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Article
Publication date: 17 October 2024

Claire-France Picard, Cynthia Courtois, Sylvain Durocher and Angélique Malo

This paper examines how rank-and-file practitioners react to and negotiate uniformized professional standards imposed by the elites of their profession in order to embody their…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines how rank-and-file practitioners react to and negotiate uniformized professional standards imposed by the elites of their profession in order to embody their professional ideal.

Design/methodology/approach

We explore this topic through the specific case of the Canadian independence rule. We mobilize Freidson’s and Becker’s conceptual tools to make sense of our data, generated through 55 interviews with rank-and-file practitioners.

Findings

We found that most rank-and-file practitioners override the (spirit of the) independence rule and engage in a process of secret deviance to pursue their professional ideal of accompanying their client in their business. Specifically, our analysis underlines how they find pleasure in fulfilling their professional ideal, seek to protect the secrecy that allows them to pursue this ideal while avoiding sanctions, and convince themselves of the morality of breaking the (spirit of the) rule in order to embody their conception of professionalism.

Research limitations/implications

Our analysis expands fieldwork on rank-and-file practitioners by offering an analysis of struggles they experienced in their daily practice and by bringing to light their path to secret “professional” deviance.

Practical implications

Our study points to the necessity for better consideration of the realities of professional segments when developing rules or standards.

Originality/value

Our study develops a distinctive conceptual construct – the professionalism conception gap – to explain how secret “professional” deviance can unfold within a profession. This construct could be mobilized to further understand the divergences that can exist within broader professional spheres.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 June 2023

Sylvain Durocher, Claire-France Picard and Léa Dugal

This paper aims to examine how auditors make sense of the ill-theorized and contentious notion of other comprehensive income (OCI), specifically by uncovering their use of…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine how auditors make sense of the ill-theorized and contentious notion of other comprehensive income (OCI), specifically by uncovering their use of metaphors to make OCI plausible and intelligible.

Design/methodology/approach

This interpretative paper draws on a collection of 21 interviews with experienced auditors. The analysis first uncovers metaphors that naturally surface within the talk and sensemaking of auditors about OCI (elicited metaphors). The authors then encapsulate these elicited metaphors into second-order constructs (projected metaphors) to synthesize and further explain auditors’ practical sensemaking.

Findings

Auditors conceive OCI as a “safety” that ensures the well-functioning of fair value accounting, metaphorically qualifying this notion as a “necessary evil”, a “passage obligé”, and a “parking lot” resolving fair value-related issues and aberrations. Auditors also metaphorize OCI as a “purifier” that allows “polluted”, “noisy”, and “unloved” items to be “parked” outside net income.

Practical implications

The study’s findings further the understanding of auditors’ tendency to remain uncritical throughout their sensemaking process. Making sense of professional standards of practice through metaphors indubitably involves shadowing and silencing other worldviews.

Originality/value

This paper extends knowledge of auditors’ sensemaking, specifically showing how auditors easily make sense of complex notions even in the absence of conceptual grounds. This study also highlights that metaphors are a powerful sensemaking device that auditors mobilize to render complex notions intelligible and mitigate IFRS inconsistencies.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 37 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 September 2023

Anne K.H. Neal, Merridee Lynne Bujaki, Sylvain Durocher and François Brouard

The authors examine and compare accounting associations' identities in distinct segments of the accounting profession surrounding the 2014 merger of three Canadian accounting…

205

Abstract

Purpose

The authors examine and compare accounting associations' identities in distinct segments of the accounting profession surrounding the 2014 merger of three Canadian accounting associations.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conceive of accounting associations' magazine front covers as a setting for “identity performance” (i.e. a scenery through which identity dimensions are intentionally communicated to target audiences). The authors examine pre-merger and post-merger associations' identity performances that took place between January 2011 and December 2020 and identify 21 broad themes that the authors interpret in terms of identity logics (i.e. professionalism/commercialism) and audience focus (society/association members), underscoring (dis)similarities in identity performances pre- and post-merger.

Findings

The authors' analysis reveals distinct identity performances for the different segments of the pre-merger accounting profession and for the post-merger unified accounting association. Identity logics manifest differently: a commercial logic dominated for two of the associations and a professional logic dominated for the third. Identity fluidity was evident in the merged association's shift from commercial toward professional logic when the association ceased publishing one magazine and introduced a new one. Society rather than associations' members dominated as a target audience for all associations, but this focus manifested differently. Post-merger, identity performances continued to focus on society as the audience.

