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Our examination of accounting and violence aims to reinvigorate what it means to provide accountability and visibility given that knowledge and values are socially constructed. The authors follow the legacy of critical accounting research in this essay, using counter accounts, shadow accounting, and narratives to uncover the discipline’s relationship to violence, women, and migrants.

This chapter contributes to literature illustrating accounting’s impact in making things governable, thinkable, and knowable. Although critical accounting research has been exemplary in examining consequences of its practices on vulnerable populations, there has been a scarcity of investigation regarding incarcerated populace. This chapter begins the process of exploring neoliberal discipline, rule, and calculative techniques intersecting with gender, race, and class in prisons. For this disenfranchised population the construction of the “feared and deviant other” is of particular significance. A crime-control dynamic mythologizing and dreading the criminal has become so institutionalized that discourses justifying surveillance, dominance, and injustice have become normalized, in which accounting takes part. We are particularly interested in the impact for incarcerated women who are shackled, sterilized, and at risk, modes of control that are extraordinary. As such, the dynamics of knowledge creation challenges us to ask what initiates visibility and transformation. We suggest the narratives of incarcerated women are potential devices in this process, and add to an emerging literature revealing the emancipatory possibility of alternative, or counter-accounts. Seen as tools of resistance and change, we give voice to their narratives. As their accounts demonstrate resilience and power, we reject an inevitability of silence. Rather, these critical accounts provide pathways for thinking differently and aspiring for a change, as the social never disappears.

This chapter analyses the emergency policy responses that the European Union made during the summer of 2015 to manage the significant numbers of migrants entering Europe. The chapter employs Broadbent’s (1998) ideas of ‘accounting logic’ to analyse these policy actions. The chapter argues that there are multiple and complex reasons why people migrate, and why in this instance people are prepared to risk their lives by taking perilous journeys. An ‘accounting logic’ leads to decisions being based mainly on financial inputs and expected outputs rather than on the social and humanitarian needs of migrants and refugees. Despite the significant amount of resources provided by the European Union, the crisis continues. The risks associated with employing an accounting logic are that it may preclude a full understanding of situations by silencing other values and logics.

The study examined voluntary disclosure of contributions towards SDG-6 achievement by premium board companies in the Nigerian Stock Exchange. It employed a qualitative research design in which data were collected from the sustainability/annual reports of these companies and subjected to content analysis. The analysis shows overall poor quality as the disclosures are not linked to indicators that can help measure the extent of meeting the UN set target for SDG-6. Two tangible indicators disclosed are water use efficiency and construction of boreholes. However, there is no disclosure of the proportion of the population that gained access to clean water through these initiatives. Similarly, poor quality exists when compliance with GRI-303 on water information disclosure was assessed. The motivation behind the disclosures points to a continuation of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The objective is to gain a social licence to operate, and legitimation as opposed to signalling superior SDG-6 performance.

Companies are often accused of using sustainability disclosures as public relations tools to manage financial and non-financial stakeholders' impressions. The purpose of our study was firstly to determine how comprehensive the human rights disclosures of a sample of large international companies were and secondly, whether different narrative styles are associated with levels of disclosure to manage readers' impressions about the company. We analysed the public human rights disclosures for 154 large, international companies obtained from the UN Guiding Principles Reporting website. On average, companies complied with only one-third of the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework criteria. Communication about policies has the highest compliance, whilst communication about determining which human rights aspects are salient to the company, remedies for transgressions and stakeholder engagement have the lowest disclosure. When we split the sample between high disclosure and low disclosure companies, we found that the readability of the human rights disclosures is exceptionally low and even more so for low disclosure companies. Low disclosure companies used words implying Satisfaction significantly more than high disclosure companies, which provides some support for suspecting that low disclosure companies practise impression management by only presenting a ‘rosy picture’, as well as obfuscation via low readability. We add to the literature on impression management by large corporations in their sustainability reporting, and specifically human rights disclosures, by revealing how the interplay of low disclosure, low readability and overuse of words signalling Satisfaction contributes to impression management, rather than sincere attempts at accountability to all stakeholders.

