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The paper provides a theoretical framework for interdisciplinary accounting scholars interested in performances of accountability in front of live audiences.

This is a processual case study of “Falkirk in crisis” that covers the period from September 2021 to September 2022. The focus of this paper is two-fan-Q&A sessions held in October 2021 and June 2022. Both are naturally occurring discussions between two groups such as are found in previous research on routine events and accountability. This is a theoretically consequential case study.

A key insight of the paper is to identify the practical and symbolic dimensions of accountability. The paper demonstrates the need to align these two dimensions when responding to questions: a practical question demands a practical answer and a symbolic question requires a symbolic answer. Second, the paper argues that most fields contain conflicting logics and highlights that a complete performance of accountability needs to cover the different conflicting logics within the field. In this case, this means paying full attention to both the communitarian and results logics. A third finding is that a performance of accountability cannot succeed if the audience rejects attempts to impose an unpalatable definition of the situation. If these three conditions are not met, the performance is bound to fail.

An important theoretical coontribution of the study is the application of Jeffery Alexander’s work on political performance to public performances of accountability.

The phenomenon explored in the paper (what the authors term “grassroots accountability”) has broad applicability to any situation in organizational or civic life where the power apex of an organization is required to engage with a group of informed and committed stakeholders – the “community”. For those who find themselves in the position of the fans in this study, the observations set out in the empirical narrative can serve as a useful practical guide. Attempts to answer a practical complaint with a symbolic answer (or vice versa) should be challenged as evasive.

This paper studies an engagement of elite actors with ordinary (or grassroots) actors. The study shows important rules of engagement, including the importance of respecting the power of practical questions and the need to engage with these questions appropriately.

This paper offers a new vista for interdisciplinary accounting by synthesizing the accountability literature with the political performance literature. Specifically, the paper employs Jeffery Alexander’s work on practical and symbolic performance to study the microprocesses underpinning successful and unsuccessful performances of accountability.

Existing literature has begun to identify the agonistic and contested aspects of the ongoing development of accountability systems. These “contests” are particularly important during periods of change when an accountability “deficit” has been identified, that is, when existing accountability systems are deemed inadequate and requiring revision. The purpose of this paper is to explore one such set of contests in the case of large technology and social media firms: the so-called “big tech”. The authors focus specifically on “big tech” because of increasing societal concerns about the harms associated with their products, services and business practices.

The authors analysed four US Congressional hearings, in which the CEO of Facebook was held to account for the company's alleged breaches and harms. The authors conducted a discourse analysis of the dialogue between the account giver (Mark Zuckerberg) and account holders (Members of Congress) in the oral testimony at the four hearings.

Two areas of contestation in the dialogue between the account giver and account holders are identified. “Epistemic contests” involved contestation about the “facts” concerning the harms the company had allegedly caused. “Responsibility contests” involved contestation about who (or what) should be held responsible for these harms and according to what standards or criteria.

The study advances critical dialogical accountability literature by identifying two areas of contestation during periods of change in accountability systems. In so doing, they advanced the theory by conceptualising the process of change as underpinned by discursive contests in which multiple actors construct and contest the “problem” with existing accountability systems. The outcomes of these contests are significant, the authors suggest, because they inform the development of reforms to the accountability system governing big tech firms and other industries undergoing similar periods of contestation and change.

This paper aims to examine the nature of academic engagement with policy and the (lack of) responsiveness by policymakers to the scientific community through the development of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation Trustees’ Consultation Paper on Sustainability Reporting (IFRS Foundation, 2020).

The 577 submissions to the IFRS Foundation consultation were reviewed, and 39 were identified as being submitted by academics. These 39 included collectively 104 academic signatories from 74 organisations or networks and 20 countries. They were analysed using NVivo. Drawing on the literature on techniques used to discredit or credit arguments, we examine the academic responses to the consultation questions, particularly those concerning: the role of the IFRS Foundation; perceptions of the “investor perspective”; the audience for reporting; the definition of materiality; and a climate first approach.

The majority (72%) of academic submissions were opposed to the IFRS Foundation Trustees’ proposals on key issues. This dissenting majority collectively have substantial research records in sustainability reporting and its outcomes. Those supportive were significantly less likely to reference research or state their credentials and, despite being supportive, nevertheless raised concerns with the proposals.

Senior academics undertaking research in the field have engaged, in unusually high numbers, with a policy development they believe will not work and maybe counter to achieving sustainable development. The findings underscore the importance of highlighting the discrediting strategies and tactics used in this discursive “battle”. The findings have implications for the legitimacy of policymakers on sustainability-related initiatives which are not engaging with the relevant scientific community.

Policy initiatives that are judged as potentially harmful to sustainable development attract more intense, activist and sustained engagement supported by research evidence.

The paper identifies the importance of evidence-based academic engagement and highlights strategies that engaging academics need to persist over. It highlights the collective view of academics in the field on the IFRS Foundation consultation paper.

The research community currently employs four very different versions of the social network concept: A social network is seen as a set of socially constructed role relations (e.g., friends, business partners), a set of interpersonal sentiments (e.g., liking, trust), a pattern of behavioral social interaction (e.g., conversations, citations), or an opportunity structure for exchange. Researchers conventionally assume these conceptualizations are interchangeable as social ties, and some employ composite measures that aim to capture more than one dimension. Even so, important discrepancies often appear for non-ties (as dyads where a specific role relation or sentiment is not reported, a specific form of interaction is not observed, or exchange is not possible).

