Oana Apostol

A project for Romania? The role of the civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to look more closely, in the context of a given case study, at the role of civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society, as an essential goal of an emancipatory and radical social accounting project. Design/methodology/approach - – A case study of a Canadian company’s plans to open a gold mine in western Romania is here analysed. Civil society’s opposition to the mining project gave rise to an unprecedented social movement contesting the project’s utility for Romanian society. The role played by counter-accounts produced by civil society groups is investigated. Findings - – Counter-accounts produced by civil society played multiple roles in the case study analysed. First, counter-accounts indicated the failure of corporate reports to present the gold mining project in a balanced manner. Second, counter-accounts were successful in problematizing the corporate approach to addressing the social, cultural and environmental impacts of the project, while also nurturing societal debate on these issues. Third, counter-accounts exposed the ideological inclinations of state institutions to favour economic interests over the social, cultural and environmental ones. As a result of these contributions, even if the counter-accounts were subjective, this study claims that they form a good basis for the development of emancipatory accounting. Research limitations/implications - – Limitations associated with an interpretative approach and case study research apply. Originality/value - – The paper illustrates the potential of civil society’s counter accounts to enable societal debates, as means towards democratic, transformative change.

Responsible Tax as Corporate Social Responsibility: The Case of Multinational Enterprises and Effective Tax in India

The study is one of the recent pieces of work exploring the relationship between taxes and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The starting point for the study is the intriguing question of how multinationals behave in regulatory jurisdictions such as India, where they enjoy a ‘moral free space’ (437), as the authors define the discretionary corporate freedom in these societies. The question is not new, but they test it with respect to tax payments. Based on a relatively large sample and using statistical regressions, they find that subsidiaries of multinationals in India pay higher effective tax rates (ETR) than local firms and also that multinationals with higher CSR profiles paymore taxes than those with lower records of CSR activities. The authors conclude that multinationals prefer to contribute to the much needed development of the host country rather than elude taxes. I have at least two reservations regarding the results of this article. First, I faced difficulties in understanding some technical choices and omissions made by the authors. For instance, one criterion to judge tax responsibility was to calculate the difference between ETR paid by local and multinational firms. In my view, a direct comparison of average ETR paid by multinationals with nominal tax rates in India would give a much clearer picture of how multinationals use their discretionary freedom in tax matters. Interestingly enough though, the authors were able to calculate the average ETR of the entire sample comprised of both, multinationals and local firms, and found it to be much lower (21.7%) than the nominal tax rates in India (35–40%). They also cautiously comment that ‘the low overall ETRs do indicate that all firms exploit opportunities to reduce their tax burden below the nominal rate to some degree’ (454). This detail aside, Müller and Kolk fail to sufficiently explore the reasons why ETR payments differ between local firms and multinationals and conveniently prefer to attribute it to a presumed CSR consciousness of multinationals. However, in the methodological section we learn that India has distinct tax rates for local and foreign firms and some percentages are provided for the year 1993. No clear picture of the tax regime in place at the time of the research inquiry (2000–2002) is offered, notwithstanding the great importance of these details for the results obtained. A more fine grained investigation is also needed to understand in which circumstances firms with better CSR reputation pay higher taxes than other firms. Second, the data collected for the study originates from the years 2000–2002, when societal awareness of tax-related issues was in its infancy. In mid-2000s, there were still calls for enlarging CSR agenda to include tax issues. Hence, the question is whether any tax-related CSR consciousness was present in the business world at the time of the inquiry. Despite the limitations of this study, the topic remains highly relevant and pertinent analyses are needed to understand whether and how multinationals can be mobilised to use ‘moral free spaces’ for societal betterment.

The Institutionalisation of Unaccountability: Loading the Dice of Corporate Social Responsibility Discourse

The article contributes to institutional theory and, in particular, to the literature examining institutional change by adopting a critical-discursive approach to show that an open arena, where conflicting discourses are freely contested, is insufficient to produce institutional change. The authors draw on Bourdieu’s concept of field, as a system of social relations, to question the potential of field struggle to alter taken-for-granted norms in society. Empirically, the article examines recent government-led Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Spain. We are introduced to the three institutional mechanisms established to shape the Spanish CSR agenda, which are based on social dialogue and stakeholder consultation. The analysis of the case, based on documents produced by three multi-stakeholder forums and interviews with participants to the consultation processes, is rich and thought-provoking. The authors identify two sub-discourses dominating consultations on CSR, which they label ‘the dominant’ and ‘the heretic’. The dominant discourse aligns CSR with business interests and promotes a voluntary approach to CSR. The heretic discourse articulates CSR in terms of the ecological crisis and social injustice faced by contemporary societies. The analysis indicates that, in spite of vivid and contradictory processes of stakeholder consultation, the heretic discourse not only lost the battle but in fact ‘self-subjugated’ to the dominant discourse. The final outcome is a voluntary approach to CSR being officially adopted in Spain. This is a significant finding because we are dealing with a societal story, not an organisational one (inherently business-laden). Although these conclusions might not be a surprise for readers of SEAJ, it is a worrying story and shows how state institutions are captured by the dominant business-as-usual CSR discourse. Positioning the article in a larger picture, I think it has several merits. It provides evidence of the poor performance of stakeholder consultation processes for promoting social and environmental issues in society. It also touches on a key challenge for contemporary CSR discourse, i.e. its inability to deal simultaneously with business growth, social injustice and a finite planet. These findings could be uncomfortable reading for the managerially oriented stakeholder and CSR literature if the article manages to reach a non-accounting audience. From this perspective, it is a pity that social and environmental accounting research and other socially and environmentally interested literatures remain largely disconnected. The study further brings a more refined understanding of discourse, by showing that discursive purity does not exist as such. Societal actors adopting one discourse or another also borrow elements from competing discourses. Finally, the study seems to suggest that Social and Environmental Accountability Journal Vol. 32, No. 2, 109–118, September 2012