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Book part
Publication date: 28 December 2006

Katarzyna Kosmala and Pat Sucher

We suggest that a notion of auditor independence, constructed in Anglo-American epistemology and practice, is a social construct that has different meanings in different…

Abstract

We suggest that a notion of auditor independence, constructed in Anglo-American epistemology and practice, is a social construct that has different meanings in different historical, socio-cultural and economic milieus. We have researched how this idea of auditor independence, incorporated locally from the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) Code, is perceived and has been implemented in three countries of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region: Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. With a view to seeking a comprehensive understanding of what is happening in transition economies, all aspects of auditor independence – from basic educational provision for an auditor, to complex aspects such as the provision of non-audit services – were considered. From all these aspects of independence, a framework of the requirements for independence was developed. As a result of this research, we question whether the usual international definitions of auditor independence, as laid out in the IFAC Code, with their separation into mind and appearance, are at all realisable.

Details

Independent Accounts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-382-2

Article
Publication date: 27 July 2011

Katarzyna Kosmala and Chunyan Xian

This study aims to examine aspects of the construction of professional identity, based on an interpretative inquiry in two Chinese professional service firms in Beijing.

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine aspects of the construction of professional identity, based on an interpretative inquiry in two Chinese professional service firms in Beijing.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were gathered through participant observation, archival material and interviews. The interpretive nature of the research experience facilitated openness to the local field and avoidance of a heavy reliance on assumptions that derive from privileging the Western constructions of professional identity, where “I” (the researcher) am situated epistemologically.

Findings

Professionalism discourse, a powerful resource of ambiguity, becomes an arena where identity is “asserted” through organisational performance, incorporated in normative Western‐driven laws. Enacted professionalism appears consistent with the pursuit of an elevated Western image. The relationships with the clients, however, are embedded in guanxi dynamics and related accountabilities, reflecting the local ways of doing things.

Originality/value

Empirical material offers insights into professionalisation processes in Chinese firms, with a focus on the construction of professional identity, located within organisational micro‐dynamics.

Details

Critical perspectives on international business, vol. 7 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-2043

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 2004

Pat Sucher and Katarzyna Kosmala‐MacLullich

A notion of auditor independence, envisaged as crucial to the credibility of the audit function, resides in professional Codes of Ethics in much of the western world. Since the…

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Abstract

A notion of auditor independence, envisaged as crucial to the credibility of the audit function, resides in professional Codes of Ethics in much of the western world. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the auditor independence construct has been imported eastwards and incorporated into legislation and Code of Practices amongst central and eastern European economies (CEE), together with other requirements, as the countries prepare for their accession to the European Union. This study is aimed at ascertaining the meanings conveyed by the auditor independence construct and its state of realisation in one of the transition economies of the CEE region, the Czech Republic. Also, the study seeks to understand how local culture impacts upon a particular understanding of auditor independence. In order to examine the auditor independence in this part of the world, a framework for analysis incorporating structural conditions, local traditions and culture is proposed. The analysis is conducted first de jure, and is based upon a review of the Czech law and professional regulation. This is complemented with a de facto analysis based upon interviews with audit practitioners, regulators and financial statement users in the Czech Republic and on a review of Czech media coverage. What emerges from the study is a particular local understanding of the auditor independence construct, perceived primarily as an economic concept in the context of market instability and the immature legal framework. It appears that there is a tendency to follow the form of audit procedures without substantial rationalisation. We conclude that socio‐economic and cultural pressures appear to far outweigh any formal safeguards implemented to maintain professional integrity and competence in the CEE region.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 17 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 29 March 2011

Katarzyna Kosmala and John Francis McKernan

This conceptual paper aims to elucidate and explore the implications for critical accounting and management of some of the ethical dimensions of Foucault's thought, hitherto…

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Abstract

Purpose

This conceptual paper aims to elucidate and explore the implications for critical accounting and management of some of the ethical dimensions of Foucault's thought, hitherto comparatively neglected by critical scholars.

Design/methodology/approach

Foucault's late works are read as offering a view of the cultivation of ethical agency through the work of the self on the self, through care of the self, which at least implicitly gives priority to care for the other. This notion of moral agency is situated in the context of the broad spectrum of Foucault's influence on critical accounting and management thought, and its significance for professional responsibility in the workplace is explored.

Findings

It was found that the accounting and management scholarship that has drawn on Foucault's work on care of the self tends to marginalize its ethical dimension, in particular by neglecting the role of openness to, and responsibility for, the other, in the processes of ethical self‐creation.

