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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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethical dimensions of crisis translation through the lenses of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical scholarship. In particular, his work on both translation and ethics will be examined in order to draw practical applications for those involved in humanitarian action.

The authors identified relevant themes in the work of renowned philosopher Paul Ricoeur and used philosophical analysis to apply them to ethical issues in crisis translation.

Paul Ricoeur was one of the leading philosophers in the twentieth century, writing on a wide variety of topics. From these, his work on translation and on ethics provided suitable ways to examine ethical issues in crisis translation. In particular, his concept of “linguistic hospitality” provides an important lens through which translation ethics can be examined. In addition, Ricoeur’s approach to ethics emphasised relational and justice dimensions which are crucial to examine in humanitarian settings.

While the findings are conceptual, they have many practical implications for how translation is approached in humanitarian crises. The focus on justice in Ricoeur’s approach has implications for policy and practice and serves to ensure that translation is available for all affected communities and that all groups are included in discussions around humanitarian responses.

Ricoeur’s work provides important insights into both translation and ethics that have significant social implications. His ideas highlight the personal and emotional aspects of translation and ethics, and point to their relational character. His openness to others provides an important basis for building trust and promoting dignity even in difficult humanitarian settings.

Ricoeur’s ethics points to the importance of persons and their relationships, reminding responders that translation is not just a mechanical exercise. This approach fosters an interest in and openness to others and their languages, which can promote respect towards those being helped in humanitarian crises.

The study seeks to address the research question: “How can Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics be operationalized in an interpretive accounting research project”? The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to review the key hermeneutic concepts of philosophers Gadamer and Ricoeur; and second, to share insights from the researcher’s experience of applying Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics to an interpretive accounting research project.

The paper draws on the extant literature and the researcher’s own experience using hermeneutics theory in an interpretive accounting research project involving in-depth interviews with organisational managers.

The process of interpretation is described using the core concept of the hermeneutic circle where the reader and the text engage in dialogue. The readers’ pre-understandings play a key role in this dialogue and assist in drawing meaning from the text. However, it is necessary for the reader to adopt a critically reflexive approach remaining alert for both unproductive pre-understandings and hidden power structures and ideologies in the text being interpreted. Each reading of a text involves the completion of one cycle of the hermeneutic circle in which the reader transitions from pre-configuration to configuration and ultimately re-configuration concluding with the reader acquiring new horizons of understanding. The researcher’s experience of applying hermeneutic theory to an interpretive accounting research project are reflected on and nine lessons are offered.

These insights will prove valuable to interpretive researchers within the social sciences, including accounting and management studies, as well as those working in the natural sciences.

To examine the rhetorical claims put forth by several prominent organizations in the American public accounting profession that claim to act in the public interest, and to attempt to identify the ideological position or positions underlying their claims.

Certain rhetorical claims put forth by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) are examined. A discussion of Paul Ricoeur's concept of ideology follows, along with an explanation of the way in which Ricoeur's understanding of ideology can be used to gain a better understanding of the ideology of the American public accounting profession.

Initially it appears that the rhetorical claims of the prominent organizations of the American public accounting profession reveal an underlying neo‐liberal ideology. Closer examination indicates a certain degree of ambiguity with respect to a neo‐liberal ideology, with a greater emphasis placed on the importance of regulation of capital markets through auditing and financial accounting standards setting. This ambiguity also reveals that there are economic interests involved and that these economic interests constitute a public accounting ideology, one which conflates the values and activities of the public accounting profession with serving the public interest. This public accounting ideology can be understood as providing a socially integrative function for the public accounting profession and also a justifying function with respect to maintaining the legitimate authority of CPAs with respect to auditing and financial accounting standards setting. The distortive aspect of ideology is also evident, in that there seems to be an inability to determine precisely what the meaning of the public interest is or may be.

This is a limited study of only three prominent organizations in the American public accounting profession.

May help to define the meaning of the term “the public interest.”

Uses Ricoeur's concept of ideology for the first time in the accounting literature. One of the first papers to explicitly address the meaning of “the public interest.”

The purpose of this paper is to study the status of the individual self in the emergence of change initiatives in organizations.

This theoretical paper examines the emergence of change initiatives through the building of agents’ capacity to act, based on a theory of action inspired by Paul Ricœur.

This paper identifies the “course of recognition” to favor the emergence of change initiatives and the building of the capacity to act of agents, respecting the autonomy at the individual level, a sense of care at the group level and justice at the institutional level.

The theoretical research can be extended with empirical studies dealing with the role of agents’ capacities in conflict management, the role of the “narrative self´” in change processes in organizations and the conjoint operationalization of autonomy care and justice to determine the agents’ capacity to act for initiatives to emerge.

It is important to develop a sense of shared leadership to nurture the capacity to act of agents to make change initiatives emerge in organizations, increasing organizational members’ feelings of being recognized.

So far, research has not provided satisfactory answers to the question about how to best initiate organizational change. The use of Ricœur’s theory of action adds value to the existing approaches as it addresses the source of the emergence of initiatives from agents’ feelings of their capacity to act, and integrates individual, group and institutional levels, which are rarely contemplated together.

The purpose of this paper is to first consider how veterans use talk to shape interpretations of personal and social identify. Second, this paper seeks to gain an understanding of how veterans see themselves in a civilian world, their ability to re-conceptualise and realign their perspective on life to support their transition in to a civilian world.

Underpinned by Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, the work provides a qualitative analysis data from coaching interviews with five veterans.

