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.