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Article
Publication date: 15 January 2018

Martina Linnenluecke, Kerry Jacobs and Tom Smith

565

Abstract

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Article
Publication date: 29 November 2018

Lee D. Parker, Kerry Jacobs and Jana Schmitz

In the context of global new public management reform trends and the associated phenomenon of performance auditing (PA), the purpose of this paper is to explore the rise of…

2894

Abstract

Purpose

In the context of global new public management reform trends and the associated phenomenon of performance auditing (PA), the purpose of this paper is to explore the rise of performance audit in Australia and examines its focus across audit jurisdictions and the role key stakeholders play in driving its practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts a multi-jurisdictional analysis of PA in Australia to explore its scale and focus, drawing on the theoretical tools of Goffman. Documentary analysis and interview methods are employed.

Findings

Performance audit growth has continued but not always consistently over time and across audit jurisdictions. Despite auditor discourse concerning backstage performance audit intentions being strongly focussed on evaluating programme outcomes, published front stage reports retain a strong control focus. While this appears to reflect Auditors-General (AGs) reluctance to critique government policy, nonetheless there are signs of direct and indirectly recursive relationships emerging between AGs and parliamentarians, the media and the public.

Research limitations/implications

PA merits renewed researcher attention as it is now an established process but with ongoing variability in focus and stakeholder influence.

Social implications

As an audit technology now well-embedded in the public sector accountability setting, it offers potential insights into matters of local, state and national importance for parliament and the public, but exhibits variable underlying drivers, agendas and styles of presentation that have the capacity to enhance or detract from the public interest.

Originality/value

Performance audit emerges as a complex practice deployed as a mask by auditors in managing their relationship with key stakeholders.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 February 2018

Peni Fukofuka and Kerry Jacobs

The purpose of this paper is to explore the fluid role of accounting both as a form of power and resistance in the context of World Bank projects in the Island Kingdom of Tonga.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the fluid role of accounting both as a form of power and resistance in the context of World Bank projects in the Island Kingdom of Tonga.

Design/methodology/approach

Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa and capital provided the framework for problematizing the fluidity of practices of accounting as both a form of power and of resistance. The authors used a qualitative field study design based on a combination of a documentary analysis of these loan agreements and interviews with key actors and informants.

Findings

The role of accounting in relation to subaltern groups is mediated by the doxic rules and existing capital arrangements at the national and the local or village level. Understanding accounting as both capital and as doxa explains why it can be both a form of power and of resistance.

Practical implications

This study provides policy makers and foreign donors of Tonga and other Pacific Islands a deeper understanding on the struggles to implement and the impacts of accounting at local level as accounting is deployed as part of struggles in various social contexts each with its own doxa and capital arrangements.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the growing accounting body of work that seeks to better understand accounting by proposing that role of accounting as a tool for domination is mediated in various social settings by the doxic value and the existing capital arrangements in those settings.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 December 2018

Paul D. Ahn and Kerry Jacobs

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an accounting association and its key members define, control, and claim their knowledge; adopt a closure and/or openness policy to…

1456

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an accounting association and its key members define, control, and claim their knowledge; adopt a closure and/or openness policy to enhance their status/influence; and respond to structural/institutional forces from international organisations and/or the state in a particular historical context, such as a globalised/neo-liberalised setting.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical tools (field, capital, habitus, and doxa) to understand how public sector accrual accounting was defined, and how the Korean Association for Government Accounting was formed and represented as a group with public sector accounting expertise. The research context was the implementation of accrual accounting in South Korea between 1997/1998, when the Asian financial crisis broke out, and 2006/2007, when accrual accounting was enforced by legislation. The authors interviewed social actors recognised as public sector accounting experts, in addition to examining related documents such as articles in academic journals, newsletters, invitations, membership forms, newspaper articles, and curricula vitae.

