Correction: Speaking Truth to Power: Twitter Reactions to the Panama Papers

Journal of Business Ethics -     

Correction: Social Accountability,Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests

Journal of Business Ethics -     

Accounting and networks of corruption

This study examines the nature and role of accounting practices in a network of corruption in an influence-market setting. The study focuses on the Canadian government’s Sponsorship Program (1994–2003), a national unification scheme that saw approximately $50 million diverted into the bank accounts of political parties, program administrators, and their families, friends and business colleagues. Relying on the institutional sociology of Bourdieu, the study demonstrates the precise role of accounting practices in the organization of a corrupt network imbued with a specific telos and certain accounting tasks. The study illustrates how accounting is accomplished and by whom, and it shows how the ‘skillful use’ of accounting practices and social interactions around these practices together enable corruption. In so doing, the study builds on a growing body of work examining criminogenic networks and the contextual, collaborative and systemic uses of accounting in such networks.     

Do managerial behaviors trigger firm exit? The case of hyperactive bidders

This paper investigates the effects of managerial mergers- and acquisitions-related investment strategies on the exit risk of firms. Using a sample of hyperactive bidders, I show that managerial excessive acquisitiveness can precipitate firm exit. Overbidding is associated with weak corporate governance and lower disclosure quality within firms. I find that hyperactive bidders take more risk compared to conservative bidders. Such bidders also misallocate firms’ resources and dent firms’ reputational capital. Eventually, the external corporate control market is more effective compared to mechanisms such as bankruptcy reorganization, forced liquidation, leveraged buy-out, and expulsion from stock exchanges in disciplining hyperactive bidders by turning them into targets of takeover. These results suggest that a hyper acquisition-induced growth strategy is, on average, detrimental to the long-term survivability of firms and that the internal and external corporate-control mechanisms may not be effective enough to forestall falling value of an excessively acquisitive firm.     

The sign value of accounting: IMF structural adjustment programs and African banking reform

This paper examines an IMF structural adjustment program and the role of accounting technologies and agents within that program. Focusing on banking sector reform in Nigeria, the paper shows how IMF attempts to remake economic life come up against formidable contextual challenges, and how accounting may or may not be taken up to confront those challenges. Specifically, it shows that even where accounting numbers are ‘managed’, the potential disciplinary power of accounting's system of signs remains, though again that power may not be exploited if those who are responsible for governing lack the necessary desire. The study's findings challenge two sets of understandings: that which sees the economy as somehow separate or distinct from the wider socio-political field, and that which sees crises such as occurred in Nigeria as simply resulting from inadequate or insufficient accounting regulations and controls.     

We Have Never Been Secular: Religious Identities,Duties, and Ethics in Audit Practice

Contemporary research highlights multiple societal and environmental benefits in addition to potential economic advantages associated with renewable energy (RE) utilization. As federal and state incentives for investments in RE technologies become more prevalent, RE sources represent increasingly viable alternatives to established fossil fuel energy. RE utilization is recognized as a key component of “green” product innovation that helps firms reduce the environmental impact of production processes and diminish their ecological footprints and energy consumption. Yet, despite consistent evidence that corporate sustainability initiatives are favorably associated with firm performance, the limited research that examines associations between RE initiatives and firm performance yields mixed results and an explicit link has yet to be established. Drawing on the natural resource-based view of the firm, we examine the association between RE utilization and firm financial performance over time. Annual ROI, Tobin’s Q, and operating margin for large U.S. firms identified as exceptional users of RE in the EPA’s Fortune 500 Top Green Power Partners list are compared with their respective industry medians over a 7-year period (2007–2013) and post hoc bootstrapping and sensitivity analyses are performed to further validate the study findings. Our research advances current knowledge about the influence of RE utilization by demonstrating that top RE user firms consistently generated superior financial performance compared to their industry competitors. As such, the study findings lend credence to the existence of a business case that complements the societal and environmental benefits of RE utilization.     

Social Accountability,Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests

Journal of Business Ethics - The growing interest in sustainable development in all sectors of the economy has fostered a noteworthy shift toward responsible management education (RME). This...     

The Global Fight against Corruption: A Foucaultian, Virtues-Ethics Framing

This paper extends the discussion of business ethics by examining the issue of corruption, its definition, the solutions being proposed for dealing with it, and the ethical perspectives underpinning these proposals. The paper’s findings are based on a review of association, think-tank, and academic reports, books, and papers dealing with the topic of corruption, as well as the pronouncements, websites, and position papers of a number of important global organizations active in the fight. These organizations include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Transparency International, USAID, the United Nations, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Organization of American States, and the Council of Europe. Our discussion departs from prior analyses by adopting a Foucaultian theoretical framing and by incorporating insights found in the virtue ethics literature. Implications are provided for international business organizations.     

Accounting and the global fight against corruption

This paper draws on a governmentality framing to consider the global fight against corruption and the role of accounting in that fight. Specifically it examines two contrasting modes of thought or ‘mentalities’ in the anticorruption field and the manner in which they shape, envision, and constitute the cultural and technological practice of accounting. The first of these—the orthodox mentality—is evident in the programmatic discourses and academic research of the major anticorruption organizations (esp., the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, OECD, and Transparency International). This mentality has us envision accounting’s involvement in the fight as part of a relatively unproblematic if not noble cause. The second, radical mentality draws on race-, gender-, and class-based commentaries and has us see accounting’s involvement in more ambivalent terms: as a potential enabler but also a potential constrainer of economic accountability and the achievement of the liberal republican dream.