by increasing the chances that the implications of inconsistent evidence are considered.
Abstract: This experiment examines whether there are systematic offsetting differences in the manner in which initial decision makers and reviewers attend to information which ensure that evidence inconsistent with initial judgments is given adequate consideration. Differences in attention are proposed, which result in differential recall of evidence by the initial decision maker and reviewer and thus influence what knowledge initial decision makers and reviewers bring to their discussions and subsequent decisions. The results suggest that the review process can act as an effective control by increasing the chances that the implications of inconsistent evidence are considered.
TL;DR: This work identifies specific strategies and tactics for creating a deception and proposes what the knowledge that would lead to the detection of financial statement fraud must be like based on a proposed hierarchy of the manager's (deceiver's) goals.
Abstract: Fraud detection is made difficult in part due to the fact that most auditors have relatively little experience with it. We address the issue of what kind of knowledge supports success in financial statement fraud detection by examining the more general information processing problem of detecting a deception. We define deception as a process in which a deceiver (e.g. management) has intentionally manipulated an environment (a financial statement) so as to elicit a misleading representation in a target agent (e.g. an auditor). We develop a theory of the knowledge that the deceiver and the target use for respectively constructing and detecting deceptions. Drawing on the literature in several fields (e.g. cognitive ethology, military strategy, child development) we identify specific strategies and tactics for creating a deception. We then hypothesize that reasoning about a deceiver's goals is one of the main strategies for detecting deception. We use the strategies and tactics for creating a deception to propose what the knowledge that would lead to the detection of financial statement fraud must be like based on a proposed hierarchy of the manager's (deceiver's) goals. We compare the proposed detection knowledge with the knowledge base of a computer (expert system) model of financial statement fraud detection task that was successful in solving several real fraud cases (and was built independently from the proposed theory). We also compare properties of the detection knowledge proposed in our theory with the knowledge employed by several experienced auditors who performed the task of concurring partner review on one of the fraud cases successfully analyzed by the model.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe accounting as a practice that has no necessary relation to the institutions and practices of a professionalized elite known as "Accountants" and assume that the giving and receiving of economic accounts is a ubiquitous aspect of human experience, and they seek to explain its practice as one of donating intelligibility and understanding to what Etzioni describes as the moral dimension of economic experience.
Abstract: This essay describes accounting as a practice that has no necessary relation to the institutions and practices of a professionalized elite known as “Accountants”. We assume that the giving and receiving of economic accounts is a ubiquitous aspect of human experience, and we seek to explain its practice as one of donating intelligibility and understanding to what Etzioni (The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics, Free Press, 1988) describes as the “moral dimension” of economic experience. Appropriating arguments from the moral philosopher H. Richard Niebuhr, we outline that moral dimension in a way that culminates in the act of giving economic accounts. Then, through the arguments of Paul Ricoeur, we show how the hermeneutical horizon of the economic account can be explained as an analogue to the hermeneutics of speech and the hermeneutics of writing. These two opposed structures of discourse — speech and writing — form a theoretical typology adequate to the task of expanding our sense of what accounting is and what it is not in a way that accomodates the cultural ubiquity of the economic account.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors track the effects of an accounting-based intervention in a rationalized lifeworld that is constituted by three cultural spheres with their associated modes of rationality (instrumental, moral and aesthetic).
Abstract: Accounting research is beginning to concern itself with mapping the operation of accounting in specific empirical settings. This paper has a similar aim — to track the effects of an accounting-based intervention in a rationalized lifeworld that is constituted by three cultural spheres with their associated modes of rationality —instrumental, moral and aesthetic (Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action , Vol. 1, Heinemann, 1984). The institutional setting chosen is the U.S. health-care industry and the empirical event focused upon is the introduction of a prospective payment system in 1983. The empirics raise some interesting suggestions for future research. It appears that accounting struggles as an instrumental technology but enables action by providing a way out of moral dilemmas and in so doing enacts substantive power effects upon human bodies, both individual and collective.
