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The purpose of this paper is to advance a research agenda on the topic of problematising profit and profitability. This paper also acts as an introduction to this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability (AAAJ) special section which aims to foster the development of literature focussing on critically evaluating issues surrounding profit and profitability and their sometimes, deleterious effects on society. The authors encourage an interdisciplinary discussion on the concepts of profit and profitability and various ways in which the authors could potentially problematise these concepts.

The authors undertake a purposive interdisciplinary review to provide context on problematising profit and profitability by briefly discussing the evolution of the concept of profit and by reviewing some contemporary debates and discussions about the role and status of profit and profitability.

In order to further develop the literature on problematising profit and profitability, it is important to broaden the analytical framework in order to (1) uncover the assumptions that make profitable activities possible as well as justifications of such activities; (2) analyse the practices of profit not only in the sense of computational practices but also in the sense of strategic and rhetorical calculations; (3) evaluate the practices of profit and profitability where they are situated within social and power relationships and (4) connect practices of profit to specific social imaginaries of profit.

In setting out a future research agenda, this paper fosters theoretical and methodological pluralism and encourages box-breaking research in the research community focussing on problematising profit and profitability in various settings. The perspectives offered in this paper provides not only a basis for further research in this critical area of discourse and regulation on the role and status of profit and profitability but also provides emancipatory potential for practitioners (to be reflective of their practices and their undesired consequences of such practices) whose overarching focus is on these accounting numbers.

Building on the research program of Dillard and Brown (2015) and Dillard and Vinnari (2019), specifically related to an “ethic of accountability,” this paper recognizes accountability systems as key to how organizations conceptualize their responsibility to society. The objective is to explore how managers of hybrid organizations conceptualize responsibility and the role of accountability systems in their conceptualization.

This paper studies hybrid organizations that are for-profit entities with explicitly recognized non-economic imperatives. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with managers of organizations that pursue certification as a B-Corporation, often in conjunction with a legal designation as a benefit corporation.

Managers of the hybrid organizations evidenced a broader responsibility logic that extends beyond responsibility to shareholders. This pluralistic orientation and broader set of objectives are expressed in a set of certification standards that represent an accountability system that both enables and constrains the way responsibility is understood. The accountability system reflects a “felt” accountability to the “other” manifested, for example, as generational accountability, with the other (re)created relative to the certification standards.

Certifications and standards represent accounting-based accountability systems that produce a type of accountability in which the certification becomes the overall objective nudging out efforts to take accountability-based accounting seriously (Dillard and Vinnari, 2019). At the same time, the hybrids under study, while not perfect exemplars, incline toward an ethic of accountability (Dillard and Brown, 2014) that moves them closer to accountability-based accounting.

The findings reveal perspectives of managers embedded in hybrid organizations, illustrating their experiences of responsibility and accountability systems in practice (Grossi et al., 2019). The insights can be extended to other hybrid contexts where accountability systems may be used to demonstrate multiple performance objectives. We also recognize the irony in the need for an organization to be required to attain a special license to operate in a more responsible manner.

The current challenges international charities face with regards to their deteriorating image, as a result of recent scandals (e.g. Oxfam, Save the Children), provide the impetus for this exploratory research, where the purpose of this paper is to examine the conceptualization and dimensionality of non-profit brand image across national cultures.

The study employs a quantitative research design, using multi-country samples from India, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the UK. The authors first examine the psychometric properties of the non-profit brand image scale via confirmatory factor analysis across countries, identifying the optimal model for invariance testing. Further, the authors use multi-group invariance analysis to evaluate whether non-profit brand image (using an 18-item scale and six factors) provides equivalent measurement across cultures.

The study shows that individuals in the three countries perceive non-profit brand image equally, and as consisting of perceptions of usefulness, efficiency, affect, dynamism, reliability and ethicality. However, the results also indicate that the means of the dimensions of non-profit brand image are not comparable across different cultures.

The study extends limited current literature on non-profit brand image in international contexts, deriving insightful suggestions for further theoretical approaches in this under-developed research domain. It also yields key implications for charities and other non-profit organizations operating internationally, as they can use non-profit brand image and its dimensions as actionable tools in their communication campaigns to shape their brand image.

This paper offers a framework for understanding the financial system using Marx’s theory of value. It examines how to interpret the Marxist concepts of the rate of profit and fictitious capital when analysing the financial sector, showing how accounting terms such as ‘return on equity’ and ‘leverage’ can also be understood in this context. The analysis argues that the capitalist system’s rate of profit should be conceptualised in a way that includes finance, but that one should not mix up the accumulation of financial assets with the accumulation of advanced capital. While the costs of finance are negative for the system’s average rate of profit, the paper concludes by noting how this is not inconsistent with financial operations being very profitable for imperialist powers that can use the financial system to appropriate surplus value from elsewhere in the global economy.

The Berle and Means thesis focuses on a managerial revolution in which corporate control came to be transferred from owners to managers. Currently, it is arguable that control of corporate policy has shifted back to owners in what has come to be called “investor capitalism.” Stock market manipulators, as owners, have currently come to assert increased levels of control over CEO autonomy. This empirical reality appears in a vicious circle culminating in excessive CEO profits. The result has been to give support to a basic Veblenian assertion that imbecile business institutions hold sway to direct and dominate the economic process. In this process, the making of money rather than the production of goods serviceable for basic human needs have increasingly come to prevail over the US economy and culture.

