Leslie S. Oakes

Business Planning as Pedagogy: Language and Control in a Changing Institutional Field

Language and power are central to an understanding of control. This paper uses the work of Pierre Bourdieu to argue that an enriched view of power, in the form of symbolic violence, is central. We examine the pedagogical function business plans played in the provincial museums and cultural heritage sites of Alberta, Canada. The struggle to name and legitimate practices occurs in the business planning process, excluding some knowledges and practices and teaching and utilizing other knowledges and ways of viewing the organization. We show that control involves both redirecting work and changing the identity of producers, in particular, how they understand their work through the construction of markets, consumers, and products. This process works by changing the capital, in its multiple forms-symbolic, cultural, political and economic-in an organizational and institutional field.

Some Feminisms and Their Implications for Accounting Practice

Uses Harding′s 1986 book. The Science Question in Feminism, as a framework for examining the implications of some feminisms for accounting. First explores feminist empiricism which challenges the exclusion of women from prominent professions. Second, addresses feminist postmodernism, which explores the differences among women and contends that no over‐arching feminist theory can be found. Third, analyses the feminist standpoint. Advocates that the current masculine system be replaced by one that is infused with a feminist perspective. Discusses and critiques each of the three theories, and explores the implications for accounting.

Accounting as discursive construction: The relationship between statement of financial accounting standards no. 106 and the dismantling of retiree health benefits

Abstract This study explores reductions in benefits that occurred coincident with the passage of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard 106 requiring companies to accrue a liability for unfunded retiree health benefits. Congressional hearings and the business press reveal two competing discursive constructions of the retiree health benefits crisis. The first portrayed them as moral obligations that firms were attempting to avoid, the second as unexpected liabilities threatening corporations. Drawing on the work of Skocpol (1992), Weber (1949, 1978) and Burawoy (1983, 1985), we argue that characterizing these benefits primarily as accounting liabilities reinforced the second construction, facilitating corporate efforts to roll back retiree health coverage.

Accountability re‐examined: evidence from Hull House

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to re-examine accountability in a concrete historical context from the perspective of pragmatism and feminist theory. Design/methodology/approach - An archival case study of Hull House. Findings - Both pragmatism and feminist theory of Benhabib provide new insight into alternative conceptions of accountability, conceptions at odds with the prevailing and dominant emphasis on quantitative measures of performance. Further, this paper suggests that this limited view severely narrows the understanding of organizational “success.” Research limitations/implications - While this research serves to problematize notions of accountability further, it leaves the task of developing alternative practices to future researchers. Originality/value - This paper contributes in two ways: first, there is a paucity of research linking pragmatism to the actual workings of concrete organizations. This paper begins to fill that gap. Second, this work draws the attention of accounting and other organizational researchers to the important role played by the settlement movement, and particularly Hull House, in the development of contemporary organizations.

Adverse public policy implications of the accounting conservatism doctrine: The case of premium rate regulation in the HMO industry

Abstract Evidence of managerial misrepresentation of performance through the choice of financial reporting methods is well-documented. The phenomenon has been studied primarily as overstatements of profit performance, with the presumed motivating factor the separation of ownership from managerial control. We examine in this paper evidence of managerial misrepresentation of performance designed to avert adverse political effects of excessive profitability. Specifically, we provide evidence of managerial earnings management designed to disguise above-normal rates of return in the politically-sensitive prepaid health care industry. This is achieved through the relative overstatement of incurred but not reported expenses by the consistently-profitable segment of the industry. To the extent that the accounting doctrine of conservatism might favor overestimation of potential liabilities, adverse public policy implications arise from that accounting convention.

Reflections on the practice of research

Abstract In this essay, we consider the relevance of research. To support our argument of its relevance, we offer three cases – Hull House, the Indian Trust Fund, and accounting standard-setting – that examine the taken-for-grantedness of accountability and the ways in which the term is frequently used.