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11 – 20 of over 1000

Abstract

Details

Accelerating Change in Schools: Leading Rapid, Successful, and Complex Change Initiatives
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-502-7

Article
Publication date: 10 February 2012

Cheryl Lehman

Transforming gender research in accounting is possible, desirable, and promising: the past few decades have included prescient work and expansive theories. The purpose of this…

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Abstract

Purpose

Transforming gender research in accounting is possible, desirable, and promising: the past few decades have included prescient work and expansive theories. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the legacy of the 1992 special issue “Fe[men]ists' account” and urge new linkages and contexts for a continuation of visionary inquiries.

Design/methodology/approach

By reviewing pioneering feminist research in various disciplines, the author opens the margins and boundaries of gender‐in‐accounting research. Innovative multidisciplinary works from different regions of the globe reveal methods for challenging entrenched premises and recasting new meanings.

Findings

Reflecting on our embedded ideas, expanding boundaries, and imagining new areas of inquiry are not only plausible, they are essential, for contesting repression and discrimination and advancing social justice.

Research limitations/implications

Tying the current rhetoric of global neo‐liberalism to contemporary feminist struggles, the paper illustrates the significant consequences of economic globalization on women, and accounting's connection. As there is no single story regarding gender, research exploring the unexplored has precedent in accounting literature, providing a foundation for new insights and enhanced possibilities for advancing and transforming the field.

Originality/value

The paper re‐imagines the accounting‐gender dilemma, offering practical yet expansive research concepts regarding values, class, the construction of gender, and the impositions of economic structures.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 25 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 October 2020

Bradley Bowden and Peta Stevenson-Clarke

Postmodernist ideas – most particularly those of Foucault but also those of Latour, Derrida and Barthes – have had a much longer presence in accounting research than in other…

Abstract

Purpose

Postmodernist ideas – most particularly those of Foucault but also those of Latour, Derrida and Barthes – have had a much longer presence in accounting research than in other business disciplines. However, in large part, the debates in accounting history and management history, have moved in parallel but separate universes. The purpose of this study is therefore one of exploring not only critical accounting understandings that are significant for management history but also one of highlighting conceptual flaws that are common to the postmodernist literature in both accounting and management history.

Design/methodology/approach

Foucault has been seminal to the critical traditions that have emerged in both accounting research and management history. In exploring the usage of Foucault’s ideas, this paper argues that an over-reliance on a set of Foucauldian concepts – governmentality, “disciplinary society,” neo-liberalism – that were never conceived with an eye to the problems of accounting and management has resulted in not only in the drawing of some very longbows from Foucault’s formulations but also misrepresentations of the French philosophers’ ideas.

Findings

Many, if not most, of the intellectual positions associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History – that knowledge is inherently subjective, that management involves exercising power at distance, that history is a social construct that is used to legitimate capitalism and management – were argued in the critical accounting literature long before Clark and Rowlinson’s (2004) oft cited call. Indeed, the “call” for a “New Accounting History” issued by Miller et al. (1991) played a remarkably similar role to that made by Clark and Rowlinson in management and organizational studies more than a decade later.

Originality/value

This is the first study to explore the marked similarities between the critical accounting literature, most particularly that related to the “New Accounting History” and that associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History in management and organizational studies.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 27 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Suyan Pan and Joe Tin-yau Lo

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education…

Abstract

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Moreover, scholars who engage in the trendy internationalization in higher education should move beyond the logics of neo-liberalism, and pay closer attention to the new geopolitical realities that are changing the normative and interactive dimensions of international higher education at large.

Details

Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2022
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-738-9

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 8 November 2010

Howard Stevenson and Autumn K. Tooms

The United States of America and England are countries that have embraced neo-liberalism, and have been at the forefront of the neo-liberal restructuring of public education. Both…

Abstract

The United States of America and England are countries that have embraced neo-liberalism, and have been at the forefront of the neo-liberal restructuring of public education. Both of these countries can be considered as laboratories for neo-liberal policy, hence their focus in this chapter. Primarily conceptual in nature, this chapter seeks to connect what happens ‘Up There’ with what school leaders do ‘Down Here’ (Bell & Stevenson, 2006). The authors intend to demonstrate how global politics and policy are linked with the everyday practices of school leaders. Furthermore, the chapter illustrates how values and practices of individual school leaders are shaped by the systems values implicit in policy. We recognise that debates which pose structure against agency are debates ultimately about balance and relativities. It is not that as individuals we are free agents, or have no agency, but about understanding how structure and agency interplay in ways that constrain and shape what we do. Moreover, we believe that by having a more sophisticated understanding of how structural factors constrain our actions, we are better able to maximise the opportunities provided by our agency. This is not about over-stating the potential for agency, but it is about seeking to maximise the ‘spaces and interstices’ (Dale, 1982, p. 158) within which agency may be exercised. In presenting this work the authors draw on a number of different traditions, not all of which sit comfortably with each other. However, taken together they shed some light these complex issues.