TL;DR: The role of statistical sampling as a social phenomenon complicit in modifying and controlling the accounting profession's abstract system of knowledge has been examined in this paper, where the authors examine the role of group interest in the institutionalization process.
Abstract: Statistical sampling has long been interpreted as a technical means for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of independent audits. This article subjects this interpretation to closer scrutiny from the perspective of institutional theory and the sociology of the professions. The article examines the role of statistical sampling as a social phenomenon complicit in modifying and controlling the accounting profession's abstract system of knowledge. In so doing, the discussion provides a more thorough understanding of the roles of sampling in the auditing profession, and it extends the institutional theory perspective by examining the role of group interest in the institutionalization process.
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the emergence and functioning of modern financial reporting can more plausibly be explained as a response to the rise of investor capitalism, the general socialization of capital which Marx predicted.
Abstract: Conventional accounting history explains the rise of modern financial reporting (MFR) in the U.K. in the late nineteenth century, the publication of independently audited, cost-based accrual accounts, as a response to the appearance of “managerial capitalism”, the “divorce” of ownership from control. It is almost universally accepted that MFR had no clear conceptual foundation and that management was able to manipulate published accounts in its own interests. Many historians assume the result was capital market inefficiency. A minority explicitly assumes capital market efficiency, but also explains MFR as the consequence of management's pursuit of self-interest. However, it is argued here that MFR was clearly conceptualized, and the hypothesis is explored that its emergence and functioning in the late nineteenth century can more plausibly be explained as a response to the rise of “investor capitalism”, the general socialization of capital which Marx predicted. From the 1880s shareholders began to passively hold well-diversified portfolios. Although ownership and control certainly became separated, their nature had fundamentally changed. For the first time in history on a large scale, industrial companies became collectively owned. It is argued that the rise of MFR can be explained as a response to the demand from investors collectively for help in managing the new social relationships which emerged between them and management, and between individual investors. It is concluded that when understood in the social, political and economic contexts in which it functioned, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that late nineteenth-century MFR provided investors with useful information, and that the capital market was efficient.
TL;DR: In this article, the French motor car manufacturer Renault is studied over a forty-year period immediately preceding the Second World War, and it is argued that accounting change at Renault was dependent on a complex set of relationships and preconditions and the specificity of the company's accounting controls was tied to both contemporary and historically distant influences rather than to notions of functional requirements dictated by processes internal to the organisation.
Abstract: This essay focuses on the manner in which an enterprise's accounting practices may be affected by a complex of independent and disparate external factors interacting with internal forces to create a sustained dynamic of change within the organisation. As its object of enquiry, the French motor car manufacturer Renault is studied over a forty-year period immediately preceding the Second World War. The conditioning influences of scientific management and statistical information and their interplay with Renault's costing concerns are examined. The study suggests that accounting change at Renault was dependent on a complex set of relationships and preconditions and that the specificity of the company's accounting controls was tied to both contemporary and historically distant influences rather than to notions of functional requirements dictated by processes internal to the organisation. As such, accounting change is argued to have been determined by circumstance as opposed to essence.
TL;DR: The relationship between management accounting and the rise of the factory system is explored in this paper, where the authors emphasize the way in which periodic reports, rather than ad boc calculations of cost or profit, were interwined with this new organization of work.
Abstract: Despite the substantial body of research which assumes that management accounting was a reflex to the emergence of the factory system, little is known of the relationship between the two. Archival materials are presented in this paper which would suggest a far more complex relationship between accounting and the rise of the factory. In particular, we emphasize the way in which periodic reports, rather than ad boc calculations of cost or profit, were interwined with this new organization of work.
TL;DR: This paper investigated the relationship between job-related tension and managerial performance and found no evidence to support the proposition that participation moderates the relation between job related tension and performance, and they concluded that the relationship is significant and negative.
Abstract: The association between job-related tension and managerial performance has been the subject of speculation and some preliminary research, with little resolution. Four potential reasons for the lack of resolution on this issue are explored in this paper. These are (1) the use of single organizational samples in prior studies, (2) the measurement of managerial performance, (3) the prospect of a curvilinear relation between job-related tension and performance, and (4) the possibility that budgetary participation moderates the association, if any, between job-related tension and performance. By systematically varying both the measurement of managerial performance and the employment of random sampling, the findings of this research suggest that the association between job-related tension and performance is significant and negative. There is no evidence to support the proposition that participation moderates the relation between job-related tension and performance.
