Dale Tweedie

Entitlements and time: integrated reporting's double-edged agenda

Abstract This paper argues that the Integrated Reporting (IR) framework developed by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) is double-edged from a critical sustainability perspective. The paper is based on qualitative content analysis of public documents from four leading non-financial reporting organisations: the IIRC, the Accounting for Sustainability Project, the Global Reporting Initiative and the King Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa. This analysis shows that IR moves away from three key tenets of prior social and environmental reporting frameworks by privileging: (i) communication over holding organisations accountable, (ii) organisational over social sustainability and (iii) the entitlements of providers of financial capital over other stakeholders. Yet, IR is also a practical attempt to shift financial capital from a short-term to long-term investment horizon. As critical social and accounting theorists have argued, extensive short-term investment is a threat to environmental and social sustainability. Hence, IR has the potential to progress sustainability goals if it forms part of a broader re-organisation of capital markets to reward longer term perspectives.

Making sense of insecurity: a defence of Richard Sennett’s sociology of work

This article defends Richard Sennett’s sociology of work under ‘new capitalism’ against claims that his analysis lacks empirical foundation and methodological rigour. While studies of aggregate labour market trends in recent criticisms imply that predictions of an ‘end of work’ or ‘age of insecurity’ are premature, the article demonstrates that Sennett’s sociology is not committed to these predictions. Instead, his research provides a targeted critique of specific management practices and of those social transformations that share the same ethos. More constructively, Sennett’s sociology articulates a unique concept of workplace insecurity and raises pressing issues in contemporary experiences of work and citizenship, rather than – as critics presuppose - in workers’ contractual conditions as such.

Precarious work and Australian labour norms

Casual employment in Australia is more prevalent than temporary work in most European nations, and casual employees have fewer rights and entitlements than comparable temporary employment categories in Europe. Yet, despite Australia’s long history of industrial activism and political representation of labour, there are fewer examples of social or political movements in Australia resisting precarious work than in Europe. This article provides a partial explanation of this puzzling lack of social resistance to casual employment. It begins from the idea, developed by the Frankfurt School tradition of critical social theory, that economic systems can create or sustain norms that conceal their more harmful social effects from public view. It then uses conceptual categories drawn from critical social theory to show how individual and social costs of casual employment have been overlooked or ‘reified’ in the workplace and in public political discourse. The study is based on existing qualitative research and on a new analysis of attitudes to work and economic organisation in Australian public discourse.

Exploring integrated thinking in integrated reporting – an exploratory study in Australia

Purpose Integrated thinking is central to the International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC’s) integrated reporting (IR) framework, which is in turn is related to a potential resurgence of intellectual capital (IC) reporting. However, it remains unclear how key IR stakeholders understand this concept in theory or practice. The purpose of this paper is to explore how key stakeholders interpret integrated thinking; and how pilot organizations are applying integrated thinking in practice. Design/methodology/approach The study involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with key IR stakeholders in Australia, including two IR pilot organizations, one professional association, an accounting professional body, an accounting firm and two IIRC officials. Findings First, the IIRC has not fully defined and articulated the concept of integrated thinking, and there is no shared consensus among practitioners. Second, there is evidence of an evolving understanding of integrated thinking within practice. What remains unclear is how this understanding will develop over time. Research limitations/implications Since interviews were conducted with a relatively small sample of participants in Australia, the results may not be generalizable across different contexts. The study emphasizes the need to interpret carefully IR’s potential contribution to organizational practice through either reporting in general, or IC reporting in particular. Originality/value Despite the centrality of integrated thinking to IR, there has been limited research to date on the concept. Clarifying what integrated thinking means in practice can improve our understanding of a key IR concept, and can advance our understanding of IR’s potential to improve IC reporting and research.

An investigation into the roles, characteristics, expectations and evaluation practices of audit committees

Purpose - – This paper aims to investigate how the roles, characteristics, expectations and evaluation practices of audit committees have adapted to regulatory change and what practices are most conducive to effective audit committees. Design/methodology/approach - – This paper uses semi-structured interviews with audit committee chairs and chief audit executives. Findings - – While new regulation is a primary driver of changes in the roles of audit committees, the audit committee’s role has evolved beyond regulatory requirements. Audit committees are taking a more active role in organisational governance and performance in key areas such as risk management. However, while audit committees have a clear concept of what characteristics committee members require, conceptual frameworks and mechanisms for evaluating the performance of committees and their members remain underdeveloped. Research limitations/implications - – The responses of audit committees in Australia to broader regulatory trends suggest that more research is required into how audit committees function in practice, and into developing new frameworks for evaluating the committees’ performance. This paper provides an in-depth exploration of key areas of audit committee performance, and identifies aspects that might be further investigated. Practical implications - – The paper identifies key attributes of effective audit committees and especially the characteristics of audit committee members. The paper also identifies a need to improve – and in many cases create – performance evaluation frameworks and mechanisms. Given the international regulatory trend towards greater reliance on audit committees to improve governance, more policy attention is required on developing guidelines and assessment processes that evaluate whether audit committees are fulfilling their legislative mandate in practice. Originality/value - – The paper contributes to the relatively new and more specific discussion on reviewing and evaluating the performance of the board and its subcommittees.