Originality/value

It is emphasised that in his later works Foucault puts responsiveness to difference and responsibility for the other at the centre of his ethical project of the self, and it is argued that this opening up of the moral dimension in his work has the potential to enrich the ways in which critical scholarship addresses issues such as professional agency and responsibility, identity politics, and governance in the workplace.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 24 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 September 2007

John Francis McKernan and Katarzyna Kosmala

The paper's purpose is to use religious thought to inform accounting, and in particular to make a contribution to the ongoing debates concerning the merits of rules‐ and…

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Abstract

Purpose

The paper's purpose is to use religious thought to inform accounting, and in particular to make a contribution to the ongoing debates concerning the merits of rules‐ and principles‐based accounting systems and the value of a rule‐overriding requirement of fair presentation in financial reporting.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper applies to accounting a conception of religion that is heavily influenced by Jacques Derrida's writings on religion and deconstruction. In order to clarify the nature of this religion and to facilitate appreciation of its significance for accounting it is progressively recast, in the paper, first in terms of deconstruction and then in terms of a demand for an infinite justice.

Findings

At the core of the paper, religious responsibility, as a demand for justice, in accounting is explored through Derrida's analysis of the relation between justice and law, which is found to have clear application to accounting in terms of an aporetic tension between an infinite demand for fairness in accounting and accounting regulation.

Practical implications

The analysis implies that the pursuit of justice as fairness in accounting, “doing the truth” in accounting, will always demand the negotiation of an unstable and difficult mediation between the poles of regulation and fairness, the calculable and the incalculable, the possible and the impossible.

Originality/value

The paper draws on the postsecular current in religion to make a novel contribution to the critical and interdisciplinary awareness in accounting that has begun to unsettle the hold that certain modernist dichotomies, such as that of myth and reason, have had on accounting thought.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 20 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 October 2013

Katarzyna Kosmala and Roman Sebastyanski

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the roles of the artists’ collective in the creation of socially shared knowledge, concerning Gdansk Shipyard's heritage protection…

Abstract

Purpose

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the roles of the artists’ collective in the creation of socially shared knowledge, concerning Gdansk Shipyard's heritage protection during the urban regeneration process over last ten years, since 2002.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical section of the paper is based on a single case study concerning the artists collective’ ability to build a complex network of social relations, to research cultural heritage of the Gdansk Shipyard, to translate this knowledge into symbolic languages through art-based work and to transmit knowledge to the wider public with an aim to engage in an open dialogic public communication.

Findings

The case study draws on insights from participant observation carried out on the premises of the Gdansk Shipyard between years 2000 and 2008 and interviews with individual artists from the collective, conducted between years 2004 and 2006. Data was also drawn from archival research. The exposure in public media was also examined over last ten years, including Internet websites as well as newspapers and magazines’ content.

Research limitations/implications

The case study research indicates that methods and techniques applied by the artists’ collective in researching the shipyard's historical heritage and communicating their findings to the wider public have been more effective than the official planning methods of expert-led post-industrial urban regeneration. Over the last ten years, the artists have succeeded to transform the negative perceptions about the values of the shipyard's cultural heritage and engaged local citizens in the preservation of the historical identities of the place. In 2012, the Mayor of Gdansk has invited representatives of the artists’ collective to the newly established Young City Stakeholders’ Board in order to utilize their knowledge of the shipyard's cultural heritage and their capacity to mediate between various groups involved in urban regeneration planning process as well as to communicate with the wider public.

Practical implications

Despite persistent views in literature that equate public engagement in the planning process of urban regeneration with a kind of “modern utopia”, we argue that participatory process is not only possible in practice but also can be highly effective and democratically ethical.

Details

Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, vol. 3 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2044-1266

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 July 2004

John Francis McKernan and Katarzyna Kosmala MacLullich

This paper analyses what is seen as a crisis of authority in financial reporting. It considers the view that an element of authority may be restored to accounting through…

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Abstract

This paper analyses what is seen as a crisis of authority in financial reporting. It considers the view that an element of authority may be restored to accounting through communicative reason. The paper argues that the justice‐oriented rationality of traditional, Habermasian, communicative ethics is incapable of providing a solid foundation for the re‐authorisation of financial reporting. The paper argues that a more adequate foundation might be found in an enlarged communicative ethics that allows space to the other of justice‐oriented reason. The inspiration for the enlargement is found in Ricoeur's analysis of narrative, his exploration of its role in the figuration of identity, and in his biblical hermeneutics which reveals the necessity of an active dialectic of love and justice.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 17 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 28 December 2006

Abstract

Details

Independent Accounts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-382-2

Article
Publication date: 1 August 2002

Pawan Budhwar, Andy Crane, Annette Davies, Rick Delbridge, Tim Edwards, Mahmoud Ezzamel, Lloyd Harris, Emmanuel Ogbonna and Robyn Thomas

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce …

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Abstract

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Details

Management Research News, vol. 25 no. 8/9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0140-9174

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 27 July 2011

Joanne Roberts and George Cairns

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Abstract

Details

Critical perspectives on international business, vol. 7 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-2043

1 – 10 of 12