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1 – 10 of over 23000Dominic Detzen and Sebastian Hoffmann
The purpose of this paper is to study how two accounting professors at a German university dealt with their denazification, a process carried out by the Allied Forces following…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study how two accounting professors at a German university dealt with their denazification, a process carried out by the Allied Forces following the Second World War to free German society from Nazi ideology. It is argued that the professors carried a stigma due to their affiliation with a university that had been aligned with the Nazi state apparatus.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses Goffman’s work on “Stigma” (1963/1986) and “Frame Analysis” (1974/1986) to explore how the professors aimed to dismiss any link with the Nazi regime. Primary sources from the university archives were accessed with a particular focus on the professors’ post-war justification accounts.
Findings
The paper shows how the professors created a particular frame, which they supported by downplaying frame breaks, primarily their Nazi party memberships. Instead, they were preoccupied with what Goffman (1974/1986) terms “the vulnerability of experience,” exploiting that their past behavior requires context and is thus open to interpretation. The professors themselves provide this guidance to readers, which is a strategy that we call “authoring” of past information.
Originality/value
The paper shows how “counter accounts” can be constructed by assigning roles and powers to characters therein and by providing context and interpreting behavior on behalf of the readers. It is suggested that this “authoring” of past information is successful only on the surface. A closer examination unveils ambiguity, making this strategy risky and fragile.
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Marsha B. Keune, Timothy M. Keune and Linda A. Quick
Voluntary changes in accounting principle represent explicit and fundamental decisions by managers to exercise accounting discretion. This paper develops an organizing framework…
Abstract
Voluntary changes in accounting principle represent explicit and fundamental decisions by managers to exercise accounting discretion. This paper develops an organizing framework to review prior literature on voluntary changes, provides descriptive insights on contemporary changes, and identifies opportunities for future research on voluntary changes. The voluntary change literature is robust and has examined many questions using data prior to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). We find that contemporary voluntary changes often vary across the pre-SOX, post-SOX, and post-SFAS No. 154 periods by the materiality of their income effect, issue type, and justifications provided by managers, suggesting that manager use of voluntary changes has evolved over time. Our future research opportunities consider potential determinants of voluntary changes including strategic incentives, environmental conditions, and manager characteristics, as well as the potential direct or moderating role of corporate governance and auditors on manager use of voluntary changes. They also consider user reactions to voluntary changes. By providing insight into both extant voluntary change research and the contemporary use of voluntary changes, our study informs standards setters who grant managers the ability to exercise this form of accounting discretion, as well as researchers who plan to study accounting choice through voluntary changes.
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This study used a critical incidents methodology to examine the influence of accounts on perceived social loafing and evaluations of team member, and to investigate the face…
Abstract
This study used a critical incidents methodology to examine the influence of accounts on perceived social loafing and evaluations of team member, and to investigate the face management and responsibility explanations of account‐giving. The results of this study suggest that communicative acts such as accounts may reduce perceived loafing. In addition, perceived loafing and evaluations of the team member were influenced by the type of account provided; concessions were more effective in decreasing perceptions of social loafing and increasing evaluations of the team member than excuses and justifications which, in turn, were more effective than refusals. These findings indicate tentative support for the face management explanation of account effectiveness.
Marcia Annisette and Alan J. Richardson
The purpose of this paper is to introduce and illustrate the insights of the sociology of worth as advanced by sociologist Luc Boltanski and his collaborator…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce and illustrate the insights of the sociology of worth as advanced by sociologist Luc Boltanski and his collaborator economist/statistician Laurent Thévenot in their works, including their path‐breaking book De la justification published in 1991.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explores the basic tenets of this “new sociology” and draws on it to render a reinterpretation of Ansari and Euske's study of cost accounting in a military depot.
Findings
The sociology of worth complements extant sociological approaches to accounting by providing a language and a conceptual tool‐box for understanding the multiple rationalities in which accounting is implicated. In addition, given its pragmatic micro level approach to accounting, it has the potential to act as a bridge between institutional theory and practice theory.