TL;DR: The case of life insurance in England is used in this paper to argue that the constitution of risk as the object of insurance is linked to a series of important transformations in the aims and means of the liberal government of the "social" domain.
Abstract: This paper is a contribution to the continuing examination of the linkages and interdependencies between politics and forms of calculation. It uses the case of life insurance in England to argue that the constitution of risk as the object of insurance is linked to a series of important transformations in the aims and means of the liberal government of the “social” domain. Insurance and its associated calculative techniques have been constituted as moral and political technologies and relied upon by a succession of governmental-administrative projects of social regulation culminating in, but not exhausted by, the construction of a state-sponsored “insurantial” apparatus.
TL;DR: In this paper, a disfiguration of accounting as an embodied practice and an appeal for quite speculative refigurations consistent with Irigaray's notion of the feminine imaginary, a pre-discursive space of possible difference.
Abstract: Feminist theory offers a rich array of discourses of value in reflection upon the shape and character of accounting theory and accounting practices. This essay has the dual purpose of broadening the available field of feminist discourse for accounting and demonstrating the relevance of one particular feminist theorist (Luce Irigaray) to accounting. In particular, we appropriate Irigaray's feminist deconstruction of Freudian and Lacanian notions of sexual difference in order to similarly deconstruct some dominant notions of accounting's relation to value, to subjectivity, to intersubjectivity and to sexuality. What emerges is a disfiguration of accounting as an embodied practice and an appeal for quite speculative refigurations consistent with Irigaray's notion of the feminine imaginary, a pre-discursive space of possible difference. Such accounting imaginaries raise new questions about accounting's relation to value, to subjectivity, to intersubjectivity and to sexuality.
TL;DR: Behavioral decision theory (BDT) is concerned with "accounting for decisions" as mentioned in this paper, and it has seen considerable consolidation and expansion in the 1970s with the appearance of the review by Slovic & Lichtenstein ( Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, pp. 549-744, 1971).
Abstract: Behavioral decision theory (BDT) is concerned with “accounting for decisions”. The development of this interdisciplinary field is traced from the appearance of several key publications in the 1950s to the present. Whereas the 1960s saw increasing theoretical and empirical work, the field really started to flourish in the 1970s with the appearance of the review by Slovic & Lichtenstein ( Organizational Behavior and Human Performance , pp. 549–744, 1971), and key papers on probabilistic judgment (Tversky & Kahneman, Science , pp. 1124–1131, 1974), and choice (Kahneman & Tversky, Econometrica , pp. 263–291, 1979). From the early 1980s to the present, BDT has seen considerable consolidation and expansion and its influence now permeates many fields of enquiry. After this brief history, eight major ideas or findings are discussed. These are: (1) that judgment can be modeled; (2) bounded rationality; (3) to understand decision making, understanding the task is more important than understanding the people; (4) levels of aspiration/reference points; (5) use of heuristic rules; (6) the importance of adding; (7) search for confirmation; and (8) thought as construction. Next, comments are addressed to differences between BDT and problem solving/cognitive science. It is argued that whereas many substantive differences are artificial, two distinct communities of researchers do exist. This is followed by a discussion of some major shortcomings currently facing BDT that include questions about the robustness of findings as well as overconcern with a few specific, “paradoxial” results. On the other hand, there are many interesting issues that BDT could address and several specific suggestions are made. Moreover, these issues represent opportunities for accounting research and several are enumerated. Finally, BDT presents “decisions for accounting” in the sense that scarce resources need to be allocated to different types of research that could illuminate accounting issues. The argument is made that BDT is one research metaphor or paradigm that has proved useful in accounting and that should be supported. Such support, however, may mean that some researchers may work on issues that, at first blush, might seem distant from accounting per se .