Findings

The authors found that the key founders of KAGA included some public administration professors, who advocated public sector accrual accounting via civil society groups immediately after Korea applied to the International Monetary Fund for bailout loans and a new government was formed in 1997/1998. In conjunction with public servants, they defined and designed public sector accrual accounting as a measure of public sector reform and as a part of the broader government budget process, rather than as an accounting initiative. They also co-opted accounting professors and CPA-qualified accountants through their personal connections, based on shared educational backgrounds, to represent the association as a public sector accounting experts’ group.

Originality/value

These findings suggest that the study of the accounting profession cannot be restricted to a focus on professional accounting associations and that accounting knowledge can be acquired by non-accountants. Therefore, the authors argue that the relationship between accounting knowledge, institutional forms, and key actors’ strategies is rich and multifaceted.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 September 2019

Paul D. Ahn and Kerry Jacobs

The purpose of this paper is to understand how and why accountants who moved from accounting firms to public service adapted their identities to reduce insecurity. The literature…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how and why accountants who moved from accounting firms to public service adapted their identities to reduce insecurity. The literature on accountant identity highlights insecurity caused by promotion criterion to partnership, which requires accountants to win new work for their employers and leads to overtime, as a serious problem which has permeated the accounting profession. However, there have been few studies that explore whether accountants who moved to the public service, where they have stronger job security and can enjoy work-life balance, have resolved the insecurity problem, although a neoliberalism turn accompanied by New Public Management-style reforms has increased the number of accountants in public service. Therefore, the authors of the current study aim to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the identity transitions of South Korean (hereafter Korean) accountants who joined the public service.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors theorise the nature of the process of identity adaptation with conceptual tools from Pierre Bourdieu, such as habitus and capital, and examine whether the accountants took a “vision-of-division” or a “di-vision” strategy in the public service to secure their identity. For this purpose, the authors interviewed accountants and their non-accountant colleagues, and investigated other written sources, such as newspaper articles and business cards.

Findings

The authors found that Korean accountants in Big-4 firms dealt with the same insecurity issues as accountants in western countries and perceived public service as an attractive alternative to remove this insecurity. However, accountants who joined the public service found themselves confronted with different types of problems, such as accounting/costing work being regarded as demeaning, which made their identity insecure. Therefore, some accountants took a di-vision strategy that makes the difference between themselves and typical public servants less visible by avoiding accounting/costing work, using bureaucratic designations and de-emphasising their accounting credentials. Accountants took this strategy because the symbolic value of their accountancy qualifications grew weaker over time, due to the increase in the number of qualified accountants, and because the public service field valued bureaucratic habitus and capital more highly than those of the accountants.

Originality/value

From a methodological aspect, the authors collected participants’ business cards and analysed which designations/credentials they chose in order to create a certain perception. This analysis helped the authors understand how accountants work on their identity by de-emphasising accounting credentials to secure their identity in an organisational field. In a theoretical dimension, the current study argues that the symbolic capital of accounting credentials is dependent on the organisational and social context in line with Bourdieu, and, contrary to Bourdieu, on the supply and demand in the professional labour market.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 July 2019

Glenn Finau, Kerry Jacobs and Satish Chand

The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine the role of accounting and accountants in customary land transactions between Indigenous peoples and foreign corporate…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine the role of accounting and accountants in customary land transactions between Indigenous peoples and foreign corporate entities. The paper uses the case of two accountants who utilised accounting technologies in lease agreements to alienate customary land from Indigenous landowners in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Design/methodology/approach

Employing a case study methodology, the paper draws on contemporary data sets of transcripts related to a Commission of Inquiry established in 2011 to investigate PNG’s Special Agricultural Business Lease system. Analysis of other publicly available data and semi-structured interviews with PNG landowners and other stakeholders supplement and triangulate data from the inquiry transcripts. A Bourdieusian lens was adopted to conceptualise how accounting was used in the struggles for customary land between foreign developers and Indigenous landowners within the wider capitalist field and the traditional Melanesian field.

