Search

Purpose: This paper aims to explore how corporate Australia engages in reconciliation through recognizing and providing pathways for Indigenous Australians' corporate leadership aspirations. Design/methodology/approach: The research design is informed by the prior literature on pathways by minority groups to corporate leadership through the theoretical lens of transformational leadership. The investigation is conducted using textual analysis of reconciliation action plans (RAPs), a contemporary and voluntary practice adopted by Australian listed companies to disclose their commitment to national reconciliation. RAPs are publicly available from the official websites of listed companies. Findings: The analysis of contemporary RAPs highlights organizational initiatives to support Indigenous Australians related to corporate and community leadership. Since the authors' focus is the former, corporate leadership initiatives are further analyzed. Two initiatives for Indigenous Australians to pursue corporate leadership positions are emerging future leaders' programs and mentoring programs. This is the extent to which the authors observe Australian firms' transformational leadership. While some firms have implemented these initiatives with specific targets, other firms do not have specific initiatives or targets. The paper also conducts longitudinal analysis into the transformational leaders' past RAPs and triangulates to other evidence of reconciliation commitment such as the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Research limitations/implications: This paper contributes new insights to the research area of board cultural diversity, specifically to the limited literature on Indigenous reconciliation. It provides insights into firms and policymakers to address the ongoing issue of the underrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in corporate leadership. The sample of firms comprises Australian listed firms that have adopted higher-order RAPs, which restricts the generalizability of the findings to other sectors. Originality/value: This paper explores the under researched phenomenon of Indigenous people's pathways to corporate leadership. The research design is informed by transformational leadership theory through considering institutional actions for reconciliation. This research provides evidence of the extent to which corporate Australia has taken action on the issue of the under-representation of Australian Indigenous people in corporate leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Temporary labour mobility programmes (TLMPs) are initiated by high-income nations to fill their labour demands by offering temporary work opportunities to migrants from low-income nations. TLMPs also seek to contribute to economic development in workers' home countries. This paper aims to assess the accountability of New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) Scheme and Australia's Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) in reaching their economic development objectives in one sending nation, Samoa. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative study with RSE and SWP workers and key informants (collectively stakeholders) in Samoa was undertaken to assess the contributions of these schemes to economic development. An interdisciplinary research approach was taken using the Pacific methodology of talanoa. Talanoa was used to "operationalise engagement" and empower local stakeholder accounts. Findings: Talanoa supported the elicitation of accounts that contributed nuanced insights into the accountability of TLMPs. Specifically, stakeholder accounts revealed limitations in the ability of the RSE Scheme and SWP to meet their economic development objectives for Samoan communities and workers. Adjustments are necessary to meet Pacific nations' economic development objectives. Practical implications: This study responds to calls for on-the-ground accounts of stakeholders involved in TLMPs. It provides insights that may contribute to the development of more effective TLMPs, particularly regarding economic development in workers' home countries. Originality/value: Drawing on dialogic accounting literature, which calls for engagement with the marginalised, a talanoa approach has been engaged to assess TLMPs via on-the-ground participant accounts in a specific context. This paper introduces talanoa to the critical and social accounting literature, to move beyond a typical accounting qualitative interview process and encourage greater engagement and collaboration with Pacific scholars and partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper aims to investigate how accounting techniques, when embedded within data-driven public-sector management systems, mask and intensify the neoliberal ideological commitments of powerful state and corporate actors. The authors explore the role of accounting in the operationalisation of "instrumentarian power" (Zuboff, 2019) – a new form of power that mobilises ubiquitous digital instrumentation to ensure that algorithmic architectures can tune, herd and modify behaviour. Design/methodology/approach: The authors employ a qualitative archival analysis of publicly available data related to the automation of welfare-policing systems to explore the role of accounting in advancing instrumentarian power. Findings: In exploring the automation of Australia's welfare debt recovery system (Robodebt), this paper examines a new algorithmic accountability that has emerged at the interface of government, technology and accounting. The authors show that accounting supports both the rise of instrumentarian power and the intensification of neoliberal ideals when buried within algorithms. In focusing on Robodebt, the authors show how the algorithmic reconfiguration of accountability within the welfare system intensified the inequalities that welfare recipients experienced. Furthermore, the authors show that, despite its apparent failure, it worked to modify welfare recipients' behaviour to align with the neoliberal ideals of "self-management" and "individual responsibility". Originality/value: This paper addresses Agostino, Saliterer and Steccolini's (2021) call to investigate the relationship between accounting, digital innovations and the lived experience of vulnerable people. To anchor this, the authors show how algorithms work to mask the accounting assumptions that underpin them and assert that this, in turn, recasts accountability relationships. When accounting is embedded in algorithms, the ideological potency of calculations can be obscured, and when applied within technologies that affect vulnerable people, they can intensify already substantial inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The overall aim of this paper was to examine the impact of the Australian research assessment exercise on the research approaches (positivist/non-positivist) favoured by accounting disciplines in Australia. Our key research question examined how the outputs and foci of research in elite accounting disciplines changed over a 16-year period. Our analysis was informed by Bourdieu's notions of academic elitism and symbolic violence. Design/methodology/approach: