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

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Critical accounting research in Africa: Whence and whither

This paper provides a review of the critical accounting literature on Africa highlighting the paucity of studies in this area and outlining the objective of this special issue of Critical Perspectives on Accounting. The paper also provides some directions for future critical accounting research focused on Africa, arguing that the continent presents significant research opportunities for the critical accounting community and therefore joins the chorus for more scholarship in this area.