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We use a theoretical framework based on concepts of historical institutionalism, institutional logic and ideology to enhance understanding of how government accounting and taxation helped to institutionalize slavery in Brazil by interpreting enslaved people as an economic commodity. We conduct an interpretive critical analysis using archival sources from the period 1531–1888. The social practice of government accounting and taxation produced and conveyed meaning using symbolic forms that ranged from everyday statements to complex texts and images. These codified financial realities in a way that reified slavery and influenced the historical trajectory of slavery. Government accounting and taxation practices were self-reinforcing sequences. They encouraged a structural inertia that was not conducive to de-reification of the slave trade or of slavery. We reveal how government accounting and taxation institutionalized government administration of slavery by according it social authority, social reality and temporal endurance.

While authentic leadership is highly valued in today’s business world, managers do not necessarily have the resources to attain it. Building on conservation of resources theory, we propose a conceptual model to address how personal and contextual resources predict authentic leadership. Study 1 analyzes the day-to-day variability in managers’ positive psychological capacities as personal resources in relation to changes in authentic leadership. In addition, it tests ethical organizational climates as stable, contextual resources for authentic leadership. In Study 2, we replicate our results on the between-person level and extend the research model by exploring promotion focus as a link in the relationship between personal resources and authentic leadership. Evidence from an experience sampling study with 89 managers surveyed daily on 10 consecutive work days (Study 1) and a field survey of 130 managers at two points in time (Study 2) supports the hypothesized role of personal resources and promotion focus for authentic leadership. In both studies, only principled but not benevolent ethical organizational climates emerged as a contextual resource for authentic leadership. We discuss the implications for current management research and practice.

This paper explores the relationship between leadership language and the safety culture at British Petroleum [BP] prior to the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The discursive construction of important aspects of safety culture in a large, risky, global company such as BP is a central feature of the CEO’s role. Using a social constructionist perspective, we conduct an interpretative close reading analysis of the speech of BP’s [then] CEO, Tony Hayward, at the Annual General Meeting of BP on April 15, 2010. We also analyse the transcripts of 18 other speeches Hayward delivered before the Deepwater Horizon explosion. We find that the language used contributed rhetorically to an ideology of economic efficiency and cost control, in a manner that was inconsistent with an enduring safety culture. We highlight important insights that close reading analysis of the narrative in CEO speeches can provide to help understand a corporation’s ambient safety culture.

The aim of this paper is to examine the value relevance of fair value accounting of biological assets under IAS 41 - Agriculture - using 389 firm-year observations of listed firms in 27 countries worldwide that had adopted IFRS, for the period between 2011 and 2013. In order to operationalize it as the ability of book value to explain market equity value, this study adjusts the original Ohlson model. The results confirm that recognized biological assets are value relevant at fair value and they are more value relevant in firms that exhibit higher disclosure levels. The same results were obtained when this analysis was conducted for bearer biological assets, but when it was applied to consumable biological assets, the results suggest that investors do not value recognized biological assets in firms that exhibit higher disclosure levels. Bearing in mind the current adjustments to IAS 41, according to which firms will be permitted to choose either the cost or the revaluation models for mature bearer plants under IAS 16 - Property, plant and equipment - for annual periods beginning on/or after 1 January 2016, this paper seeks to help standard setters to better understand the market valuation implications of this standard.

This paper explores the nature and impact of research misconduct in psychology by analyzing 160 articles that were retracted from prominent scholarly journals between 1998 and 2017. We compare findings with recent studies of retracted papers in economics, and business and management, to profile practices that are likely to be problematic in cognate social science disciplines. In psychology, the principal reason for retraction was data fabrication. Retractions took longer to make, and generally were from higher ranked and more prestigious journals, than in the two cognate disciplines. We recommend that journal editors should be more forthcoming in the reasons they provide for article retractions. We also recommend that the discipline of psychology gives a greater priority to the publication of replication studies; initiates a debate about how to respond to failed replications; adopts a more critical attitude to the importance of attaining statistical significance; discourages p-hacking and Hypothesizing After Results are Known (HARKing); assesses the long-term effects of pre-registering research; and supports stronger procedures to attest to the authenticity of data in research papers. Our contribution locates these issues in the context of a growing crisis of confidence in the value of social science research. We also challenge individual researchers to reassert the primacy of disinterested academic inquiry above pressures that can lead to an erosion of scholarly integrity.

