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1 – 10 of 50Carolyn J. Cordery, Ivo De Loo and Hugo Letiche
This paper aims to outline the motivation for this Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) Special Issue, providing an overview of the six selected papers. This…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to outline the motivation for this Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) Special Issue, providing an overview of the six selected papers. This study seeks to inspire further ethnographic research on accountability.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors reflect on why ethnographic investigation is essential to accountability research and the boundaries that constrained and enabled both this Special Issue and which occur in ethnographic research.
Findings
The contents of this issue do not merely describe or analyse one or more “accounts”, but also consider how the accounted for reflects its surroundings and its role in the social world. The authors argue that such research should progress from ethnographic descriptive data to infer meaningful conclusions and move from the everyday natural settings of behaviour to examine inter-relatedness. This requires the researcher to maintain their intra-relatedness. These boundaries, inherent to human existence, are actively created and operate at different aggregation levels to include and exclude.
Research limitations/implications
In this introduction and the papers selected for this AAAJ special issue, with few exceptions, accountability shifts from the researched to the researcher as research accounts are produced. Yet, ethnographies of accountability are epistemologically and ontologically weighted towards accepting the possibility of shared social meaning requiring researchers to manage the interactions, relationalities and presuppositions between these places. The authors urge future researchers to experiment more explicitly than has often been the case with published accounts of these demands.
Originality/value
This AAAJ Special Issue provides a set of original empirical and theoretical contributions to support and advance further ethnographic research into accountability which acknowledges the boundaries that may include and exclude.
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Bikram Chatterjee, Carolyn J. Cordery, Ivo De Loo and Hugo Letiche
In this paper, we concentrate on the use of research assessment (RA) systems in universities in New Zealand (NZ) and the United Kingdom (UK). Primarily we focus on PBRF and REF…
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, we concentrate on the use of research assessment (RA) systems in universities in New Zealand (NZ) and the United Kingdom (UK). Primarily we focus on PBRF and REF, and explore differences between these systems on individual and systemic levels. We ask, these days, in what way(s) the systemic differences between PBRF and REF actually make a difference on how the two RA systems are experienced by academic staff.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is exploratory and draws on 19 interviews in which accounting researchers from both countries offer reflections on their careers and how RA (systems) have influenced these careers. The stories they tell are classified by regarding RA in universities as a manifestation of the spectacle society, following Debord (1992) and Flyverbom and Reinecke (2017).
Findings
Both UK and New Zealand academics concur that their research activities and views on research are very much shaped by journal rankings and citations. Among UK academics, there seems to be a greater critical attitude towards the benefits and drawbacks of REF, which may be related to the history of REF in their country. Relatively speaking, in New Zealand, individualism seems to have grown after the introduction of the PBRF, with little active pushback against the system. Cultural aspects may partially explain this outcome. Academics in both countries lament the lack of focus on practitioner issues that the increased significance of RA seems to have evoked.
Research limitations/implications
This research is context-specific and may have limited applicability to other situations, academics or countries.
Practical implications
RA and RA systems seem to be here to stay. However, as academics we can, and ought to, take responsibility to try to ensure that these systems reflect the future of accounting (research) we wish to create. It is certainly not mainly or solely up to upper management officials to set this in motion, as has occasionally been claimed in previous literature. Some of the academics who participated in this research actively sought to bring about a different future.
Originality/value
This research provides a unique contextual analysis of accounting academics' perspectives and reactions to RA and RA systems and the impact these have had on their careers across two countries. In addition, the paper offers valuable critical reflections on the application of Debord's (1992) notion of the spectacle society in future accounting studies. We find more mixed and nuanced views on RA in academia than many previous studies have shown.