This paper aims to explore the potential contributions of the for-profit sector in integrating resources with social marketing organisations for value co-creation at the meso level (midstream) of the social marketing eco-system. The paper addresses calls for further theorisation and understanding of value co-creation beyond the micro level (downstream).

The paper draws from social marketing, value co-creation and eco-systems literature to present a conceptual model for meso-level value co-creation between social marketing and for-profit organisations.

The paper proposes four dimensions of resources which can be integrated: cognitive, labour, economic and network. Additionally, it is proposed that from these integrated resources, three co-creation outcomes can be achieved – co-learning, co-design and co-production – which lead to improved value propositions.

This paper offers a framework for strategic planning and evaluation regarding partnerships and collaborations with for-profit organisations, which potentially lead to greater value propositions being offered.

This paper furthers the theoretical discussions and understanding of value co-creation in social marketing at the meso level. The paper identifies a new actor – for-profits – as a potential collaborator for value co-creation with social marketing organisations and contributes new understanding about value co-creation at the meso level between social marketing and for-profit organisations. Further, the paper describes and reviews the potential contributions of for-profits to social marketing efforts.

This study aims to present how a historical governance mechanism (a statutory rule of profit allocation) could answer the practical question of profit allocation, thereby proposing a methodology to enhance future quantitative studies.

The rule sets profit allocations to a predetermined set of stakeholders in corporate charters. It could be seen as a tool used by historical organisations to enact corporate social responsibility (CSR). The authors propose a straightforward way to calculate the payout ratios promised by this rule to each stakeholder. This methodology was applied to shareholders and used to calculate the promised dividend payout ratios.

This rule constitutes a natural experiment from which modern organisations could learn to implement the most relevant profit-allocation schemes given their CSR strategy. The authors propose calculating a promised payout ratio that would allow scholars to empirically examine the rule and its effects and provide accurate recommendations to these organisations.

This mechanism allows the study of profit allocations made to stakeholders (not limited to shareholders or employees like it is usually done). The promised payout ratio makes future quantitative investigations possible.

Modern organisations could use the CSR mechanism to allocate profits continuously in formats that would best fit their strategy and environment.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first article to examine the statutory rule of profit allocation per se, which proposes a new methodology to calculate payout ratios promised by the rule. The idea is to investigate their impact and provide recommendations for modern organisations to adapt.

Many researches have proposed a virtuous chain of effects from improved customer satisfaction to profits. In particular, satisfaction is thought to improve share‐of‐spending, which in turn leads to higher customer revenue and customer profitability. This paper aims to examine these proposed linkages using data from the institutional securities industry.

The data used in the analyses were collected as part of an ongoing telephone satisfaction survey of 81 clients of an institutional securities firm across two continents (North America and Europe). Mediation analysis was used to test the hypothesized effects.

Customer revenue was found to correlate negatively with customer profitability for unprofitable customers, and positively for profitable customers.

One of the limitations of this research is that it tests the propositions within a single industry. Future research should attempt to replicate these findings in other contexts.

A simplistic focus on improving customer satisfaction for all customers in order to improve share‐of‐wallet and customer revenue does not seem to represent the best management approach to maximize overall firm profitability. In fact, it could actually result in a negative return on investment. Therefore, customers should first be segmented by their profitability to the firm before expending resources to improve customer satisfaction and share‐of‐wallet.

The results of this paper challenge the conventional belief that customer satisfaction should lead to customer retention in turn, resulting in customer revenue and ultimately customer profitability. The findings indicate that this may not always be true.

This paper investigates the relationship between organizational structures and the performance of FORTUNE 500 companies, which have always been among the most profitable and admired in the world. After a discussion of whether companies should organize regionally, nationally, or globally, the important assumption is made that each structural type utilizes resources differently in generating profit. Performance is conceptualized as Return on Capital Employed (RoCE) and Return per Employee (RpE). A sample of 50 companies was randomly selected. Testing revealed that structural types are positively related to financial performance, calculated as RoCE, with Multidivisional-structured companies outperforming Functional-structured ones; structural types are not related to human resource performance, calculated as RpE.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the profitability of rice production for irrigated and rain-fed farmers; determine the factors that influence farmers' decision to participate in irrigation and the impact of irrigation on rice farmers' profitability in northern Ghana.

Using cross-sectional data collected from 543 rice farmers in northern Ghana, the study employed both non-parametric (cost benefit analysis) and parametric (endogenous switching regression) approaches to analyse the data.

The empirical results reveal a significant difference between the profits of irrigated (GHS 2442.30) and rain-fed farmers (GHS 576.20), as well as the cost-benefit ratios between irrigators (2.53) and rain-fed farmers (1.37). Also, participation in irrigation was found to be influenced by relatively small farm size and off-farm income; while profitability was influenced by membership in a farmer-based organization, access to agricultural extension services and perception of decreasing rainfall intensity. Irrigation also had a positive significant net impact on profitability of rice production.

The results provide justification for development partners and the government of Ghana through the “one-village-one-dam” policy, to invest in irrigation in northern Ghana in order to improve household welfare as well as build resilience for sustainable production systems.

This study is the first of its kind to provide a robust analysis of the difference in profits of rain-fed and irrigated rice farmers while estimating the determinants of Ghanaian farmers' choice of either of the regimes within a bias-corrected framework.