This paper analyzes the accounting reasoning of two expert accounting witnesses at the 2006 trial of Enron executives who testified that the financial reporting of Enron conformed fully with US generally accepted accounting principles [GAAP]. We analyze the experts’ evidence using argumentation theory to highlight important issues in the reasoning process underlying financial reporting as support for our critique of the IASB’s proposed 2015 Conceptual Framework. We make two recommendations. First, that a CF should be allowed to override any detailed standard whenever that standard results in untruthful/unethical reporting. This effectively means that the CF should be installed at the top of any GAAP hierarchy as the dominant item guiding standard setting and professional practice. Second, that the concept of ‘faithful representation’ should invoke the concept of ‘verifiably acceptable levels of accounting risk’ in order to incorporate the notion of truthfulness of forecasts in accounting estimates.

Available online 20 June 2012, Common explanations for the voluntary adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards [IFRS] have been based on economic efficiency arguments. This paper introduces new theoretical arguments to explain how institutional pressures influence decisions to adopt IFRS voluntarily. Through recourse to an institutional theory context, we combine the analytical framework proposed by Oliver (1991) with the concept of institutional logics, and apply this framework to the financial accounting field for the first time. This combined model shows how multiple forms of rationality constrain company responses to pressures to adopt a new accounting regime. We find that companies in a code law country are willing to change from a code-law institutional logic to a common-law institutional logic if they consider such a change will have positive overall benefits to them. Companies assess the net benefits of change after considering the legitimacy they achieve with IFRS, the consistency of IFRS with their goals and institutional context, and the loss of autonomy they believe they are likely to sustain from adopting IFRS. Contrary to predictions in earlier formulations of institutional theory, we find that the acquiescence of companies in adopting IFRS is not a blind response to institutional demands, but is largely predictable by virtue of the inherent nature and importance of such institutional pressures to them. Prevailing institutional logics are shown to provide important insights to the decisions of companies to adopt IFRS voluntarily. We draw on our results to contend that a company’s acquiescence to institutional pressures to adopt IFRS occurs notwithstanding that they can also contemplate more active strategies (through decoupling)., Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Project PEst-OE/EGE/UI4021/2011

In Portugal, a concept of taxable income associated closely with reported accounting income is used to determine the tax liability of firms. Recently, the Portuguese government legislated to introduce a system of “special payment on account” (SPA). Firms were required to pay an amount of income tax in advance that varied between a promulgated minimum and maximum. Although such a tax is unique to Portugal, other countries have tax arrangements that are similar in intent. Thus, Portugal’s experience with the introduction of a SPA regime is likely to be instructive in fiscal policy deliberations in other settings. We assess the extent to which the SPA tax policy measure encouraged private Portuguese companies to manipulate earnings. We find that earnings manipulation appears to have been motivated by desire to minimize SPA. Firms whose estimate of SPA liability fell within the range of minimum and maximum limits of the SPA had higher levels of discretionary accruals than firms whose estimate was (equal to or) above the ceiling imposed by the new legislation. Firms with higher rates of income tax were found to reduce earnings to near zero. Firms with higher average income tax rates were more likely to manipulate their earnings than other firms. Our results reinforce the importance for auditors, stakeholders, and tax policy advisors to be alert to the close association between tax planning considerations and reported earnings in their monitoring, analysis, and policy advising activities., Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