Originality/value
This paper is the first known to render an extensive discussion of Boltanski and Thévenot's work in the accounting literature and to apply insights from this work to accounting research.
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By specifying long lists of users of published financial reports, accounting authorities may be raising the expectations of users for corporate accounting information. Discusses…
Abstract
By specifying long lists of users of published financial reports, accounting authorities may be raising the expectations of users for corporate accounting information. Discusses whether the raising of these lists creates users’ rights to information. Rights to information has been a theme, without in‐depth examination, both in conceptual frameworks and the general accounting literature. Conducts such an examination, revealing both the bases for, and justification of, the rights claimed within the accounting literature. After identifying what rights are claimed, justifications proffered by their proponents are investigated to establish the validity of these rights. Concludes that accounting’s frameworks need a rights‐based approach to ensure that fairness and justice are extended to those named as users.
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Gillian Maree Vesty, Chao Ren and Sophia Ji
The purpose of this paper is to provide practical insights into a senior manager’s engagement with integrated reporting (IR). This paper theorises IR as an accounting compromise…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide practical insights into a senior manager’s engagement with integrated reporting (IR). This paper theorises IR as an accounting compromise and test of worth in an Australian IR pilot organisation.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews with the chairman of the IR pilot organisation are analysed in the context of Boltanski and Thévenot’s (1991, 2006) economies of worth (EW). A personal narrative approach was used to privilege the voice of an individual actor at the heart of decision making.
Findings
In contributing to van Bommel’s (2014) use of EW to examine IR as an accounting compromise, the authors find that ambiguity in IR does not mean that reporting is getting harder to operationalise. Instead, IR is getting harder to justify. The relativism issues that IR has revealed suggest that if all views are met, any significant contributions would not stand out. Interviews reveal that the challenge for IR is to provide the means to report on the organisation’s broader societal impacts, which go beyond measures of IR value creation.
Practical implications
This paper contributes to the accounting academy with practical insights on a dual-purpose organisation’s experiences with IR. The authors demonstrate how a chairman of the board uses accounting to navigate competing priorities and justify management decisions.
Originality/value
This study offers unique insights from the chairman of an IR pilot organisation. A personal narrative approach contributes to the limited empirical literature in accounting using EW as a micro-level analytic.
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Niklas Sandell and Peter Svensson
The aim of this paper is to study the rhetoric of goodwill impairment, more specifically rhetoric, as it is constructed in the form of accounts (i.e. statements that explain…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to study the rhetoric of goodwill impairment, more specifically rhetoric, as it is constructed in the form of accounts (i.e. statements that explain unanticipated or untoward behavior). The authors argue that goodwill impairment is not only a technical matter but also a rhetorical practice by means of which external scrutiny is responded to.
Design/methodology/approach
The data corpus consists of explanations provided by corporations regarding impairment of goodwill. Data were collected from annual reports from companies quoted on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm, Sweden. The impairment explanations were analyzed according to a taxonomy of account types. The explanations were subjected to close reading to discern the potential rhetorical functions of the different accounts.
Findings
Seven account types are identified and discussed, namely, excuse, justification, refocusing, concession, mystification, silence and wordification.
Research limitations/implications
There is a need for further research that explores the process of authorship (i.e. writing, editing, negotiating and revising) through which the texts of financial communication are produced.
Practical implications
The findings have implications for the future formulations of standards regarding qualitative explanations in financial reporting in general and explanations of goodwill impairment in particular.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the knowledge about the use of natural language and rhetoric in financial communication.
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Agathe Morinière and Irène Georgescu
This study aims to understand whether and how the use of performance measures in the context of healthcare organizations facilitates the dynamics of compromise or whether it…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand whether and how the use of performance measures in the context of healthcare organizations facilitates the dynamics of compromise or whether it creates moral struggles among a wide variety of actors. It offers novel insights into the concept of hybridity by investigating its underlying moral dimension. Drawing upon the sociology of worth theory (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991, 2006), this paper examines how actors negotiate and compromise over time concerning issues of justice, involving the use of performance measures on a day-to-day basis.