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Ethnography produces accounts; the critical reflection of accounts produces accountability. Ethnography requires accountability if meaningful conclusions and/or observations are…
Abstract
Purpose
Ethnography produces accounts; the critical reflection of accounts produces accountability. Ethnography requires accountability if meaningful conclusions and/or observations are to be made. Accountability requires ethnography if is to address lived experiences. Virno argues that the principles of “languaging” make ethnographies and accountability possible. This papers aims to describe an instance of the circularity of accountability and use this to explore Virno’s insights. Doing this helps us to see the connections between accountability and ethnography, and reflect on the nature of these interconnections.
Design/methodology/approach
Inspired by Paulo Virno’s philosophy, the authors assert that an ethnographer typically produces an account of a chosen “Other” in which this “Other” is held to account. But at the same time, the ethnographer needs to be held to account by the very same “Other” and by the “Other” of the (research) community. Furthermore, ethnographers are accountable to themselves. All these moments of accountability can endlessly circle, as responsibilization of the researchers by their Other(s) continues. For ethnography to function, this must be tamed as a (research) account ultimately has to be produced for an academic project to be considered complete. Drawing on Virno’s principle of the “negation of the negation” by the “katechon,” by the “katechon,” the authors propose a potentially valuable intervention that would enable ethnography – and by extension, ethnographers – to prosper.
Findings
The authors apply Virno’s philosophical reflections to propose a positive feedback cycle between ethnography and accountability. Virno’s ideation centers on two key concepts: (i) the multitude of social relatedness and (ii) the ontology of the languaging of individuation. Hereby, a positive circle of causality between ethnography and accountability can be realized, whereby the authors can respect but also break the causal circle(s) of ethnography and accountability. This might be achieved via a reflection on Virno’s concept of the “katechon.”
Originality/value
The authors illuminate the accountability–ethnography dynamic, providing an illustration of the circularity of ethnography and accountability and showing how Virno provides us with tools to help us deal with it. Hence, ultimately, the paper focuses on the accountability as ethnographers.
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Gunther Anders in the 20th century and Hartmut Rosa in the 21st have argued that the technics of organization – that is, its physical and social technologies, have from…
Abstract
Purpose
Gunther Anders in the 20th century and Hartmut Rosa in the 21st have argued that the technics of organization – that is, its physical and social technologies, have from acceleration become so uncontrollable and unpredictable that circumstances actually outstrip awareness to the degree that intentional “organizing” is more a fable than a reality, as stated in the quote from Rosa that forms the title of this article.
Design/methodology/approach
In this article, two critical theorists are examined who have fundamentally rejected the “control” thesis that dominates organization theory. It is a thesis that assumes that organizational change ought to be goal-directed, leadership driven and make use of soft and hard technologies to achieve defined objectives.
Findings
The prevailing “idea” of organizing has become illusionary. The technics of accelerationism have overpowered it. Not “organizing” but “ethic-sizing” is what remains as the: “What is to be done.”
Originality/value
The tradition of Gunther Anders and Hartmut Rosa (second and third generation Frankfurter School) and the implications of their work for our assumptions about the relations between technology, control and organization is for a first time evidenced in this article.
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Second-order cybernetics is explored here as a learning intervention strategy. Researcher reflexivity, both the student’s and the professor’s, that is asserted is crucial to…
Abstract
Purpose
Second-order cybernetics is explored here as a learning intervention strategy. Researcher reflexivity, both the student’s and the professor’s, that is asserted is crucial to achieving a liberatory learning experience. But as Lacan has revealed, the “symbolic” (written, represented and studied) has a complex relationship to the “real”, which needs the “imaginary” to be active and creative. The aim of this paper is to investigate the complexity of these relationships and their import for reflexive learning, as it is grounded in second-order cybernetics.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper, comparing second-order cybernetics to current insights into researcher reflexivity, especially as grounded in Lacan and as it has been translated into an intervention strategy by Zizek and applied by the author. Supervision of MBA theses is examined as an exemplar.
Findings
A theory of researcher reflexivity is outlined with practical potential, which was demonstrated at the ASC 2016 conference.