We assess the value relevance of the amounts for identifiable intangible assets and goodwill reported in the financial statements of all non-finance companies listed on the main market of the Portuguese Stock Exchange from 1998 to 2008. Additionally, we use panel data to explore the impact on value relevance of Portugal’s formal adoption of International Accounting Standards [IAS] and International Financial Reporting Standards [IFRS] in 2005. A distinctive feature of the accounting by our sample companies is that when they adopted IAS 38 and IFRS 3 in 2005, they were no longer required to recognise some intangible assets (such as start-up costs and research expenditures) and were no longer required to amortise goodwill. We find that net earnings, reported goodwill and other intangible assets are highly significantly associated with stock price. However, whereas earnings are related positively to stock prices when Portuguese Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) were applied prior to 2005, the value relevance of earnings appears to have declined after the adoption of IAS/IFRS in 2005. Although the change to IAS/IFRS had no impact on the value relevance of identifiable intangibles as a whole, the evidence suggests that there was a positive effect on the value relevance of goodwill. When the subclasses of identifiable intangible assets are considered, we found evidence of an increase in value relevance of goodwill, other intangible assets, and research and development expenditures.

Neo-institutional theory can increase understanding of an organization's general response to social and environmental issues and social activism. More particularly, it can frame an organization's accounting responses. The analytical schema proposed by Lounsbury (1997) is deployed to explore social and environmental accounting issues that occurred in two local government authorities—one in Canada, one in England. Our analysis highlights possibilities for better and more complete theories of organizational transformation, and social and environmental accounting. We stress the importance of ethical values and ecological thinking if change (including accounting change) is to help institutions behave in a way that is conducive to achieving a sustainable future.

This paper extends the conversation about metaphors in accounting that were presented in this journal by McGoun et al. [McGoun EG, Bettner MS, Coyne MP. Pedagogic metaphors and the nature of accounting signification. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 2007a;18:213–30; McGoun EG, Bettner MS, Coyne MP. Money n’ motion—born to be wild. Critical Perspectives on Accounting;2007b;18:343–61.]. Our aim is to promote further critical conversations about how metaphor is implicated in accounting. We assemble and review some of the empirical evidence we have gathered from close readings of discourse about accounting over the past decade. Based on this empirical grounding, we propose that the fundamental conceptual metaphor, ACCOUNTING IS AN INSTRUMENT, has been deployed commonly to describe the essence of accounting. We contend that such deployment has insidious, distortive and confounding outcomes because it encourages belief that accounting is incapable of reporting other than with representational faithfulness; and that it confounds the (alleged) primary qualitative characteristics of accounting information (relevance and reliability) outlined in the Financial Accounting Standards Board's SFAC 2 Qualitative Characteristics of Accounting.

This paper draws upon Althusser [Althusser L, Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation). In: Althusser L, editor. Lenin and philosophy and other essays [Brewster B, Trans.]. London: New Left Books; 1971] to conceive two teachers of commercial subjects as apparatchiks serving an ideological state apparatus in order to diffuse a state ideology. We explore the lives of Joao Henrique de Sousa and Albert Jaqueri de Sales, the first two teachers of the Portuguese School of Commerce, established in Lisbon in 1759. Sousa and Sales were important propagators of commercial knowledge and mercantilist State ideology during the regime of the Marquis of Pombal (Chief Minister of Portugal, 1756–1777). We explore their role as operatives of an “ideological state apparatus” and the contribution they made to the growth of indigenous commercial know-how and the development of the Portuguese economy. We explore how their status in Portuguese society was related to the fortunes of the regime they served.

This paper applies an innovative approach to explore the processes, effects and likely future progress of the convergence of national accounting standards with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Particular use is made of the Hegelian dialectic concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis; notions of isomorphism and decoupling; and, to a lesser extent, Foucault's concept of power–knowledge. Factors that are likely to explain the extent, rhythm and pattern of convergence of national accounting standards with IFRS are discussed. The paper concludes by highlighting four matters that are thought likely to enhance understanding of the process of international accounting standards harmonization; and by averring that the international harmonization process is a dialectical process influenced by belief systems that are constructed in a context of isomorphism and decoupling.