Investigating the interplay across the four definitions is a step toward developing scope conditions for generalization and application of theory across these domains.

This step is timely because emerging tools of computational social science – wearable sensors, logs of telecommunication, online exchange, or other interaction – now allow us to observe the fine-grained dynamics of interaction over time. Combined with cutting-edge methods for analysis, these lenses allow us to move beyond reified notions of social ties (and non-ties) and instead directly observe and analyze the dynamic and structural interdependencies of social interaction behavior.

This unprecedented opportunity invites us to refashion dynamic structural theories of exchange that advance “beyond networks” to unify previously disjoint research streams on relationships, interaction, and opportunity structures.

The case uses primary source documents, such as the court cases brought forth by the SEC and US District Attorney, for the specifics about the fraud and secondary sources for further background information about the town and industry. The individuals in the case are not disguised. The authors have no connection to the case.

Thomas Laws was a CPA, a registered investment advisor and a real estate broker. Laws made a poor business investment. Instead of taking the financial hit, Laws orchestrated a complex Ponzi scheme using clients from his CPA practice and embezzling money from an employer, Santa Fe Gold Corporation. Laws’ scheme continued until his employer confronted him about missing funds. Frank Mueller, the CFO of Santa Fe, did not exercise the due diligence necessary until it was too late. Rest’s framework for ethical decision making is used to frame the ethical decisions Mueller can make. The case examines the conflict-of-interest guidance issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and allows students to examine the due diligence and controls needed by employers and prospective investors.

This case is designed for undergraduate accounting students taking Intermediate Accounting I, ACCT 0312 at the authors’ institution, typically junior-level students. It would be appropriate whenever you introduce the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct during an ethics discussion.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000001031. When citing the article, please cite: Frank Mueller, (1992), “Designing Flexible Teamwork: Comparing German and Japanese Approaches”, Employee Relations, Vol. 14 Iss: 1, pp. 5 - 16.

This paper aims to explore the introduction of teamwork in two health call centres, NHS Direct and NHS24, and intervenes in the emergent debate over teamwork in call centres. Although within the call centre work environment there is no obvious functional rationale for teamwork, teams can be “accounted for” with reference to other purposes, including performance management, normative control, governmentality and institutional isomorphism/management fads. This research provides additional explanations for the use of teamwork in such an adverse work environment.

The paper is based on qualitative data (interviews and non‐participant observations) from NHS Direct and NHS24, the English and Scottish tele‐nursing organisations in the UK.

In the two tele‐nursing case studies analysed, teamwork was introduced as an expression of managers' aspirations to emulate private sector practices and to reinforce new public management ideals. However, informal teamwork, which cut across organisationally prescribed forms, provided both emotional support and spontaneous knowledge sharing among nurses.

This is an innovative study because teamwork has not been thoroughly explored in a health call centre environment.

In this paper, we propose an understanding of what personnel professionals consume when they “adopt” black‐box management initiatives (Scarbrough, 1995; Wilson, 1992). Second, we explore the way in which professional associations and, hence, institutional actors pursue their own professional projects (Abbott, 1988) within a context of political legitimacies and illegitimacies. Thus, in a double move, we seek to explore the linkages between managerial methods used by institutions to increase their jurisdiction or their “authority to speak” (Foucault, 1972) and the processes of isomorphism.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the rhetorical framings that can be discerned by applying discourse analysis to a publicly available transcript of a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) inquiry in the UK.

In particular, the authors examine the discursive tactics used during the 2013 investigation by the House of Commons PAC, “Tax Avoidance: The Role of Large Accountancy Firms”.

Two opposing rhetorical framings of “tax avoidance” are analysed which the authors see developing incrementally and directly opposing each other. Metaphors are used by the PAC to exemplify the dark side of professions, including potentially transgressing the boundaries of what constitutes “tax avoidance”. This is counteracted by the Big Four portraying an alternative market-oriented/neo-liberal view of professions pursuing a societal good through dedication to promoting market competition.

Whilst one rhetorical framing is predicated on being able to draw a clear distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance, the alternative rhetorical framing contests this distinction and contributes to an existing cultural account that paints the dark side of some of the professions. Extending the work of Creed et al. (2002) and Alexander (2011), the authors demonstrate the bridging between micro-level discursive acts and broader cultural accounts, at the macro level. As such the authors discuss the pertinence of this multi-level discursive contest, within post-inquiry sensemaking, for understanding the “dark side” of professions.

The purpose of this paper is to use Actor Network Theory to explore the role of management accounting systems (MAS) in the construction of business strategy.

The paper draws on findings from an ethnographic study of a UK‐based firm. Theoretical concepts from Actor‐Network Theory are used to illuminate the findings of the study.

The study found that MAS acted as an obligatory point of passage into the strategic agenda of the firm. However, the findings also reveal the political tactics used by employees in order to work within, against and around the MAS.

The paper shows that MAS are a key player in the political contests that occur during the process of strategy formulation, as opposed to offering a neutral tool for measuring the strategic value of innovative ideas.