We analysed all papers published in 20 major accounting journals across a 16-year period by Australian accounting disciplines that were highly rated in the research assessment exercise. We also compared our results from this group against two case study accounting disciplines that were not rated as "world class". Findings: Our key finding is that the introduction of a research assessment exercise in Australia has resulted in research outputs of elite accounting disciplines over this period being increasingly focused on positivist rather than non-positivist research. Our findings evidence a narrowing of accounting disciplines' research agendas and foci across the period. Research limitations/implications: Our findings highlight a considerable narrowing of the research agenda and paradigms in accounting disciplines that is not in the public interest. Our findings also have implications for the literature on academic elitism. The narrowing of the research agenda and greater foci on positivist research exhibited in our findings demonstrates the role of dominant elites in controlling the research agenda through a research assessment exercise. Practical implications: A practical implication is that proper research, regardless of the approach used, must be appropriately recognised and accepted by Accounting Disciplines, not ostracised or discouraged. Research implications are the breadth of accounting research should be celebrated and concentration eschewed. Australian accounting discipline leaders should not fall for the illusion that the only good research is that which is published in a small number of North American positivist journals. Originality/value: Our findings provide insights into Bourdieu's work through demonstrating how dominant players have successfully exploited an external regulatory mechanism, a research assessment exercise, to strengthen their position within a field and exert control over the research agendas of accounting disciplines. Previous work by Bourdieu has not directly examined how actors utilise these outside forces as instruments for shaping their own field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Prior research has investigated legitimation strategies in corporate annual reports in the for-profit sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this phenomenon in an NGO environment. It investigates Australian overseas aid agencies’ responses to criticism of the relief effort following the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. It aims to determine whether voluntary annual report disclosures were reflective of impression management and/or of the discharge of functional accountability. Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies content analysis to compare the structure and content of the annual reports of 19 Australian overseas aid agencies before and after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Findings – Results suggest voluntary disclosure in annual reports significantly increased post-tsunami and was more consistent with impression management activity rather than functional accountability suggesting a response to the legitimacy challenge. The use of impression management tactics differed with agency size, with larger agencies using ingratiation in order to appear more attractive while smaller ones promoted their particular achievements. Originality/value – This paper makes a contribution by extending prior impression management and legitimacy literature to an NGO environment. It has implications for the development of these theories as it looks at organisations where the stakeholders are different from the for-profit sector and profits are not the main concern. It raises issues about the concept of accountability in the NGO sector, and how the nature of organisation reporting is changing to address the challenges of a sector where access to funds is highly competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper considers how archival accounting records may support truth-telling about past atrocities during Australia's frontier wars. Design/methodology/approach: The study examines two colonial accounting records – military muster payrolls and the ledger statements of a local tax fund – used during the British's punitive expeditions against the Aboriginal peoples of Sydney in 1816. Findings: The accounting records reveal new information about the full scale of the campaign, the degree to which the violence was formally endorsed and acts of Aboriginal resistance. However, much of the human toll of the campaign remains obscured by the highly structured, monetary lens of financial records authored and archived by the British colonial regime. Social implications: Australia's First Nations have called for greater truth-telling about the frontier wars to enable meaningful reconciliation and political recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. This study highlights the potential role of accounting records as a resource for contemporary truth-telling processes. Originality/value: The study contributes to the literature about the dark history of accounting by explicating genre features in the content, form and context of archival accounting records, which can both render past atrocities more visible as well as perpetrate invisibilities, ambiguities and silences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper reports on a study that investigated the (potential) impact of client use of blockchain technology on financial statement audits of Australian accounting firms. Design/methodology/approach: Data were primarily collected from semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders including audit partners from first- and second-tier accounting firms in Australia. The interviews focused on the perceived (potential) impact of blockchain on the stages of obtain (retain) engagement, engagement planning, risk assessment, audit evidence and reporting of financial statement audits of clients that use blockchain technology. Perceptions of changes to financial statement audits were interpreted using the logics of professionalism and commercialism. Findings: Australian accounting firms have either obtained or considered engagements with clients with a cryptocurrency business or that use a blockchain platform although they are a small group. There is a view that blockchain technology is distinctive and therefore poses risks not encountered before in audit engagements. These risks would most likely shift how firms plan, design audit methodologies and execute financial statement audits. The study showed that the logics of professionalism and commercialism are not conflicting but instead complementary. They present both opportunities and challenges for firms to apply and develop audit expertise in an emerging area in audit. Research limitations/implications: Being an exploratory study, the findings are tentative. A case study of an audit engagement with a cryptocurrency business will add to a nuanced understanding of the challenges posed to financial statement audits by blockchain technology. Originality/value: This study is novel because of its focus on the impact of an evolving technology on the stages of financial statement audits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper explores the creation in Australia of the Register of Accountants for National Service. Established at the outset of the Second World War, the Register operated for four years from June 1940 providing voluntary, non-remunerated, part-time and after-hours services to a highly stressed and seriously stretched federal government bureaucracy by members of the main Australian professional accounting bodies. Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Supply and Development and Munitions were the largest consumers of the services offered. Design/methodology/approach: The study of the Register relies mainly on an extensive archive of war-time documentation from the Federal Government and various accounting professional institutes which has survived, predominantly in the National Archives of Australia. The resource is particularly rich in material covering the complex negotiation processes that brought the Register into operation together with documentation recording and reporting the work of the Register. The themes of professionalization, institutional legitimacy, volunteerism and patriotism are all invoked to explain the presence of the Register in the machinery of government that was assembled to deliver the ultimately successful war effort. Created by the principal professional accounting institutes, the Register attests to the commitment of their members to the war effort and, thereby, the importance of the profession to Australian society. Findings: The perilous situation of Australia at a time of war provided a compelling incentive for the accounting profession to organise itself in an efficient and highly effective manner to assist with the war effort. The disparate and somewhat fractured accounting profession at the time was able to work together in a structured, cohesive and disciplined manner to provide voluntary services when called upon. To deliver the voluntary services promised, a purpose-built set of institutional arrangements was put in place. An extensive inventory of the potential services that could be provided by members of the main professional accounting bodies was conducted to facilitate the smooth matching of government needs with services available. Research limitations/implications: Discussion focusses only on Australia where the Register was unique. No other examples have been discovered where a profession has self-mobilised to serve a nation in a time of war. A further limitation is that the activities reported are restricted to self-reporting by the Register and a small loose collection of documents prepared by the Department of the Navy. Originality/value: The uniqueness of the Register is the core of the originality and value of this study. How and why it came into being and the method by which it completed the "task" assigned to it stand as testament to a profession strategically placed to contribute in a substantive manner to the war effort at minimal cost to the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to advance a critical realist perspective on performativity and use it to examine how novel conceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have performative effects. Design/methodology/approach: To illustrate how the authors' critical realist understanding of performativity can play out, the authors offer a field study of an Australian packaging company and engage in retroductive and retrodictive theorising. Findings: In contrast to most prior accounting research, the authors advance a structuralist understanding of performativity that pays more systematic attention to the causal relationships that underpin performative tendencies. The authors explain how such tendencies are conditioned by pre-existing, social structures, conceptualised in terms of multiple, intersecting norm circles. The authors illustrate their argument empirically by showing how specific conceptions of CSR, centred on the notion of "shared value", were cemented by the interplay between the causal powers embedded in such norm circles and how this suppressed alternative conceptions of this phenomenon. Research limitations/implications: The findings draw attention to the structural boundary conditions under which particular conceptions of CSR can be expected to become performative. Greater attention to such boundary conditions, denoting the social structures that reinforce and counteract performative tendencies, is required to further cumulative, yet context-sensitive, theory development on this topic. Originality/value: The paper is the first to adopt a critical realist perspective on performativity in the accounting literature. This perspective strikes a middle path between the highly constructivist ontology, adopted in most accounting research concerned with performativity and realist criticisms of this ontological position for de-emphasising the influence of pre-existing, objective realities on performativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Given the impending introduction of legislation requiring large Australian listed companies to make supply chain disclosures about modern slavery, the paper aims to reveal current voluntary practice. The purpose of this paper is to provide a benchmark for assessing the current engagement of large companies with modern slavery in Australia. Design/methodology/approach: Institutional theory provides the foundation for assessing current voluntary practice in relation to modern slavery disclosures by large Australian listed companies. Content analysis is used to identify quantity and quality of modern slavery disclosures of the top 100 companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. The contents of annual and standalone reports available on websites, as well as other online disclosures, are examined using terms associated with modern slavery identified from the literature. Findings: Evidence gathered about modern slavery disclosures by ASX 100 companies shows information in annual and standalone reports reveal far less than other disclosures on company websites. Overall, the volume and quality of disclosures are low and, where made, narrative. A wide range of themes on modern slavery are disclosed with bribery and corruption and human rights issues dominant. Although currently in line with institutional theory, as there appear to be mimetic processes encouraging disclosure, results support the idea that legislation is needed to encourage further engagement. Research limitations/implications: The paper provides a baseline of understanding about the volume and quality of modern slavery disclosures as a foundation for future research into the practices of Australian companies prior to the signalled introduction of legislation mandating reporting. It also identifies potential lines of research. The sample only examines large Australian listed companies which restricts generalisation from the results. Originality/value: This is the first academic research paper to examine quantity and quality of modern slavery disclosures of large Australian companies. Results add support for the introduction of legislation by government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]