Search results

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the life of Tony Lowe, Emeritus Professor of Accounting and Financial Management at the University of Sheffield, who died on 5 March 2014. It celebrates Tony Lowe’s considerable direct contributions to accounting knowledge and, possibly more significantly, his indirect contribution through his enabling of a range of those associated with him at Sheffield to become scholars of distinction in their own right.

Publication review, personal reflections and argument.

Apart from providing insight into Tony Lowe's direct contribution to accounting knowledge through an analysis of a range of significant sole authored and joint authored publications, the paper gives rather more attention to his more indirect enabling contribution. In this regard it traces the development of initially the Management Control Association and subsequently the “Sheffield School” to Tony Lowe, clarifying the values that underlie these groups. It also clarifies how some of the key elements that have allowed the now global Interdisciplinary and Critical Perspectives on Accounting (ICPA) Project to exist and flourish are traceable to Tony Lowe and the “Sheffield School” he created.

This paper provides an important historical analysis of the direct and indirect influence of a unique scholar on the beginnings and development of particularly the now global ICPA Project. This history is personal and maybe selective and possibly limited because of this but hopefully will encourage others to investigate the claims further.

The history of the ICPA Project has only partially been told before. This is another part of this history that has not been analysed before on which further work can build.

This paper applies Bhabha’s concept of the third space to frame an understanding of Prem Sikka’s use of digital media to bridge the academic–activist binary. In doing this, the paper makes two contributions. First, it conceptualises Sikka’s engagement, and second, through the lens of the third space, it analyses it to establish whether, in the era of the neoliberal corporatised university, public intervention has the potential to generate new perspectives and new knowledge.

Sikka’s articles and blogs for the period 20 February 2002 to 15 April 2020 were analysed using Leximancer, a textual analysis software programme that displays the output visually. A discriminant analysis was used to identify where each year of the study is situated in the overall semantic analysis. Netnography, the examination of archived published texts, was then used to analyse the responses by members of the public, academics, accountants and auditors, tax experts, policy makers and regulators to Sikka’s digital media engagement.

As a third space practitioner, Sikka has overcome some of the shortcomings associated with academic research to challenge the activities of professional accounting firms, regulatory bodies and multinational corporations. Through extending the boundaries of accounting and accountability, he has facilitated new radical alliances aiming to create a just and equitable society. The paper also finds that by opening up a third space of engagement, academic activists’ work can play an essential part in social transformation and emancipatory change framed in terms of social justice and equity.

This is one of the few papers to provide an in-depth examination of the activities of an accounting activist over twenty years.

The article is the response to a reply to the authors′ earlier article (in this journal) criticising the UK audit standard‐setting process. The reply claimed the article failed to prevent a balanced review of the “due process”, was not clear as to what constitutes “public interest”, and contained misrepresentations and errors. This response counter‐claims the errors and misrepresentations and accuses their critic of unwillingness to discuss the politics of accountancy regulation (compounded by his previous position as an official of the Auditing Practices Committee). These issues are discussed: clarifying the original article and dealing with the criticism point by point.

In the UK, the accountancy profession plays an important and influential role in the audit and regulation of economic and social affairs. Although an increasing amount of interest is currently being taken in the role of accounting and auditing in society, comparatively little attention has been given to the profession′s obligation, as mentioned in the Royal Charters, to act as guardian of the “public interest” in relation to public policy making. Through an examination of correspondence with the professional bodies, stimulated by a refusal to provide information about matters relating to an auditing guideline, the accountability of these bodies to their members and to the public more generally is discussed. It is suggested by the evidence that the profession′s interpretation of the requirement to serve the “public interest” is not easily reconciled with its declared obligations.

The purpose of this paper is to understand why a professor of accounting uses the media to expose the failure/shortcomings of the accounting profession. Using Prem Sikka's writings, the paper argues that accounting communications have become distorted thereby failing to live up to their potential to contribute to the enhancement of social well‐being. The intention is to go beyond the media exposes and appreciate the underlying pursuit of fairness and justice in society.