This paper analyzes two examples of micro-discourse that have emerged in the Enron saga: first, the Letter to Shareholders in Enron’s Year 2000 Annual Report; and second, the testimony provided by the CEO of Andersen, Joseph Berardino, to the U.S. Congress in December 2001. The intent is to inform the grander (or mega) discourse relating to Enron and to corporate collapse, US-style. The micro-perspective reveals a rhetoric that is integral to sustaining the ideology of capitalism and to ensuring its resilience and long-term survival. We highlight the authors’ reverence of “the market” and a win-at-all-costs form of capitalism; their reification of the business corporation; and their confounding view of the significance of accounting. The micro-discourse also suggests that several of the corporate leaders implicated in the collapse of Enron were deceitful, deceptive, egocentric, arrogant, hubristic and harbored delusional complexes.

Speeches, shareholders’ letters and other utterances by business leaders help shape what is accepted as legitimate discourse in organizations and society. This paper focuses on the joint letter, issued by the CEOs of three global aluminium companies, announcing a proposed unique three-way merger. That letter is read and analysed closely, both in terms of content and context. The themes of ideology, audience and metaphor are employed with the intent to make the cognitive world of the three leaders at least partially visible, and to sustain needed counter-discourse. The analysis of the joint letter reveals an elitist, exclusionary text based upon assumptions that are consistent with the extreme rhetoric of the allegedly “free" market.

This paper analyses IBM's teaching of financial accounting via the Internet. The seductive nature of the hyperreal pedagogy in IBM's @9pGuide to Understanding Financials@2p is explored in two stages: first, by means of a technical critique; and second, by examining the @9pGuide's@2p rhetorical features. Particular focus is given to IBM's use of pictorial metaphors as visual rhetoric. We conclude that the curriculum of IBM's web-based financial accounting teaching contains much more than is apparent upon superficial examination. IBM's website paraphernalia constructs beliefs and shapes public discourse. Like all curriculum, IBM's @9pGuide@2p is contestable social construction.

Much of the process of financial accounting research is merely theatre , a ritual with a facade of sophistication and scientism. This paper outlines the causes, manifestations and outcomes of such theatricality and provides a critical, introspective assessment of the state of contemporary financial accounting research. The view that financial accounting research is worthy and scientific only if it imitates research methods in the physical sciences is contested. The need to re-think the way the financial accounting research community selects research topics, motivates research and directs doctoral education is emphasised. How influential, but rather narrow and dubiously-conceived attitudes towards contemporary financial accounting research are associated with an onset of cultural illiteracy is the subject of speculation. The paper calls for greater tolerance by financial accounting researchers of scholarly work which embraces subject matter, research modes and guiding paradigms, other than their own.

This paper draws upon agency theory, political cost theory, signalling theory, and legitimacy theory to construct an index of the voluntary disclosure of intangibles by companies listed on the Euronext market in Lisbon. We analyse the Management Report and Chairman's Letter of all 56 listed companies at 31 December 2003 (49 companies on the main market and 7 on the secondary market). We test several hypotheses about associations between the index of voluntary disclosure of intangibles (the dependent variable) and 8 firm specific characteristics (the independent variables: size, leverage, ownership diffusion, auditor size, profitability, industry, listing status and foreign activity). Our results reveal factors that influence the voluntary disclosure of intangibles in the small European capital market of a country where managers generally do not perceive capital markets as an important source of financing. Univariate analysis showed a significant influence of size, ownership diffusion, type of auditor, industry and listing status on the voluntary reporting of intangibles. Multivariate analyses revealed that the hypotheses concerning size, industry, type of auditor and ownership diffusion (and listing status to a lesser extent) provide a satisfactory basis for explaining firms' behaviour towards the voluntary provision of intangibles information. Other hypotheses, relating to leverage, profitability and foreign activity were rejected. Our results support the application of agency and political costs theories, signalling theory and legitimacy theory in determining the reporting of intangibles information in the annual reports of listed companies in Portugal.