Originality/value

The authors highlight the Goffmanian identity performances (Goffman, 1959) taking place via accounting associations' magazines. The authors adopt a segment perspective (Bucher and Strauss, 1961) that demonstrates that commercialism does not trump professionalism in all segments of the profession. For the first time, the authors juxtapose identity logics (professionalism/commercialism) and targeted audiences to better understand how these facets of accountants' identities compare between segments.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 37 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 24 June 2020

Claire-France Picard, Sylvain Durocher and Yves Gendron

This paper investigates the strategic processes surrounding the development, in accounting firms, of office (re)design projects and their overarching objectives.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper investigates the strategic processes surrounding the development, in accounting firms, of office (re)design projects and their overarching objectives.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors’ investigation relies on a series of interviews with individuals from different accounting firms involved in the decision process related to office (re)design projects. A triangular template made up of strategy, space and time informs the analysis, which the authors complement by relying on a strategy-as-practice integrated framework.

Findings

The authors found that accounting firm office (re)design projects are characterized by a strategic spatial agenda that aims to define and create present organizational time, in ways that embed a particular vision of the future. The analysis brings to light the interrelationships between strategy practitioners, strategy practices and strategic work through which the future is actualized. Office design processes involve not only the physical transformation of office space; they also promote a prominent agenda to modify, in the long run, office members' minds. Hence, office (re)design processes may be conceived of as a significant device in the socialization of accounting practitioners.

Research limitations/implications

This study underscores that spatial strategizing constitutes a major device through which the future is brought into the present. As such, the analysis provides insights not only into the processes through which space transformations take place, but also into their underlying agenda. The latter promotes the advent, in present time, of the organic office of the future.

Practical implications

This analysis brings to the fore a concrete illustration of how the strategy-space-time triangle operates in organizational life. The authors underline the key role played by strategists in charge of designing the office of the future.

Originality/value

This study extends the burgeoning literature whose analytical gaze is informed by the strategy, space, and time triangle.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 33 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 December 2019

Merridee Lynne Bujaki and Sylvain Durocher

This qualitative paper is about social reporting in response to an incident that involved the loss of human life. It examines Loblaw’s disclosures following the Rana Plaza…

Abstract

Purpose

This qualitative paper is about social reporting in response to an incident that involved the loss of human life. It examines Loblaw’s disclosures following the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 Bangladeshi workers.

Design/methodology/approach

This article draws on Suchman’s (1995) comprehensive legitimacy typology to interpret Loblaw’s disclosures about the collapse in both mass media coverage of the tragedy and the company’s quarterly, annual and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports.

Findings

Loblaw worked on many fronts to secure stakeholders’ support in the aftermath of the fatal incident. Through their social disclosures, Loblaw simultaneously managed exchange, dispositional, consequential, procedural, structural, personal and cognitive legitimacy, striving to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the incident, the company was still conforming to its social contract.

Practical implications

This research operationalizes all aspects of Suchman’s legitimacy typology in the context of social reporting. In particular, the paper further develops the concept of cognitive legitimacy. This should be of benefit to other CSR researchers.

Social implications

The loss of human life during business operations is one of the most terrible events an organization can face. Corporate activities leading to loss of human life are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Stakeholders are likely to disapprove such activities and reconsider their support, which can threaten the survival of the organization. It is thus of utmost importance to understand the strategies used by corporate managers in their attempt to secure ongoing stakeholder support.

Originality/value

This paper innovates by focusing specifically on social disclosures about a negative event. In so doing, it also contributes to a small, but important, literature within CSR research that examines incidents resulting in the loss of human life. The paper adapts and applies Suchman’s legitimacy framework to interpret social reporting in response to a specific instance of loss of life, the Rana Plaza building collapse. Finally, this paper mobilizes the notion of cognitive dissonance to further develop Suchman’s notion of cognitive legitimacy.

Details

Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, vol. 11 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8021

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 May 2019

Mohamed Chelli, Sylvain Durocher and Anne Fortin

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the…

1217

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the specific negative media context surrounding the company’s environmental activities.

Design/methodology/approach

Thompson’s (2007) and Eagleton’s (2007) theorizations are used to build an extended ideological framework to analyze ENGIE’s environmental talk from 2001 to 2015.

Findings

ENGIE drew extensively on a combination of symbolic and substantive ideological strategies in its annual and sustainability reports while ignoring several major issues raised in the press. Its substantive ideological mode of operation included actions for the environment, innovation, partnerships and educating stakeholders/staff, while its symbolic ideological mode of operation used issue identification, legal compliance, rationalization, stakeholders’ responsibilization and unification. Both ideological modes of operation worked synergistically to cast a positive light on ENGIE’s environmental activities, sustaining the ideology of a company that reconciles the irreconcilable despite negative press coverage.

