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The purpose of this paper is to respond to Modell’s arguments regarding the relative usefulness of critical realist philosophy in relation to actor-network theory.

The authors outline the challenges in applying critical realism to critical accounting. The authors then consider Modell’s criticisms of actor-network theory, providing a counterargument highlighting the methodological choices distinguishing actor-network theory from critical realism.

The authors argue that critical realism, whilst providing an interesting addition to the critical accounting research project, confronts challenges disentangling intransitive and transitive forms of knowledge. Actor-network theory is presented as a way of examining accounting practices as local associations, providing practical opportunities to study (the assembly of) “the social”.

Methodological diversity is to be explored, acknowledging the ontological politics of our choices.

This paper is an original commentary contributing to critical accounting research.

The purpose of this paper is to review extant accounting research combining institutional and critical theories to examine whether the paradigmatic tensions associated with such research can be alleviated whilst engendering politically engaged scholarship aimed at facilitating processes of emancipation in organisational fields.

The paper provides a review of relevant accounting research and offers recommendations for how to combine institutional and critical research approaches in a paradigmatically consistent way.

Extant accounting research combining institutional and critical theories has not dealt effectively with the partly inter-related problems of ontological drift (i.e. misalignment of ontological assumptions and epistemological commitments) and the conflation of notions of agency and structure. If such problems remain unaddressed institutional research aimed at generating politically engaged scholarship and human emancipation is unlikely to progress in a paradigmatically consistent direction. Recommendations for how to address these issues, grounded in recent advances in critical realism, are elaborated upon. This results in a contingent view of the ontological possibilities of emancipation in organisational fields as well as the epistemological premises that need to be filled to engender processes of emancipation.

The paper reviews an emerging body of research seeking to radicalise institutional accounting research and enhance its contributions to democratic debate in organisations and society. It also outlines how some pertinent paradigmatic tensions associated with such research may be addressed.

Accounting history has tended to ignore the accounting research enterprise, focusing instead on particular episodes or periods, such as histories of standards setting or histories of the accounting profession. In effect, methodological and theoretical differences within the accounting research discipline have so profoundly divided the discipline that researchers working in one area are relatively unable or unwilling to understand the key issues in other areas. This chapter seeks to shed some light on the greatest divide in accounting research: the divide between positive and critical accounting research. This chapter argues that both positive and critical accounting research can trace their origins to certain key figures who were doctoral students at the University of Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The chapter employs Foucault’s concept of genealogy to examine the origins of the positivist and critical paradigms in accounting research.

The intention of this chapter is to examine race and racism in the accounting industry in the context of neutrality. Objectivity and impartiality minimize the space for alternative voices, too often unheard from the margin, that speak of a differing racialized professional existence for the Black accountant. A Critical Race Theory (CRT) of accountancy is called for among a number of takes in the genre of Critical Accounting to begin a process of unpacking systemic processes within the profession, which encourage homogeneity and exclusion.

Belief in professional colorblindness as impartiality where race is concerned is critiqued as a tool of domination that fosters injustice because it hides racism from the institution while simultaneously allowing racist practice to go unchallenged.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how critical realism can be mobilised as a meta-theory, or philosophical under-labourer, for research on space accounting and how this may further inquiries into the known as well as the unknown implications of space exploration and commercialisation.

This is a conceptual paper that applies critical realism to the field of space accounting using cost management in space contracts as an illustrative example.

Adopting a naturalised version of critical realism that recognises the complex interplay between natural and social realities, the author nuances the distinction between intransitive and transitive objects of knowledge and advances a framework that may be used as a starting point for a transfactual mode of reasoning. The author then applies this mode of reasoning to the topic of cost management in the space sector and illustrates how it may enhance our insights into what causes cost overruns in space contracts.

By adopting a naturalised version of critical realism, the author establishes a philosophical framework that can support the broadly based, inter-disciplinary research agenda that has been envisaged for research on space accounting and possibly inform policy development.

This paper is the first to apply a critical realist perspective to space accounting and lays a philosophical foundation for future research on the topic.

