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This study aims to analyse how the collective processing of the #MeToo legacy in the form of community discourses and activism conceptualises organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and enhances the development of new accountability instruments.

The study draws on social movement theory and the intellectual problematics of accountability, together with the empirical insights from two research engagement projects established and facilitated by the author.

The study reveals multiple dimensions of how post-#MeToo community activism impacted the conceptualisation of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work. The movement enhanced discourses prompting a new societal sense of accountability for sexual wrongdoings. This in turn facilitated public demands for accountability that pressured organisations to respond. The accountability crisis created an opportunity for community activists to influence understanding of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and to propose new accountability instruments advancing harassment reporting technology, as well as an enhancing the behavioural consciousness and self-assessment of individuals.

The study addresses a topic of social importance in analysing how community activism arising from a social movement has transformed accountability demands and thus both advanced the conceptualisation of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and established socially desirable practices for it. The study contributes to theory by revealing the emancipatory potential of community activism to influence organisational accountability practices and to propose new instruments at a moment of organisational hesitation and crisis of accountability.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Purpose: Previous research identified a measurement gap in the individual assessment of social misconduct in the workplace related to gender. This gap implies that women respond to comparable self-reported acts of bullying or sexual discrimination slightly more often than men with the self-labeling as “bullied” or “sexually discriminated and/or harassed.” This study tests this hypothesis for women and men in the scientific workplace and explores patterns of gender-related differences in self-reporting behavior.

Basic design: The hypotheses on the connection between gender and the threshold for self-labeling as having been bullied or sexually discriminated against were tested based on a sample from a large German research organization. The sample includes 5,831 responses on bullying and 6,987 on sexual discrimination (coverage of 24.5 resp. 29.4 percentage of all employees). Due to a large number of cases and the associated high statistical power, this sample for the first time allows a detailed analysis of the “gender-related measurement gap.” The research questions formulated in this study were addressed using two hierarchical regression models to predict the mean values of persons who self-labeled as having been bullied or sexually discriminated against. The status of the respondents as scientific or non-scientific employees was included as a control variable.

Results: According to a self-labeling approach, women reported both bullying and sexual discrimination more frequently. This difference between women and men disappeared for sexual discrimination when, in addition to the gender of a person, self-reported behavioral items were considered in the prediction of self-labeling. For bullying, the difference between the two genders remained even in this extended prediction. No statistically significant relationship was found between the frequency of self-reported items and the effect size of their interaction with gender for either bullying or sexual discrimination. When comparing bullying and sexual discrimination, it should be emphasized that, on average, women report experiencing a larger number of different behavioral items than men.

Interpretation and relevance: The results of the study support the current state of research. However, they also show how volatile the measurement instruments for bullying and sexual discrimination are. For example, the gender-related measurement gap is considerably influenced by single items in the Negative Acts Questionnaire and Sexual Experience Questionnaire. The results suggest that women are generally more likely than men to report having experienced bullying and sexual discrimination. While an unexplained “gender gap” in the understanding of bullying was found for bullying, this was not the case for sexual discrimination.

This paper aims to focus on compliance of workplace sexual harassment-related provisions under Indian companies and securities law, based on an empirical analysis of companies’ sexual harassment-related disclosures contained within their directors’ annual reports (ARs). Specifically, sections devoted to sexual harassment-related disclosures, inbuilt within directors’ ARs for the financial year 2019–2020 for a selected sample of companies listed under the National Stock Exchange, have been analysed.

To examine the nature of companies’ disclosures to demonstrate their compliance with statutory requirements under the POSH law, aligned with the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014 and Securities and Exchange Board of India’s regulations, an empirical-based, descriptive content analysis of ARs of 200 listed companies were used.

This study primarily finds that the majority of companies from the sample have disclosed to have prepared a corporate-level policy, as required under the POSH law. As also required under the POSH law, companies, reportedly, have constituted an Internal Complaints Committee to adjudicate and dispose of incidents related to sexual misconduct reported at their workplaces. However, companies lack in disclosing qualitative information, with sufficient detail, on many important aspects related to prevention and resolution of reported cases of workplace sexual harassment.

This paper adds to the broader narrative of the lacunae within the disclosure and reporting requirements on enhancing the liabilities of the companies to prevent and address sexual harassment under India’s corporate and securities regulations.

Drawing on hegemonic masculinity theory, this study provides evidence supporting how gender, race and sexual identity, may shape the rates of sexual misconduct reporting, by keeping those targets who traditionally enjoy positions of power (i.e. white, cisgender men) silent.

Across 3,230 gender harassment, 890 sexual advance harassment and 570 sexual assault incidents that occurred within a traditionally masculine organization, the authors conducted tests of independence and hierarchical regression analyses to examine whether targets' social identity characteristics (i.e. sex, race, sexuality and gender alignment), predicted the reporting of sexual misconduct.

Although reporting rates varied based on the type of incident, white men were less likely than their colleagues to report workplace sexual misconduct. In general, men were approximately half as likely as women to report. Lower rates of reporting were similarly seen among all white (vs BIPOC) targets and all cisgender and heterosexual (vs LGBT) targets, when controlling for other identity characteristics.