Findings

This paper reveals how accountants exploited PNG’s customary land registration system, the Indigenous peoples’ lack of financial literacy and their desperation for development to alienate customary land from landowners. The accountants employed accounting technologies in the sublease agreements to reduce their royalty obligations to the landowners and to impose penalty clauses that made it financially impossible for the landowners to cancel the leases. The accountants used accounting to normalise, legitimise and rationalise these exploitative arrangements in formal lease contracts.

Originality/value

This paper responds to the call for research on accounting and Indigenous peoples that is contemporary rather than historic; examines the role of accountants in Indigenous relations, and examines the emancipatory potential of accounting.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 7 February 2014

Prof Kerry Jacobs

1042

Abstract

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 27 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Article
Publication date: 20 March 2017

Colleen Hayes and Kerry Jacobs

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the issue of the entry of women into the Anglo-Australian accounting profession in the Second World War and provide insights on the role…

1551

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the issue of the entry of women into the Anglo-Australian accounting profession in the Second World War and provide insights on the role that gender, class, and ethnicity played in mediating women’s relations with the accounting profession in that period.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on the narratives of three women from diverse social backgrounds who entered the Anglo-Australian profession during this period.

Findings

The analysis indicates that while participants had the mindset needed for accounting work, the more removed the individual’s perceived social identity was from her perception of the dominant British, white, middle-class ideology of the profession, the less likely she was to embrace the opportunity to join the accounting profession. The distance was anchored in social (ethnicity and class) and historical forces. The study also finds that the appropriation of education and credentials ameliorated disadvantages accruing from gender and working-class status.

Practical implications

This study has implications for our understanding of the accounting profession and what is required to reduce the risks of marginalization in a contemporary setting.

Originality/value

The study provides a richer understanding of how class and ethnicity shape the female experience differently. The results also demonstrate that in times of social change, the processes of inclusion and exclusion are not confined to the deliberations of the accounting profession but also the individual. Whether the women valued accounting as an occupation depended on whether or not if offered them the freedom to achieve what they valued most. At the same time, however, the freedom to realize what they valued most was a function of class and ethnicity. Finally, the results demonstrate the capacity of unique experience to shape the perceptions, aspirations and actions of women.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 30 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 October 2016

Rachel F. Baskerville, Kerry Jacobs, Vassili Joannides de Lautour and Jeff Sissons

Accounting research has struggled with how ethnicity is to be understood in relation to concepts such as nation and nationality and how ethnicity may impact on accounting and…

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Abstract

Purpose

Accounting research has struggled with how ethnicity is to be understood in relation to concepts such as nation and nationality and how ethnicity may impact on accounting and auditing practices, behaviours, education and professional values. These themes are explored and developed in the papers presented in this special issue. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to explore the contrasting theoretical and methodological approaches reflected by the papers in the issue.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a reflective and analytical paper which explores how notions of ethnicity are conceived and operationalised in accounting research. The authors identified two distinctive analytic ordering processes evident within this AAAJ Special issue: Mary Douglas’ scheme of Grid and Group and the Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of field, capital and habitus.

Findings

The “Grid and Group” Culture Theory with Bourdieu’s theoretical tools evident in the papers provide powerful tools to explore the relationship between ethnicity and accounting both conceptually and empirically, suggesting that ethnicity can be deployed to reveal and challenge institutionalised racism. This paper highlights the potential to integrate elements of the “Grid and Group” Culture Theory and Bourdieu’s theoretical tools. The issue of ethnicity and the relationship between ethnicity and accounting should be more fruitfully explored in future.

Research limitations/implications

The authors acknowledge the challenges and limitations of discussing the issue of ethnicity from any particular cultural perspective and recognise the implicit dominance of White Anglo centric perspectives within accounting research.

Originality/value

The papers presented in the special issue illustrate that the issue of ethnicity is complex and difficult to operationalise. This paper highlights the potential to move beyond the ad hoc application of theoretical and methodological concepts to operationalise coherent concepts which challenge and extend the authors’ understanding of accounting as a social and contextual practice. But to achieve this it is necessary to more clearly integrate theory, methodology, method and critique.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 29 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 4 June 2018

266

Abstract

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 14 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

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