The subversive craft worker: Challenging ‘disutility’ theories of management control

Although sociologists and psychologists have documented various motivations for working, the concept of work as essentially disutility or undesirable retains broad resonance among influential economists and social theorists. These concepts imply that workers will tend to avoid or ‘shirk’ their work task unless subjected to management controls. Yet emerging counter-narratives have sought to retrieve and develop alternative concepts of work as craft, where workers are motivated to work well or be recognized for doing so. On these approaches, management controls can decrease the quality of the final outputs. This article uses a case study of cleaners in Australia to challenge influential representations of workers as prone to ‘shirking’ and the interpretation of management control to which these perspectives lead. The article argues that craft concepts of work derived from Richard Sennett and contemporary recognition theory provide alternative narratives of how workers can derive satisfaction from working well even in ‘menial’ tasks, and how craft motivations can drive workers to subvert management controls to uphold rather than diminish service quality. In this way, craft theories reveal limitations of overly instrumental concepts of work, and also help conceptualize how workers’ attachment to their tasks can drive resistance to management control.

Social Accounting for Inequality: Applying Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract This essay reviews the potential of Thomas Pikettys Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) to inform social accounting research into economic inequality. Economic inequality is conceptually central to social accounting agendas, yet there has been surprisingly little accounting research in this area. Pikettys text can help build this research agenda by providing a systematic account of the growth and structure of economic inequality, especially since his analysis follows a similar underlying approach to influential texts in social and environmental accounting research. At the same time, the essay argues that social accountants can address limitations of Pikettys analysis, particularly by offering a more nuanced analysis of how economic inequality is embedded in corporate structures and practices. Thus, Pikettys text is not only a timely reminder of why the social distribution of economic resources matters, but also an invitation for social accountants to engage more fully in unfolding public debates about the future of resource distribution.

Is international accounting education delivering pedagogical value

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether universities are delivering pedagogical value to international accounting students commensurate with the costs of studying abroad. The paper uses survey and interview methods to explore the extent to which Chinese Learners (CLs) in an Australian postgraduate accounting subject have distinct learning needs. The paper then reviews universities’ responses to these needs, especially in light of funding and resource pressures. The paper reinforces findings that CLs have different learning approaches to local students, but not inferior or ‘shallow’ approaches. However, since CLs face distinctive financial and social pressures to achieve high results, their learning practices may be more sensitive to changes in teaching and assessment, such that cost constraints on educational resources might disproportionately affect their learning. This suggests that a paradoxical result of the funding pressures on many universities may be to encourage large international student cohorts while constraining available resources to meet their learning needs.

The Normativity of Work: Retrieving a Critical Craft Norm

ABSTRACT Recent social theory has begun to reconsider how the activity of work can contribute to well-being or autonomy under the right conditions. However, there is no consensus on what this contribution consists in, and so on precisely which normative principles should be marshalled to critique harmful or repressive forms of workplace organisation. This paper argues that Richard Sennett’s concept of work as craft provides a normative standard against which the organisation of work can be assessed, especially when explained within a broadly Aristotelian account of the conditions of human flourishing. More precisely, the paper argues that a craft norm can meet the standards of social critique within the Frankfurt School tradition of Critical Theory, as this tradition has been interpreted by Axel Honneth. Honneth himself now rejects craft norms as too utopian and parochial to inform Critical Theory under contemporary economic conditions. In reply, this paper uses sociological studies of call centre workers to illustrate how work motivated by craft ideals can be sustainable rather than utopian, and how craftsmanship can inform social critique across a wide variety of industries and management practices.

How does performance management affect workers? Beyond human resource management and its critique

While performance management (PM) is pervasive across contemporary workplaces, extant research into how performance management affects workers is often indirect or scattered across disciplinary silos. This paper reviews and synthesizes this research, identifies key gaps and explores ‘recognition theory’ as a nascent framework that can further develop this important body of knowledge. The paper develops in three main stages. The first stage reviews ‘mainstream’ human resource management (HRM) research. While this research analyses workers’ reactions to performance management in some depth, its focus on serving organizational goals marginalizes extra-organizational impacts. The second stage reviews more critical HRM research, which interprets performance management as a disciplinary, coercive or inequitable management device. While this literature adds an important focus on organizational power, there is scope to analyse further how PM affects workers’ well-being. To develop this strand of PM research, the third stage turns to the emerging field of recognition theory independently developed by Axel Honneth and Christophe Dejours. The authors focus especially on recognition theorys exploration of how (in)adequate acknowledgement of workers’ contributions can significantly affect their well-being at the level of self-conception. Although recognition theory is inherently critical, the paper argues that it can advance both mainstream and critical performance management research, and also inform broader inquiry into recognition and identity at work.