Research limitations/implications
Exemplary learning is demonstrated and guidelines of practical significance are indicated, but these are not here further empirically researched.
Practical implications
The complexity of the “imaginary–symbolic–real” model and its value for reflexive learning is investigated. The application value of the model to learning and second-order cybernetics is developed.
Social/implications
A reflexive intervention is demonstrated in how one sees student/professor supervision and interaction.
Originality/value
Building on Glanville, it is shown that multiple reflexivities are needed to be put into play for second-order cybernetics to productively inform university practice. A difference of differences is needed to complexify feedback processes for cybernetic interventions to (best) succeed. The import of current theoretical debates from Lacan and Zizek to cybernetics is indicated.
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Although the epistemology of researcher reflexivity has been championed as crucial to research for some 30 years, it remains controversial and often ill-defined. In the 1980s…
Abstract
Purpose
Although the epistemology of researcher reflexivity has been championed as crucial to research for some 30 years, it remains controversial and often ill-defined. In the 1980s, “reflexivity” was championed by the hermeneutically and epistemologically savvy to try and break the strangle hold of naïve positivism. Nowadays, reflexivity most often refers to the turn-to-affect and to the researcher’s ability and willingness to radically sensitivize “self” to others and circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to specify what non-representational research has brought to the reflexivity debate and then focus on Brosseau’s particular rendition of reflexivity, which is seen as far more demanding, problematic and valuable.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach followed in this paper is a hermeneutic reflection based on Thrift’s and Brosseau’s oeuvres. The perspective is historical, qua research methods’ take on reflexivity and qua Brosseau textual production.
Findings
Five differences between Thrift’s and Brosseau’s reflexivities are highlighted. Brosseau brings us much further in applying affective reflexivity to research writing than does Thrift.
Originality/value
A polemic calling for and warnings about the complexities of affective reflexivity, presented as demanding, dangerous and complex.
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Commodification doubles self and work, life and object, uniqueness and standardization and art and management. For the artist, the unicity, beauty, inspiration and creativity of…
Abstract
Purpose
Commodification doubles self and work, life and object, uniqueness and standardization and art and management. For the artist, the unicity, beauty, inspiration and creativity of art is doubled in the sale, marketing, display, distribution and mass production of “art works”. Making art is intimate, personal and individual; selling art requires public display, pleasing the all important customer(s) and dealing with many sorts of in-betweens. What commodification is on the artist/art work level is doubling on the I/me, self/persona, private/public and in-group/out-group level. This paper aims to examine the commodification and doubling in the case of the Gee’s Bend quilt makers. The quilts foreshadowed the modernist aesthetic and are of the highest aesthetic quality. But, they were made in a traditional rural society by very poor, uneducated black women. The quilts were not made to be sold but were dedicated to familial remembrance and to immediate aesthetic pleasure. But now that they are on display: is escape from commodification possible?
Design/methodology/approach
Reprint for special issue.
Findings
Doubling, in the original article below, was tendentious but artistically and politically to be overcome; doubling currently seems much more ominous, omnipresent and out of control. Signifyin(g) has become bomb throwing. Present day doubling apparently produces terror and not just commodification.
Originality/value
Invited for publication.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore what “critical” could mean in “critical management studies” (CMS) in the current (Dutch) regime of re‐commodification.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore what “critical” could mean in “critical management studies” (CMS) in the current (Dutch) regime of re‐commodification.
Design/methodology/approach
Conflicts that typify the context, within which “criticalness” does or does not emerge, are examined. The specific circumstance of “criticalness” in organizational studies within the Dutch political and intellectual circumstance is appraised.
Findings
The critical management studies of experimentation (“essai”) can respond to de‐solidarization and the need for ethical democratic governance; but it can also lead to philosophizing without contextual engagement.
Practical implications
CMS has to be judged for what it tries and how it engages with its context and not the cleverness of its ideas.
Originality/value
CMS is examined not idealistically but in terms of current social and intellectual conditions
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