The approach taken was journalistic in that it sought lots of direct quotations. Such quotations, both from the professor and the responses of his audience, are available through web sites. A telephone interview was conducted with the professor. The paper attempts to place his work in a social context by providing some personal background information.

Prem Sikka's media “blogs” bring forth strong reactions. He tends to polarise people. The purpose of his media releases is to generate opposing reactions in the pursuit of an open and democratic process. By focusing on the darker side of accounting practices, Prem Sikka highlights the political aspects of accounting as accounting language that may be considered as a language of fiction. He writes from the perspective of those who least benefit from current practices and against the powerful elites who benefit from current societal arrangements. His media articles have significant potential in facilitating change for best practices in accounting services to society in a manner that truly reflects the “public interest” that accountants as a professional group ascribe to. Whether this is realised depends on how counter accounts and critiques disseminated connect with common sense of people.

The originality is a derivative of Prem Sikka's work. The paper simply tries to understand and explain how Prem Sikka uses the media to hold accountants to account. It illustrates his unique ability to identify and confront the important issues surrounding accounting practice. It adds support to his challenge to accountants to engage with issues of fairness and justice in society. Analysis bringing out accounting's ambiguous and conflict‐enhancing functioning for the socio‐political order has been especially scarce. Such writings of Sikka challenges the status quo of accountants where their charters indicate that they are a professional group that have “public interest” as their key priority but which have been illustrated otherwise by Sikka's media accounts as “dark and secretive practices” that benefit only the privileged few.

This paper is intended as an overview and think piece, contributing to literature identifying accounting’s impact in making things knowable. Critical accounting research has always sought alternative ways of understanding the discipline and the legacy is extended here by considering pathways forward. Accounting continually impacts public policy in what it privileges for selecting and in what it silences and neglects. Given that humans are meaning-making we have choices, and this essay interrogates accounting techniques operating as façades while disguising social impacts. Promoting qualitative accounting research that reimagines these complexities and considers moral contexts is the substance of this essay, for advancing the public interest in accounting.

Examines the move towards a commercialized, economically driven, health sector in New Zealand. Reforms involve extensive organizational rearrangements and the creation of profit‐driven businesses in place of public hospitals. These institutional rearrangements involve the fabrication of new ways of accounting. Attempts to understand the processes involved in the development of information technologies before they become accepted “facts” of organizational life. The fabrication of new technologies cannot be understood as an autonomous sphere of activity, but has to be understood as part of a complex series of political, economic and organizational contexts. Accountants are viewed not as mere technicians reporting on what is, but as active agents contributing to change. Accounting often acts as an arbiter in social conflict. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way it is being called upon to assist in the implementation of clause 25 of the Health and Disability Services Bill, which requires hospitals in New Zealand to act as competitive profit motivated commercial enterprises while at the same time meeting unspecified social obligations. The creation of a pseudo‐market for health services presents a challenge not only for accountants, but for all New Zealand citizens. The outcomes of the radical reforms are uncertain and some fear that the massive restructuring is in the form of an experiment. It is based on an ideology lacking empirical support. In the end it may be shown to have been impractical in the New Zealand context.

The purpose of this paper is to broaden discussions about the role of the public sphere in broadening social choices, with particular focus on accountancy magazines and national press in particular.

In replying to the commentary appearing in this edition, the paper shifts the debate to a political economy of media. In action research traditions, it also shows how academic interventions can lead to unexpected outcomes that can enrich research, teaching and social choice debates.

Public debates can be galvanised through academic interventions.

The paper suggests possible strategies for fermenting public debates and engaging with the institutions of accountancy.

Through engagement social choices can be broadened.

The paper is based on personal interventions and this offers first‐hand account of some of the public interventions and how these led to new alliances and arrangements to problematise conventional views about accounting and accounting firms.