Originality/value

This paper develops the notion of environmentally friendly ideology to analyze the environmental discourse of a polluting company. It is the first to use both Thompson’s and Eagleton’s ideological frameworks to make sense of corporate environmental discourse. Linking corporate discourse with media coverage, it further contributes to the burgeoning literature that interpretively distinguishes between symbolic and substantive ideological strategies by highlighting the company’s progressive shift from symbolic to more substantive disclosure.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 July 2009

Sylvain Durocher

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the polyphonic debate on the future of interpretive accounting research (IAR) by addressing the issues of cumulative knowledge and…

1534

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the polyphonic debate on the future of interpretive accounting research (IAR) by addressing the issues of cumulative knowledge and embedment of IAR in wider literatures.

Design/methodology/approach

McCracken's method of inquiry, adapted to incorporate meso‐level considerations, can be used to help resolve these issues. Accounting‐related phenomena can be studied by first identifying the cumulative knowledge contributed by different theoretical perspectives that provides broad skeletal categories to be investigated in the context of an interpretive study. In addition, micro‐ and macro‐level “external” theories are incorporated in a global meso‐level framework to provide a high‐level lens to guide data generation and analysis, fostering the embedment of IAR in wider literatures.

Findings

Meso‐level research implies thinking organizationally and behaviourally, and thinking about linkage. By extension, it requires reflecting on the characteristics of the context in which the phenomenon occurs and the actors behave, the nature of the task or decision to perform, and possible links between macro‐ and micro‐factors that help identify “external” theories and frameworks that contribute to understanding the phenomenon.

Research limitations/implications

The contribution of the suggested approach is highlighted in the context of financial accounting research. Reflexive accounts on the choice and use of a meso‐level approach are presented, and the issue of appropriate balance between theoretical and empirical material is addressed.

Originality/value

Creativity is fostered when cumulative knowledge about a specific phenomenon is embedded in wider meso‐level theoretical perspectives, leading to the discovery of new insights about the topic under study and contributing to the advancement of knowledge.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 6 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 November 2010

Sylvain Durocher and Anne Fortin

The objective of this paper is to critically examine the Canadian Accounting Standards Board's (AcSB) legitimacy management strategies directed toward financial statement users.

1243

Abstract

Purpose

The objective of this paper is to critically examine the Canadian Accounting Standards Board's (AcSB) legitimacy management strategies directed toward financial statement users.

Design/methodology/approach

Suchman's legitimacy typology is used as a lens through which the AcSB's legitimacy management strategies directed toward users are analyzed. The data sources consist of documentary public information available for the overall Canadian standard‐setting process and for a sample of standard‐setting projects.

Findings

The results indicate that the AcSB devotes much more efforts to symbolic features and cultural accounts than to pragmatic concerns to ensure its legitimacy toward financial statement users. The legitimacy management strategies used mimic those in the USA and at the international level. Such an isomorphism contributes to the AcSB's cognitive legitimacy and overall cultural legitimacy.

Research limitations/implications

Future research could assess a standard‐setting institution legitimacy management strategies directed to other audiences such as preparers, auditors, or other groups that fall under a broader public interest umbrella.

Practical implications

The results provide Canadian users with a general picture of the AcSB's efforts in their regard and invite them to be sceptical and critical about the so‐called user perspective in standard setting. It also provides standard setters with a legitimacy framework that they can use to identify areas for improvement to enhance users' view of their legitimacy and to help them better fulfil their mission statement.

Originality/value

This paper innovates by studying a standard‐setting institution legitimacy management strategies directed toward a specific audience, financial statement users.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 7 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 29 April 2014

169

Abstract

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 27 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Article
Publication date: 2 January 2014

Claire-France Picard, Sylvain Durocher and Yves Gendron

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative cultural shift from professionalism to commercialism in the accounting profession, based on an analysis of the promotional…

4507

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative cultural shift from professionalism to commercialism in the accounting profession, based on an analysis of the promotional brochures used by the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec (Institute of Chartered Accountants of Québec), over the last 40 years, to attract new members.

Design/methodology/approach

The study's specific objectives are: to examine accountancy's cultural representations depicted in promotional brochures; to evaluate the extent to which these representations are indicative of the commercialist shift as documented in the literature; and to establish whether the representations under study provide further insight into the nature of the cultural shift. Drawing on the semiotic approach developed by Roland Barthes, the authors' analysis is predicated on the idea that promotional brochures and advertisements, though often simple in appearance, constitute complex representations that convey meaningful information about influential values and cultural change.

Findings

The authors found that commercial values are increasingly apparent through the celebration of multidisciplinary services and the emphasis on generous compensation and high dynamism.

Originality/value

Barthes' framework was especially useful to analyze the interplay between images and text to gain insight into the historical emergence of what has become the accountant's representation of today. As such, this study points to promotional representations participating to the inculcation of a cosmopolitan culture, where the internationalization of business is supposedly natural, inevitable, and beneficial to everyone. The authors' research also highlights the increasingly significant role played by marketing experts in designing professional institutes' brochures, consistent with the broader view of marketization as a key trend within the accounting industry.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 27 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

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