Details

Global Perspectives on Educational Leadership Reform: The Development and Preparation of Leaders of Learning and Learners of Leadership
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-445-1

Book part
Publication date: 3 June 2008

Chuing Prudence Chou

Worldwide systems of higher education are experiencing intense and unprecedented transformation, both in its operation and in their relationship to governments. The adoption of…

Abstract

Worldwide systems of higher education are experiencing intense and unprecedented transformation, both in its operation and in their relationship to governments. The adoption of neo-liberal, free-market economic policies in the 1980s, and the consequent deregulation of education has impacted many systems in Europe, North and South America, and Asia (including New Zealand and Australia) (Olssen, 2002). Many of these nations have restructured their systems of public education in an attempt to acquire relative autonomy and to assume responsibility as individual institutions. As a result of deregulation and liberalization, the trends of individual institutions are to become more competitive and accountable by creating an overall market mechanism within the education system (Giroux, 2002; Dale, 2001). The issuance of educational loans by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) supports these trends. In general, the IMF and WB serve as a support mechanism for neo-liberalism in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe by the promotion of market mechanisms which effect increases in private investment in education and accountability in higher education institutions (Chou, 2003).

Details

The Worldwide Transformation of Higher Education
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1487-4

Book part
Publication date: 1 December 2008

Meagan Sylvester

This chapter will discuss the relationship between globalisation and higher education, focussing specifically on the University of the West Indies (UWI) as its case study. This…

Abstract

This chapter will discuss the relationship between globalisation and higher education, focussing specifically on the University of the West Indies (UWI) as its case study. This work will examine how closely the present policy objectives of the UWI are linked to the changing structures within higher education systems in the global arena. An argument is being made that currently, there are two overarching conditions which are transforming the structures and practices of higher education, namely globalisation through its policy affiliate, neo-liberalism and the incorporation of new information and communication technologies into the knowledge activities of research, publication and pedagogy. Through globalisation, higher education and knowledge production are thwarted as the neo-liberal positivist discourse champions the market-centric approach and higher education becomes embroiled in mass consumption and commodification. The globalisation of higher education therefore encompasses such issues as life-long learning, web-based delivery and distance education. However, this piece will not speak about the issues of technology and its impact on higher education, but address the impact of neo-liberalism on higher education.

Details

Power, Voice and the Public Good: Schooling and Education in Global Societies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-185-5

Article
Publication date: 19 February 2018

Anil Narayan and John Stittle

The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate the role and influence played by the discipline of accounting through its association with the multiple logics of government…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate the role and influence played by the discipline of accounting through its association with the multiple logics of government reforms to transform the public tertiary education sector in New Zealand.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts a case study approach utilising multiple data collection methods. Neo-institutional theory provides an insightful complement to neo-liberalism and enhances the understanding of institutional logics driving government reforms and the transformation of public tertiary institutions.

Findings

The findings reveal that accounting has become a powerful conduit for the exercise of the neo-liberalism reforms by government and implemented by managerial control over public tertiary education institutions.

Research limitations/implications

By addressing a gap in the literature, the paper shows how political and economic neo-liberal policies have been implemented in tertiary education with the discipline of accounting being adopted as a prime driver of these reforms. The paper has significant implications for educational management, academics and learners in understanding how and why the inherent nature, objectives and processes of the overall educational experience have undergone a radical reformation.

Originality/value

New Zealand is one of the first countries to implement these educational reforms and adopted “accounting technologies” to reduce costs and improve performance. But the reality has often been very different. Most of the government’s original objectives have not been fulfilled and the reforms have been costly for the academic profession. This paper provides a valuable source of learning for academics, managers and politicians.

Details

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

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 September 2008

Mitchell J. Stein

This paper aims to examine corporate governance and consequences of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in the US from a socio‐political perspective.

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine corporate governance and consequences of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in the US from a socio‐political perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

The author employs neo‐liberalism and its related mentality of governmentality to develop an analysis of how corporate governance and reforms such as SOX are socially constructed through autonomous agents, including managers and accountants, and various power relationships that comprise government.

Findings

This paper theorizes that legislative reform, such as SOX, represents pervasive mechanisms of disclosure, surveillance and power, and an insurance rationality designed to manage the new and significant risks of corporate governance. A framework is established which conceptualizes SOX as the intersection of neo‐liberalism, political rationalities and governmental techniques, and accounting practices which lead to the elements of security, quantification and shareholder value. Through this framework a model of risk as governance is developed that examines SOX through technologies of the self, calculation and insurance, designed to act upon managers using knowledge about control or financial statement weaknesses. Such mechanisms identify corporate governance risks, which can be acted upon by outside experts, such as accountants.

Originality/value

The major inference from this paper is that corporate governance research in accounting should pursue new lines of inquiry, which will permit the more profitable extension of existing research. Such inquiry should focus less on empirical corporate governance factors and more on the relationships, and power constructs of corporate governance, as well as how legislative reforms employ tactics to normalize the behaviour of not only managers, but also accountants.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 21 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

11 – 20 of over 1000