Research on sexual misconduct has largely privileged the experiences of (white, heterosexual) women, despite knowledge that men, too, can experience this mistreatment. This research broadens this lens and challenges the notion that sexual misconduct reporting rates are uniform across employee groups. By articulating how the pressures of hegemonic masculinity serve to silence certain targets – including and especially white, cisgender men – the authors provide means of better understanding and addressing workplace sexual misconduct underreporting.

Sexual misconduct (sexual assault and sexual harassment) in the US military is a long-standing problem. The military has implemented many policies and programs to address sexual misconduct in its ranks. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the processes of military sexual misconduct policy and programs have evolved since the 1940s.

Punctuated equilibrium and multiple streams theories were the guiding frameworks for this process analysis of the policies and programs implemented to address military sexual misconduct based on existing literature, news media and press.

Three punctuations are found in military sexual misconduct policy that demonstrate large-scale departures from the periods of equilibrium as the result of either a significant sexual misconduct allegation or new survey findings revealing sexual misconduct prevalence rates. In between these major-issue defining events, incremental policy change has occurred resulting in a period of stasis or return to the status quo requiring correction. Despite returns to stasis, each policy punctuation has built on the prior punctuation, generating new military directives, policies and programs.

Using the lenses of punctuated equilibrium and multiple stream theories, this paper shows how the processes of US military sexual misconduct policies and programs have evolved. The US military and militaries globally can utilize these policy frameworks to help predict future patterns of military sexual misconduct and improve responses to these problems.

Congress has spilled a good deal of ink in an attempt to support survivors of sexual assault and to prevent sexual violence from occuring. Legislation has been passed to address and prevent sexual assault in the military environment, higher education, and even within various government agencies. However, Congress has had a long and sordid history of burying incidents of sexual assault within its own halls. Prior to the #Metoo movement, Congress had a rather lackluster bill that provided minimal protection for those who were harassed or assaulted by a member of Congress and rarely held anyone accused accountable for their actions. In fact, the original Congressional Accountability Act included a fund that was used to pay off those who came forward with allegations of sexual harassment or assault against a member of Congress. This chapter follows the legislative history of Congress with regard to the response to and prevention of sexual assault and its shocking lack of oversight of its own members who were frequently committing the same assaults that they were legislating against in other areas. The chapter also highlights the brave work of survivors of assault during their time in Congress, and the work of the #MeTooCongress movement, including current members of Congress, who helped to bring more accountability to Congress as a result of their efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a possible effect of #MeToo media on individuals’ personal recall and reinterpretation of sex harassment (SH) experiences. The authors experimentally examine how exposure to high-profile stories of sexual misconduct triggers memories and reinterpretation of one’s own past SH experiences.

Using a sample of 393 US adults, participants were randomly assigned to read one of four media passages, two of which were news stories or transcripts of high-profile cases of sexual harassment or misconduct (e.g., the Trump Access Hollywood transcript), then completed the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ) and follow-up questions about how the media impacted their memory of their prior SH experiences.

Sexual misconduct media stories, compared to control conditions, indirectly predicted self-report of past SH (SEQ) through both remembering and reinterpreting one’s past experiences. Gender and political ideology moderated the indirect effects such that the effects of the media stories were stronger for women and for those higher on progressive political ideology.

This study experimentally demonstrated what has publicly been assumed to be a driving force behind the upswing of SH reports and the seriousness by which they have been regarded during the #MeToo era: publicized stories of high-profile sexual misconduct triggers personal recall of having been sexually harassed in the past and reinterpretation of SH experiences. The #MeToo movement may be acting as a driver of social change, facilitating changes in social norms. As these social norms change, organizations should be prepared to effectively respond to a possible increase in reporting SH experiences due changes in norms around reporting SH.

This study uses an experimental design to investigate the role of high-profile media stories about SH as a driving force behind the #MeToo movement.

In Chapter 5, the author will centralise the discourse on youth sexual misconduct in the focused SEA countries (Indonesia and Malaysia as the two Muslim-majority countries and Thailand as a Buddhist-majority country). Addressed youth sexual misconduct encompasses underage sex, teenage pregnancy, and extramarital sex in SEA. The focus on these kinds of youth sexual misconduct hints at why these three countries are particularly highlighted owing to the controversy and significance. Per Islamic law, non-marital sex is religiously prohibited, where Indonesia recently passed the relevant law that criminalises non-marital sex. Upon the problematisation of these forms of youth sexual misconduct, the author will recommend policies that both local governments and the ASEAN could adopt and exercise in response to curtailing the prevalence of discussed delinquency. Overall, this chapter shall contain the scholarly value that helps SEA control or contain the social harms, directly or indirectly, inflicted by the prevalence of sexual youth delinquency.

Entrepreneurs and their ventures are often portrayed as unambiguously positive forces in society. Specifically, high technology and equity-funded startups are heralded for their innovative products and services that are believed to alter the economic, social, and even political fabric of life in advantageous ways. This paper draws on established theory on the causes of misconduct in and by organizations to elaborate the factors that can give rise to misconduct in entrepreneurial ventures, illustrating our arguments with case material on both widely known and less well-known instances of entrepreneurial misconduct. In venturing into the dark side of entrepreneurship, we hope to contribute to theory on entrepreneurship and organizational misconduct, augment entrepreneurship pedagogy, and offer ideas and examples that can enhance entrepreneurs’ awareness of their susceptibility to wrongdoing.