The findings revealed the on-going legacy of military life and how its distinctiveness and belief centred on kinship shapes personal identity and the way they see their civilian world. The work sheds light on to the benefits of this Ricoeur’s self-reflexive approach and how it can be used to provide a deeper insight in to the nature of personal transitions and how narrative can be used to expose complexities of the narratives of personal history and meaning as the narrator becomes both the seeker and what is sought.

The work reinforces the value of Ricoeur’s self-reflexive approach identifying narrative mediating between two “poles” of identity and the act of mimesis; prefiguration, configuration and refiguration as veterans project stories of their world and their place within it.

The paper provides new insights in to the importance of narrative identify broadening its potential application with engagement across diverse communities, thereby providing depth and rigour of its conceptual understanding of personal identify. The work further provides insights in to the challenges facing veterans to integrate within a civilian society.

Defined as perceiving the past via the lens of former peoples, historical empathy engenders rich cognitive and affective understandings. Drawing on Ricoeur's hermeneutics (1981, 2004), this paper departs from previous work on historical empathy by conceiving empathy as dialogically mediated by sociocultural and narrative perceptions.

This hermeneutic phenomenology explores eight adolescents' engagements with primary sources from the Second World War.

This study reveals the power of empathy to draw the students into the past and to investigate sources. Alternately, the students struggled with fanciful elaborations and overidentifications with historical figures.

Cultivating wise judgments begins with accepting the inherent link between students' historicity and historical empathy and then teaching students to wisely interpret.

This study broadens historical empathy's framework to include Ricoeur's hermeneutic philosophies of narrative and history.

The paper discusses the “narrative practices” utilised by women leading in a small sample of Early Years services in the North East of England. These Early Years settings are presented as an alternative site for studying women's experiences of leadership. It examines the way in which these women use narrative strategies and approaches to work in collaborative, community based services for young children and their families.

The study is drawn from a larger study into narratives of professional identity and their relation to interactional contexts. The study follows an interpretive paradigm, and used narrative and participative methodology and methods to work with a small number of participants purposively sampled from cohorts of the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL). Participants were involved in reflective conversations about their leadership supported by interactive, visual methods in five extended sessions over the course of twelve months. Data from the larger study which related to the theme of “narrative practices” was subsequently coded and interpreted to inform this study.

Data coded as “narrative practices” led to the establishment of three high level categories of narrative practice found in the study. These are summarised in the metaphors of “tent making” (creating and using symbolic and narrative space with others), “skilled dancing” (improvising, and remembering with others) and “orchestration” (reflexive attuning). Data suggests that women involved in the study drew on their experience and values to develop sophisticated narrative practices that were particularly adaptive, ethically sensitive and sustainable – often in spite of “official” masculine leadership cultures.

This specific study only draws on narrative accounts of three women leaders in Early Years services and as such is not intended to generate generalizable theory. The intention of the study is to conceptualise women's leadership as narrative practice, and in so doing to direct further study into these practices as aspects of effective leadership.

The study develops new ways of conceptualising and interpreting women's leadership practices and opens up opportunities for further study in this field. Access to this material also provides individuals (including women leading in UK Early Years services) and opportunity for reflection on their own leadership practice.

This study is unique in using a form of highly participative, reflective methodology to consider women's use of narrative in leadership interactions in the UK Early Years sector. The study is the first in this sector to look at this specific topic using aspects of Ricoeur's (1984) narrative hermeneutics and in so doing generates new questions about women's narrative practices.

The pupose of this paper is to explore the power of narrative in management and enterprise research. It is inspired by Paul Ricoeur's philosophical understanding of the relationship between life and narrative. He draws on Aristotle's Poetics and the notion of emplotment (muthos in Greek), which embodies both imaginary story (fable) and well‐constructed story (plot). This study identifies aspects of narratives of enterprise, which resonate with Aristotle's key elements of emplotment in tragedy.

This qualitative, interpretive study relies on narrative as a way of knowing and as a form of communication. The stories as told by 16 participants in in‐depth interviews, are analysed and interpreted in terms of the key elements set out in Aristotle's Poetics – reversals, recognition and suffering.

This form of literary interpretation throws into relief aspects of the founding of a family business across the generations. The dynamics of the “family” in the business, the nature and extent of the family engagement in the business is revealed.

This paper contributes to understanding the intergenerational dynamics of family and business. It illustrates, therefore, that study of the family is central to understanding family business. This calls into question the common assumption that the individual owner manager, or entrepreneur, is synonymous with the business, and therefore necessarily the most appropriate focus for research.

The narrative approach has remained, to date, under‐utilised in family business research. In adopting Aristotlean principles as a framework this study links enterprise activity with the central traditions of Western literature and provides a fresh understanding of enterprise as epic plot.

The advent of postmodernism, post structuralism and social constructionism led over the last years to a multitude of theoretical philosophical reflections on possible meanings of the psychological basic concept ‘selfhood’ or ‘subjectivity’. The modern, sovereign self was deconstructed and no longer considered as an ontological fact but rather as a product of language. The stable core self from which many traditional psychological theories start, was dethroned and substituted by a narrative, multiple and variable self that is permanently constructed and reconstructed in social situations. May we invite the reader to reflect on this fascinating subject together with Anna and Tom, the two interlocutors. Starting from the question ‘Who are we?’, we make a tour of the different schools of thought on subjectivity. Departing from the subject concept of Descartes, we track symbolic interactionistic, post‐structuralistic, social constructionistic and narrative hermeneutic ways. All these ways provide us with a different ‘view’ on subjectivity/selfhood and raise new questions that are relevant to researchers in the social sciences.