Academics, practitioners, and standard setters have highlighted the importance of focusing on the relevance of nonfinancial reporting disclosures, calling for a debate on how best to develop corporative communicative skills with different stakeholders to conduct proper materiality analysis. To this end, the need for an inclusive process is widely acknowledged, where engagement and close relationships between an organization and its various stakeholders are crucial to identifying the main issues that the company should consider in a materiality analysis. In this chapter, an analysis of integrated reporting (IR) will be performed as an innovative corporate communication instrument that offers a complete picture of corporate performance and the important role of the concept of materiality. Then, the concept of the materiality process will be explored in a set of Spanish early adopters of IR, which will help us understand IR technology within the organizational realm and will shed some light on the materiality determination process as a communicative tool. The study revealed five main themes connected to the materiality determination process: materiality conceptualization, sources of evidence on materiality, prioritization of stakeholder engagement, the perceived advantages of the process, and its problems. The final section will set out the future challenges of IR engagement and the research opportunities that are associated with this innovative form of communicative reporting.

This chapter contributes to the literature on surveillance in education toward the development of a new branch of studies in educational surveillance that foregrounds the intersections of surveillance with international education, internationalization in higher education, and the global competition for international student enrollments. This study examines the literature on the Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a web-based data collection system that provides a pervasive surveillance mechanism to track the activities and locations of non-immigrant international students studying in the United States. Through a qualitative content analysis, I identified key themes evident in the literature; the findings serve as a measure of the current (though dated) state of research on SEVIS while also identifying that which is not examined or discussed in this scholarship. Often taken for granted as a background necessity for national security and labor market protection in relation to hosting international students, SEVIS is regrettably under-examined from student-centered, student affairs, and critical surveillance studies perspectives. In presenting the findings of this literature analysis, this chapter provides a research agenda for future empirical study of SEVIS and the surveillance of international students.

Purpose: Online gaming (OG) has become an increasing societal phenomenon during the current Pandemic times. This is due to lockdowns and people being confined to home environments. This chapter sheds light on the attraction of OG, from the perspective of it being a virtual immersion tool of emancipation. There has been an increasing amount of working from home arrangements during Pandemic times and more time is being spent in virtual immersion. As discussed in the article, there is a potential conflict between individual accountabilities, for example, to attain a certain degree of work-related performance and the hedonistic pleasure attained from OG (which is the type of focus of virtual immersion in this chapter). OG bears personal, business and societal costs, which are discussed in this chapter.

Need for this study: This study provides a picture of the implications of an individual’s virtual reality immersion for the purpose of OG, from the perspectives of personal and social accountabilities in the virtual and physical worlds in the current Pandemic environment.

Methodology: This is a concise overview of the theoretical underpinnings, impacts on accountabilities and implications relating to OG. The chapter provides a survey and discussion of the literature on increasing trends of OG, profit-making potential of OG and the related accountability perspectives.

Findings: This chapter has extended on the Internet accounting and accountability research literature by considering OG accountabilities and costs and benefits. OG supports an individual’s emancipation. From the perspective of OG, there are numerous forms of emancipations that can be achieved and that may result in ‘sacrifices’ by others including other online gamers. There is a substantial risk of a lack of accountability towards the others in the online and real-life environment on behalf of the one who is emancipated through escape.

The entry of women in accounting has been established with great effort; however, it has been achieved thanks to the academic and research leadership that has enabled incorporation into different areas in the profession. In this context, this study seeks to identify the presence of women in academic accounting spaces in Colombia. The study analyzes the field of research from the perspective of women in the development of accounting. The methodology is qualitative, based in a case study through semi-structured interviews to establish women’s experiences, barriers and perspectives within the accounting academic and research field in Colombia. The main result is that though there is headway being made, there are also gaps for women’s participation in Colombia. This is supported by research which indicates that this situation is similar in multiple contexts. It is considered essential to integrate diverse perspectives and disciplines that contribute to the transformation of the structure of domination and elimination of barriers for women in the accounting discipline.