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the emerging need for theory development and much more extensive task and context analysis with respect to cognition in the professional accounting setting (i.e., accounting, auditing, tax and related subjects about which accounting professionals exercise judgment).
Abstract: The paper discussess the emerging need for theory development and much more extensive task and context analysis with respect to cognition in the professional accounting setting (“accounting” being taken to include the various accounting, auditing, tax and related subjects about which accounting professionals exercise judgment). The paper examines how such theory development and task and context analysis can improve the research and its contribution to understanding the professional settings that are the province of accounting research. Our analysis reflects our proposal that accounting judgment research contribute more strongly to the general body of accounting research, and deal better with practitioners' problems. From our analysis, we conclude that the lack of theory development is associated with several problems in the research, including an over-emphasis on transference of simplified models from psychology, inappropriate use of normative criteria for evaluating performance, and an over-emphasis on accountants and auditors rather than accounting and auditing. We offer a large number of constructive comments about task analysis, theory development and other steps to guide future accounting judgment research.
TL;DR: The authors use the pragmatic concept of deliberation to examine proprietary theory in order to highlight the important role that accounting knowledge and expertise played in resolving the conflict between individualistic economic theories and actual economic conditions in United States.
Abstract: At the turn of the century, an emerging corporate economy created stark contradictions between individualistic economic theories and actual economic conditions in the United States. I use the pragmatic concept of deliberation to examine proprietary theory in order to highlight the important role that accounting knowledge and expertise played in resolving this conflict. The analysis highlights the naturalistic tenor of proprietary discourse and the discrepancy between the discourse and the techniques that proprietary theorists adopted. I conclude with an examination of the commitment that proprietary theorists made, a discussion of how those commitments are reflected in contemporary research, and a suggestion that we adopt a pragmatic perspective to analyse the role of our discipline in today's society.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the impact of national and organizational culture on British and Australian chartered accountants and found that there is a strong interaction between national and organisational culture for accounting firms operating in the U.K. but not in Australia.
Abstract: Soeters & Schreuder ( Accounting, Organizations & Society , pp. 75–85, 1988) examined the interaction between national and organizational culture in accounting firms operating in The Netherlands. This paper is an extension of that research in that we examine the impact of national and organizational culture on British and Australian chartered accountants. U.S. public accountants are also used in the research design as a comparison group. The results show a strong interaction between national and organizational culture for accounting firms operating in the U.K., but are inconclusive for firms operating in Australia. Implications of these results and recommendations for future research are also discussed.
TL;DR: The post-modern modes of accountability project another practice of accounting that would resist reduction to representation and control as discussed by the authors, and this alternative suggests that accounting return to a practical and professional horizon created by such internal goods as narration and acknowledgement.
Abstract: As a practice and a profession, late-modern accounting conceives accountability as representation and control. Post-modern modes of accountability project another practice of accounting that would resist reduction to representation and control. After the fashion of Friedrich Nietzsche, this alternative suggests that accounting “return” to a practical and professional horizon created by such internal goods as narration and acknowledgement. By complementing the economics and politics of representationalism, projects of narration and acknowledgement can gain greater autonomy and integrity for accounting. Especially as accountants address domains outside the modern corporation, these post-modern dimensions of practical accountability become harder to avoid, easier to understand, and better to cultivate.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore relationships between accounting standards and people's inferences and judgments, and show that they are also decision-procedure incomplete on three levels: semantic, pragmatic and institutional.
Abstract: This essay explores relationships between accounting standards and people's inferences and judgments. Acknowledging that Demski's impossibility theorem implies that the standards will be “social-preference incomplete”, the paper shows that they are also “decision-procedure incomplete” on three levels. These levels correspond to three kinds of professional judgment: semantic, pragmatic and institutional. The investigation facilitates understanding of (1) how accountants exercise judgment and deduction in applying incomplete standards; (2) how financial statement readers use the incomplete standards to draw deductive inferences from financial reports which are based on accountants' judgments; (3) the special kinds of judgment required of standard setters; and (4) the meaning and extent of professional liability, given the relationships identified between accounting standards, inferences and judgments.