Epistemic commitment and cognitive disunity toward fair-value accounting

This paper critically explores knowledge/professionalization relationships in a jurisdictional context characterized by shifting standards of practice. Focusing on the growing movement toward fair value within accounting standards, we examine practitioners' reactions to the growing compulsory application of fair-value accounting standards. To make sense of these reactions, we introduce the notion of epistemic commitment, that is to say one's degree of allegiance to a given knowledge template. Utilizing 27 interviews with Canadian experienced accountants, we rely on epistemic commitment to analyze the extent of variability in practitioners' reactions to the standardization movement toward fair-value accounting. Our analysis demonstrates an important level of variability in practitioners' epistemic commitment toward fair-value accounting, highlighting a lack of cognitive unity in the field. Our findings point to other important professionalization issues: practitioners' inclinations to refer to profitability issues when reflecting on the appropriateness of standards; practitioners' conception of accounting as an objective technology; practitioners' hesitations in voicing deep-level concerns over implementation ambiguities and lack of professional cognitive authority. Overall, our study raises doubts about the professional status of accountancy.     

Revolution,Reform, and Social Justice

The literature on mainstream economics usually takes the United States as the main geographical reference. However, the various criteria that define mainstream economics can be applied outside the United States. The ideas that have prestige and influence in a given country’s academia may not be the same ideas that constitute American mainstream economics. Brazil has been an example of pluralism. An institutional perspective helps explain why several people in Brazil conform with institutional rules of thought and of behavior that differ from those of the American mainstream, including the norm of pluralism, and how these rules influence many people.     

Alone with others: The paradox of privacy in wilderness

Attitudinal studies of wilderness visitors have indicated that people seek opportunities to limit interaction with other visitors so as to achieve privacy and solitude. This conventional interpretation of wilderness recreation was evaluated by comparing measures of visitor attitudes and social behavior in the backcountry of Yosemite National Park. Results show no association between visitor attitudes toward crowding and observed social interaction or behavior to avoid such social interaction. These findings suggest that subjective responses of visitors measured by questionnaires and interviews are often of debatable validity. Greater validity can be achieved by avoiding reliance on common‐sense interpretations in theory formulation and by employing multiple measurement techniques.     

Neither Lausanne nor Cambridge: Pantaleoni and the missing boundary between economics and sociology

Abstract

By the turn of the twentieth century, Lausanne and Cambridge were the centres of diffusion of two rival versions of marginalism. This paper focuses on the position of Maffeo Pantaleoni, a leading figure of the late nineteenth century ‘renaissance’ of Italian political economy, with respect to the eminent representatives of the two schools: Pareto and Marshall. Pantaleoni's position is examined with reference to the two main bones of contention between Pareto and Marshall, namely general as opposed to partial equilibrium, and pure as opposed to mixed economics.     

Quiet enjoyment in the National Parks of England and Wales: public understanding of the term and its influence on attitudes towards recreational activities

In response to concerns raised since the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 established the National Parks, the National Parks Review Panel (1991) recommended that the term ‘quiet enjoyment’ be included in the Environment Bill to clarify the wording of the second purpose for National Parks. During parliamentary debate the term was removed, and some have subsequently claimed that this weakened the Environment Act 1995. This article describes the outcomes of a survey to establish the nature of public understanding of the terms ‘quiet enjoyment’ and ‘quiet recreation’ and to identify the nature of incidents perceived as interfering with ‘quiet enjoyment’ and ‘quiet recreation’. The results indicate that the terms ‘quiet enjoyment’ and ‘quiet recreation’ hold different meanings for the public, with ‘quiet enjoyment’ being a broader and more emotive concept than ‘quiet recreation’. However, despite differences in meaning of the two terms, similar factors were reported as interfering with both ‘quiet enjoyment’ and ‘quiet recreation’. Respondents were also asked about the perceived acceptability of a range of activities within National Parks, and about their own involvement in those activities. Links were found between perceived compatibility of recreational activities with the terms ‘quiet enjoyment/quiet recreation’ and their acceptance in National Parks. Those surveyed viewed some restrictions on activities as necessary.     

After Durkheim: An Agenda for the Scoiology of Business Ethics

Over the last twenty years the organization of business activity appears to have shifted from an emphasis on bureaucratic organizations toward an emphasis on market structures. Economic self-interest has acquired a new social legitimacy, and the force of traditional moral authorities has waned. In these circumstances the work of Emile Durkheim on the problematics of business ethics and the impact of a culture of self-interest on the stability of society, work that has hitherto been neglected by the business ethics community, acquires a new relevance. In this paper we review Durkheim's problematization of business ethics, establish its relevance for the contemporary world, and use it to develop an empirical research agenda for the contemporary sociology of business ethics.     

行动约束与意义建构：社会学制度研究中的分化与融合

社会学制度研究具有整体主义与个体主义两种不同取向，前者强调制度中的价值观及规范性要素如何通过行动者人格系统内化对其行动产生约束作用，后者则强调行动者如何在认知性因素影响下对其行动意义进行建构进而实现制度效用。社会学早期制度研究突出规范性要素在研究中的重要性。然而，文化理论中的认知革命却促使社会学中的制度研究实现了认知转向。在社会学新制度主义研究中，认知性要素的重要性凸显并逐步取代规范性要素在制度分析中的核心地位。从制度对行动发挥的作用而言，其不仅具有客观制约性，而且具有主观建构性，因此制度与行动常被视为一个互构的系统。     

旅游学研究的新框架:对非惯常环境下消费者行为和现象的研究

本文以非惯常环境及其体验这两个核心概念,重新解析了旅游的本质及其相关概念,讨论了旅游经济学和旅游社会学的研究对象和内容,并在此基础上探讨了构建旅游学的学术框架.     

Kapitalizm: Russia’s Struggle to Free Its Economy

Contrary to the situation prevailing in most of Europe and North America, Brazilian economics can be justly described as pluralist, an outcome frequently ascribed to the role played by the Brazilian economics association (ANPEC) as conflict mediator. A crucial episode took place in the early 1970s, when ANPEC chose to welcome the filiation of the heterodox program at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) against threats of withdrawal from one of its most prestigious members, the Getúlio Vargas Foundation. After characterizing the nature of pluralism in current Brazilian economics, the article uncovers the process that led ANPEC to adopt a “pluralist” attitude, and how this related to the Brazilian political context from the 1970s. The outcome was significantly influenced by the actions of other institutions involved in Brazilian economics at the time, notably the Ford Foundation and the team of Vanderbilt University economists working in Brazil under a USAID contract. Choices made within a delicate political context opened the door to the institutionalization of theoretical plurality as a stable feature of the scholarly community of Brazilian economists.