Ethnography has emerged as a potentially valuable empirical means of understanding how and why accounting operates within organisations. However, its use in the accounting literature has not been without controversy. This paper addresses one of the key issues of dispute: the role of critical foundational theories in ethnographic accounting research. First, the paper draws from competing proposals for ethnography in the accounting literature in an attempt to shed further light on the use of critical theory within an ethnographic field study. It is argued that critical theory can be a valuable tool in developing further insights from ethnographic study, but that its timing within the stages of the empirical work is crucial to achieve a balance between understanding and explanation. Second, in highlighting the lessons learnt from the author’s own ethnographic research, the paper discusses the (as yet untapped) potential for critical ethnography to inform directly the design and development of new accounting systems. It is proposed that using ethnography “actively” in this way could provide the methodological basis for the development of new forms of accounting, such as social accounting.

Postmodernist ideas – most particularly those of Foucault but also those of Latour, Derrida and Barthes – have had a much longer presence in accounting research than in other business disciplines. However, in large part, the debates in accounting history and management history, have moved in parallel but separate universes. The purpose of this study is therefore one of exploring not only critical accounting understandings that are significant for management history but also one of highlighting conceptual flaws that are common to the postmodernist literature in both accounting and management history.

Foucault has been seminal to the critical traditions that have emerged in both accounting research and management history. In exploring the usage of Foucault’s ideas, this paper argues that an over-reliance on a set of Foucauldian concepts – governmentality, “disciplinary society,” neo-liberalism – that were never conceived with an eye to the problems of accounting and management has resulted in not only in the drawing of some very longbows from Foucault’s formulations but also misrepresentations of the French philosophers’ ideas.

Many, if not most, of the intellectual positions associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History – that knowledge is inherently subjective, that management involves exercising power at distance, that history is a social construct that is used to legitimate capitalism and management – were argued in the critical accounting literature long before Clark and Rowlinson’s (2004) oft cited call. Indeed, the “call” for a “New Accounting History” issued by Miller et al. (1991) played a remarkably similar role to that made by Clark and Rowlinson in management and organizational studies more than a decade later.

This is the first study to explore the marked similarities between the critical accounting literature, most particularly that related to the “New Accounting History” and that associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History in management and organizational studies.

Accounting for the worth of employees continues to attract the attention of accounting scholars. After more than thirty years of interest in the topic, however, comparatively little progress has been made in responding to the challenge of taking humans into account. A major reason for this may be that accounting for the worth of employees has hitherto been too closely bound up with the problematics of financial accounting and financial reporting. This has resulted in the widespread practice of conceptualising employee worth in terms of the hard accounting numbers normally associated with the discipline. Drawing on recent developments in the fields of both accounting for strategic positioning and critical accounting, this paper explores the promise which the emergence of a concern with the provision of soft(er) accounting information holds for any future attempts to account for employee worth.

The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge and obtain an understanding of the phenomenon of public sector external auditing (PSEA) in Tanzania.

The paper used a grounded theory method informed by a critical approach. It used data from multiple sources including interviews, observations and documents, to provide a theoretical and practical understanding of PSEA in Tanzania. The theoretical aspects were developed ‘in vivo’ and were also informed by the Habermasian concept of colonisation.

The principal research findings from the data concern the central phenomenon of managing colonising tendencies in PSEA which appeared to be the core strategy for both the government and external auditors. While the government appeared to manage the National Audit Office of Tanzania (NAOT) appearance and exploited the legitimising features of PSEA, external auditors manoeuvred within colonising tendencies and attempted to maintain the ‘audit supremacy’ image. PSEA in Tanzania encountered colonising tendencies because of weak working relationship between the NAOT and other accountability agencies, inconsistencies in governance and politics, the culture of corruption and secrecy, dependence on foreign financing and mimicking of foreign models. To coexist within this colonising environment, external auditors managed their relationship with auditees and the complexities of PSEA roles. Managing colonising tendencies resulted into obscured subordination of PSEA, contributing to cosmetic accountability and growing public interest in PSEA.

It is hoped that future research in other countries, in and beyond Africa, will be undertaken to broaden and deepen our understanding of the external auditing of public sector entities.

The paper combines grounded theory with a critical approach to understand PSEA in a developing country.