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This study takes the position that the concept of fraud is socially constructed. Moreover, it asks why and how different understandings of fraud have emerged. Insights from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003; Lakoff, 2002, 2004, 2009) are used to analyze language revealing dominant worldviews and metaphors regarding fraud. The research method is a case study (Yin, 2014), and the analytical approach used parallels the one described in O’Dwyer (2004). The research setting is a report issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which provides a context to study different understandings of fraud due to the report’s divided nature. The analysis reveals three alternative worldviews, representing different assumptions about reality, that are at the root of the different understandings of fraud. These worldviews also lead to the usage of different conceptual metaphors which allow the commissioners to interpret facts in a manner that supports each worldview’s assumptions. The paper also concludes by providing a nuanced and critical examination of the results of the commission concerning its understanding of fraud.

The Legends in Marketing series presents compilations of the seminal works of marketing scholars who have made significant contributions to the discipline of marketing. This review discusses the structure and contents of the volumes that comprise Legends in Marketing: Shelby D. Hunt (Sage, forthcoming).

Much has been written about metaphor in marketing. Much less has been written about simile and metonymy. It is widely assumed that they are types of metaphor. Some literary theorists see them as significantly different things. If this is the case, then there are implications for marketing theory and thought.

In keeping with literary tradition, this paper comprises a wide-ranging reflective essay, not a tightly focussed empirical investigation. A combination of literature review and conceptual contemplation, it challenges convention by “reading against the grain”.

The essay reveals that, far from being part of metaphor’s supporting cast, simile and metonymy are stars in themselves. With the aid of three concise cases-in-point – relationship marketing (RM), the consumer odyssey (CO) and Kotler’s generic concept (GC) – the authors present an alternative interpretation of their conceptual contribution and continuing importance.

Marketing management is replete with metaphorical speculation (positioning, warfare, myopia and more). The shortcomings of such figures of speech are rarely spelled out, much less foregrounded. By raising figurative consciousness, marketing practice is furthered.

As similes and metonymies are rarely spoken about in marketing scholarship, the study starts a much-needed conversation. It raises the issue of marketing’s figurative foundations and, in so doing, offers further scope for future debate.

The more orthodox versions of our discipline as well as other social sciences are grounded in the common presupposition that science and philosophy be expounded by an especially true level of language characterized by precision and absence of ambiguity. For this reason, tropological linguistic forms such as metaphor are often held to be illicit, as unimportant or nonessential frills, deviant and parasitic on normal usage, for use by none but the poet. Argues that metaphor, far from being a mere stylistic device, is an indispensable, and indeed inseparable ingredient of all discourses whether literary, scientific, philosophical, or accounting. Draws heavily on Black’s (1962, 1978, 1993) interaction account of metaphor as a basis for explicating the poetic and rhetorical roles that metaphor may play in accounting discourse. Through presentation of three primary propositions with supporting metaphoric illustrations, suggests that metaphor is very much a part of the way in which accountants create and disseminate meaning about the world as both part of mundane accounting discourse and extensions of discursive practices.

The metaphor of warfare pervades popular and academic portrayals of retailing. After a review of the literature on metaphors in marketing and the war metaphor in particular, this paper illustrates the widespread use of the war metaphor in retail and distribution studies and explores in some depth the nature of that metaphor through published depictions of Wal*Mart’s takeover of Asda. It is concluded that use of the war metaphor is both literary and theoretical, but that overuse in the former case may undermine its potential in the latter. Thus it is contended that a reappraisal of the war metaphor in retailing is overdue.

This paper adopts a literary theory perspective to depict accounting reports and information as texts rather than as economic commodities and so available for analysis from the vantage point of semiotic linguistic theory. In doing so it takes the literary turn followed by many of the social sciences and humanities in recent decades. It compares and contrasts four dominant genres of literary theory – expressive realism, the new criticism, structuralism, and deconstructionism – to developments in accounting. The paper illustrates these and other ideas in the context of the controversies surrounding the oil and gas accounting crisis and practices circa 1961 to 1990. The paper concludes by outlining a new way of preparing accounting reports based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the heteroglossic novel. This approach calls for making accounting for an enterprise an ongoing conversation rather than a monologic process of closing down on a single meaning.

The purpose of this paper is to describe linkages between the techniques of poetical expression and the language used by scholars to communicate management practice.

The approach is to consider the stylistic perspective of the language used for management theorising or research, viewing the documents produced by management researchers as communicating devices and cultural products which contribute to the creation or construction of the reality that they seek to describe and analyse.

The paper uncovers the poetic aspects buried – often deeply – in the language of management studies through which the concepts of, and ideas about, management are expressed.

The links between ways of saying usually considered to be in opposition are made known, and enjoyed.

Examines Watts and Zimmerman′s Positive Accounting Theory as a literary narrative, as the “PAT story”, in an effort to explain its success in light of the fact that it falls well short of their professed methodological standards. Their use of the rhetoric of science is examined, with special attention to their projection of a “scientific persona”, their rhetorical construction of the legitimate” boundaries of accounting research, their use of metaphor and other literary devices, their rhetorical transport of “scientific authority” from other disciplines, and the circumstances that made their audience receptive to scientific rhetoric. Their use of conservative political rhetoric (the rhetoric of revolt against the interference of government in economic affairs) is also examined, with special attention given to the devices used to convey a normative message while maintaining a positive posture, and to the role of sociohistorical circumstances (the Reagan era) that encouraged their audience to overlook the story′s lack of scientific substance.