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Purpose – This paper examines the changing regimes of governance and the roles of accounting therein in a less developed country (LDC) by using Sri Lanka tea plantations as a case. It captures the changes in a chronological analysis, which identifies four regimes of governance: (a) pre-colonial, (b) colonial, (c) post-colonial and (d) neo-liberal. It shows how dialectics between political state, civil state and the economy affected changes in regimes of governance and accounting through evolving structures, processes and contents of governance.

Methodology – It draws on the works of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi to articulate a political economy framework. It provides contextual accounts from the Sri Lankan political history and case data from its tea plantations for the above chronological analysis.

Findings – The above four regimes of governance had produced four modes of accounting: (a) a system of rituals in the despotic kingship, (b) a system of monitoring and reporting to absentee Sterling capital in the despotic imperialism, (c) a system of ceremonial reporting to state capital in a politicised hegemony and (d) good governance attempts in a politicised hegemony conditioned by global capital. We argue that political processes and historical legacies rather than the assumed superiority of accounting measures gave shape to governance regimes. Governance did not operate in its ideal forms, but ‘good governance’ initiatives revitalised accounting roles across managerial agency to strengthening stewardship rather than penetrating it into the domain of labour controls. Managerial issues emerged from contradictions between political state, civil state and the economy (enterprise) constructed themselves a distinct political domain within which accounting had little role to play, despite the ambitious aims of good governance.

Originality – Most accounting and governance research has used economic theories and provided ahistorical analysis. This paper provides a historically informed chronological analysis using a political economy framework relevant to LDC contexts, and empirically demonstrates how actual governance structures and processes lay in broader socio-political structures, and how the success of good governance depends on the social and political behaviour of these structural properties.

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek argued against planned economies that “the close interdependence of all economic phenomena makes it difficult to stop planning just where we wish…once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree, the planner will be forced to extend his controls till they become all-comprehensive” (Hayek, 1944, p. 79). According to Hayek, and especially Mises, there exists no stable condition in-between laissez faire capitalism and the planned economy. Once politicians engaged in acts of interventionism further interventions would successively lead them towards a condition where the state fully planned and controlled the economy and civil society. According to Austrians, ‘interventionism’ thus represented an unstable and self-reinforcing condition (Burton, 1984, p. 110). In John Gray's words “whenever an interventionist policy…fails to achieve the desires result, the practical and theoretical response of the interventionist ideologue is to demand an extension of the policy to new fields…interventionist policies will always interpret the failure of any such policy, not as a reason in favour of its abandonment, but rather as one supporting its wider application”(Gray, 1984, p. 32).

This paper offers a critique of the theory of market socialism and then proceeds to develop the central point of the argument — that socialism is inherently antithetical to the regulation of social relations by markets — in a more constructive manner. After a brief introduction, a summary of the contemporary market socialist case (second section) and an examination of the conceptual status of the market (third section), it is shown that the institutional arrangements proposed by market socialists are consistently subject to the totalizing rationality of market regulation (fourth section). A critique of market regulation is presented in the subsequent (fifth) section, and some implications for the theorization of the political economy of socialism are drawn out through a discussion of several transformative projects (sixth section). The conclusion outlines a perspective for further enquiry.

Purpose: National business groups in conflict countries may mitigate the civil war or do the converse. When the economy is mainly point-sourced, which means it mainly exports mineral-based products and/or narcotics, the business community (apart from small-businesses associated with services) is likely to be more pro-war, particularly, if the other side may gain control of the lootable commodities, as in secessionist wars. This tendency will be reinforced the closer are business and political ties, shorter the time horizons are and more difficult it is to make credible commitments to peace. If the economy exports mainly agricultural products excluding those mentioned above or manufactures (diffuse or manufacturing) the commercial case for peace is stronger because of the diffused nature of the core business activity. Even so, there will be some groups who profit from war contracts and arms deals. The peace lobby is likely to dominate in societies where business and political actors are more sharply separated, as well as in countries that have longer time horizons and better institutions of commitment. The pro-peace business lobby may have a stronger case in secessionist wars compared to rebellions, as the former are more likely to be longer and more intractable to purely military solutions.

There is still no universal definition of the third sector in Europe, but it can be seen as including all types of non-governmental not-for-profit entities such as non-profit organizations, mutuals, cooperatives, social enterprises and foundations. This article attempts to make sense of the current shifting conceptualization of the third sector in Europe. It is based on short country summaries of the images and concepts of the third sector in 13 European countries by EMES Network’s members, first presented in 2008 (Defourny and Pestoff, 2008; nine of them were recently revised and are found in the appendix to this article.). The perception and development of the third sector in Europe is closely related to the other major social governance institutions/mechanisms, like the market, state and community and through the third sector’s interaction with them. Moreover, many third sector organizations (TSOs) overlap with these other social institutions, resulting in varying degrees of hybridity and internal tensions experienced by them. TSOs can generate resources from their activities on the market, by providing services in partnership with the state and/or by promoting the interests of a given community or group. The country overviews document a growing professionalization of TSOs in most countries and a growing dependency of public funds to provide services. This has important theoretical and practical implications for orienting the articles included in this book. Thus, it can provide a key for better understanding the discussion and analysis in the remainder of this volume.

Much potential has been ascribed to the emergence and possibilities of a “global civil society,” one that takes the concept of civil society and civic activism and involvement beyond the traditional confines of the nation-state, and moves it instead into a globalized and increasingly politically integrated context. In general, the concept of global civil society has been treated as a positive development, with considerable attention being paid to the emancipatory and participatory opportunities that it presents. This essay explores the other side of the equation, i.e., the marginalization of national and European-level civil society and these participatory and emancipatory benefits in Central and Eastern Europe during a process of globalization and EU integration. Drawing from the emerging literatures on global civil society, this paper compares the normative and empirical emphases of that literature with the experiences and opinions of Central and Eastern European environmental NGOs. It examines how Central and Eastern European environmental movements have moved toward becoming more interconnected both in Europe and worldwide, yet are marginalized in favor of a style of environmental policy-making emerging from Brussels that emphasizes technocracy, scientific over public knowledge, and a top-down approach to the policy-making process. As a result, many of the democratic elements of civil society found at the national level have became neglected at the European and the global levels, replacing democratic politics (at least in the form of social movements) with the emergence of supranational technocratic institutions.

The origins of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been widely attributed to the work of scholars, and business managers as well, in North America and Western Europe. Inevitably, however, as the economic interaction of individual firms and entire nations has grown over the past several decades — call it globalization — so too has the concept and the practice of CSR spread throughout the world. It is certainly time to explore how CSR is being incorporated into the practice of business management in other regions and other countries. Therefore, in this chapter we will focus on Asia: specifically on Japan, South Korea, India, and China. It is interesting for academicians to understand how CSR is being absorbed and adapted into the business cultures of these four countries. Perhaps of even greater importance, it is vital that business managers know what to expect about the interaction between business and society as well as the government as their commercial activities grow in this burgeoning part of the world.

For each of these four countries, we will provide an overview of the extent to which CSR has become a part of the academic community and also how it is being practiced and incorporated in everyday management affairs. We will see that there are very significant differences among these countries which lead to the natural question: why? To answer this question, we will use an eight-part analytical framework developed specifically for this purpose. We will look at the history, the dominant religious beliefs, the relevant social customs, the geography, the political structures, the level of economic development, civil society institutions, and the “safety net” of each country. As a result of this analysis, we believe, academicians can learn how CSR is absorbed and spread into commercial affairs, and managers can profit from learning more about what to expect when doing business in this increasingly important region.