Design/methodology/approach
The article presents a single case study of a medical unit in a French public hospital. Data were obtained through the ethnographic method, semi-structured interviews and internal financial and accounting documents.
Findings
Unlike earlier accounting studies, the authors analyze whether, and how, accounting, on one hand, contributes to the dynamics of compromise between actors with divergent values that characterize hybrid organizations, and, on the other hand, increases tensions among actors with convergent values involved in caregiving. This offers practical insights into three relational mechanisms underlying the dynamics of compromise and their limits through the time dimension.
Research limitations/implications
The authors use a single case study in a country-specific context.
Practical implications
This study helps managers of healthcare organizations to understand the relationships between the use of performance measures and their impact on the evaluation of worth in practice.
Originality/value
In terms of theoretical contribution, the authors show how the sociology of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991, 2006) complements the analysis of hybridity and develop an original approach to understanding the ambivalent role of performance measures in bringing together divergent values within French public hospitals.
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Kai Michael Krauss, Anna Sandäng and Eric Karlsson
By mobilizing the empirical setting of a megaproject, this study problematizes public budgeting as participatory practice. The authors suggest that megaprojects are prone to…
Abstract
Purpose
By mobilizing the empirical setting of a megaproject, this study problematizes public budgeting as participatory practice. The authors suggest that megaprojects are prone to democratic legitimacy challenges due to a long history of cost overruns, which provides stakeholders with a chance to dramatize a budgetary controversy.
Design/methodology/approach
Through article and document data, the authors reconstructed a controversy that emerged around the budget of Stockholm/Åre’s candidature for the Olympic Winter Games 2026. The authors used Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006) orders of worth to systematically analyze the justification work of key stakeholder groups involved in the controversy.
Findings
This study illustrates that a budgetary controversy was actively maintained by stakeholder groups, which resulted in a lack of public support and the eventual demise of the Olympic candidature. As such, the authors provide a more nuanced understanding of public budgeting as a controversy-based process vis-à-vis a wider public with regard to the broken institution of megaprojects.
Practical implications
This study suggests more attention to the disruptive power of public scrutiny and the dramatization of budgeting in megaprojects. In this empirical case, the authors show how stakeholders tend to take their technical concerns too far in order to challenge a budget, even though megaprojects generally provide an ill-suited setting for accurate forecasts.
Originality/value
While studies around the financial legacies of megaprojects have somewhat matured, very few have looked at pitching them. However, the authors argue that megaprojects are increasingly faced with financial skepticism upon their approval upfront.
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Joseph Patrick Daly, Richard W. Pouder and Chris R. McNeil
The purpose of this paper is to gauge the impact of the following on the share price of a firm that has allegedly committed labor abuses: the allegation itself, explanations …
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to gauge the impact of the following on the share price of a firm that has allegedly committed labor abuses: the allegation itself, explanations (justifications and excuses) offered by the company spokesperson, and denials of responsibility for the alleged abuse.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses archival data and an event study methodology.
Findings
Labor abuse allegations have a negative impact on the firm’s share price. Allegations that are accompanied by an explanation (a justification or excuse) have a less negative impact than those that are not accompanied by an explanation. Denials of responsibility have a negative influence on the share price.
Practical implications
If managers want to avoid a negative hit on the share price from an allegation of wrongdoing, they should provide an explanation (a justification or excuse) and avoid the use of denials.
Originality/value
Prior research has shown a negative impact from several types of labor abuse. This study extends prior research by showing a negative impact for all forms of labor abuse as a general category; it also extends findings from lab research on the impact of explanations on fairness judgments to a new context and a new dependent variable (the financial performance of the firm), which is on an organizational scale. It adds to the extreme paucity of empirical findings relative to the impact of denials and also adds to a small but growing literature on fairness judgments by third parties and their consequences.
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