Yves Gendron

In the Name of Accountability - State Auditing, Independence and New Public Management

This article investigates the role of the state auditor in Alberta. An analysis of the Office of the Auditor General of Alberta’s annual reports shows that the role of the Office has significantly changed to promote and encourage the implementation in the public sector of a particular type of accountability informed by new public management. The authors argue that the Office has increased its power to influence politicians and public servants about the merits of its specific understanding of what accountability should be. However, as the Office becomes more powerful, it also becomes more vulnerable to complaints about a lack of independence from the executive. Indeed, the Office is now so closely associated with new public management that we believe that it is difficult for the Office to sustain the claim that it is able to provide independent assessments of public‐sector administration.

Constituting the Academic Performer: The Spectre of Superficiality and Stagnation in Academia

Abstract Journal rankings and performance measurement schemes tend to become increasingly influential within many fields of research, thereby consolidating the prevalence of performativity on the life and research endeavours of many academics. The latter are nowadays often pressured to publish in ‘top’ journals to ensure they have a displayable level of performance. Drawing from literature on identity, this paper introduces and details the construction of the academic performer – a representation of identity which is increasingly typical of what it means today to be an actor in academia, in terms of attitudes and behaviour. Fundamentally speaking, this paper constitutes a critique of a detrimental tendency in academia, that is to say the excessive spread of performance measurement practices and the flow of superficiality and conformity they consolidate.

Investigating interdisciplinary translations: The influence of Pierre Bourdieu on accounting literature

Purpose - Accounting researchers have frequently borrowed theories and methods from other disciplines. A noteworthy importation movement in recent decades involves the work of French intellectuals and philosophers, not least Pierre Bourdieu. This paper aims to contribute to the sociology of the accounting discipline by examining how Bourdieus works have been translated into the domain of accounting research. Design/methodology/approach - The investigation is articulated through three modes of analysis. First, it evaluates Bourdieus recognition in the domain of accounting research, through an examination of the extent to which Bourdieus writings are cited in accounting articles. Focusing on accounting articles which rely significantly on Bourdieus thought, the paper then examines which of his publications have been mobilized, and how researchers have articulated his ideas in studying accounting phenomena. The third line of inquiry addresses the extent to which accounting researchers have used Bourdieus core concepts holistically, that is to say in mobilizing simultaneously the concepts of field, capital and habitus. Findings - Several of the studies which rely significantly on Bourdieu have employed his work holistically, while others have not. Moreover, about half of the studies reviewed in the paper are characterized by a gap between Bourdieus view of academic research as a support to political and social causes debated in the public arena versus a more dispassionate approach to research. While it is difficult to be conclusive about the implications of these translational gaps, they nonetheless make one aware of some central epistemological issues: Should accounting researchers be more concerned about bringing “the achievements of science and scholarship into public debate”? What are the pros and cons of drawing upon ideas from politically-engaged intellectuals in order to conduct research characterized by political dispassion? Does it make sense to use certain concepts excerpted from a comprehensive system of thought in a piecemeal way? Originality/value - The paper mobilizes and develops the notion of translation in investigating an interdisciplinary movement.

On the role of the organization in auditors’ client-acceptance decisions

Abstract The objective of this research is to better understand the role that the accounting firm organization plays when auditors make difficult client-acceptance decisions in the midst of conflicting influences—specifically between the professional and commercial “logics of action”. The investigation was conducted via a field study at three Big Six firms located in Canada. The main argument that is developed in the paper is that the firm sets the stage for auditors’ decision-making by making its formal organizational components (e.g., the firms partner-compensation scheme and decision-making policies) more reflective of one of the two logics, thereby establishing and helping reproduce certain patterns of order and consistency within the firm. However, the firms organizational components are also to some extent reflective of the other logic, thereby providing decision-makers with a legitimizing space to influence the decision process differently. I present fieldwork data that is consistent with the papers argument.

Analysis of a failed jurisdictional claim: The rhetoric and politics surrounding the AICPA global credential project

Purpose – The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) recently proposed a global consulting credential involving a diverse set of professions including accountancy, business law, and information technology. The proposal was widely debated in the professional literature, and was a divisive issue among CPAs. In late 2001, the AICPA membership voted against any further commitment to the credential. The purpose of this paper is to examine the global credential initiative in an effort to understand why professional jurisdictional claims may fail at the theorization stage.Design/methodology/approach – The paper relies primarily on a qualitative review and analysis of archival materials and published articles and commentaries relating to the global credential project.Findings – The analysis indicates that the AICPA failed to establish either the pragmatic or moral legitimacy of the proposed credential in the eyes of the audiences. This failure appears to be attributable to the sociopolitical e...

The Difficult Client-Acceptance Decision in Canadian Audit Firms: A Field Investigation

Auditing is often depicted in scientific as well as professional literature as a practice subject to conflicting influences, such as mechanisation vs. flexibility, and professionalism vs. commercialism. This paper examines how auditors actually make the client-acceptance decision in action, in the midst of these conflicting influences. The investigation was conducted via a field study at three Big Six firms located in Canada. The results show that in all firms the decision processes are largely flexible, being characterised by a high degree of informal communications and the adaptation of the firms rules and decision aids to circumstances. Furthermore, while commercialism exerts in one firm a significant influence on the decision processes, in the two other firms the decision processes are mostly consistent with professionalism. This finding seems to contradict the deprofessionalisation claims that are often made vis-a-vis the auditing profession within the academic literature: in the majority of the firms, professionalism appears to be significantly influential when auditors make client-acceptance decisions.

WebTrust and the “commercialistic auditor”: The unrealized vision of developing auditor trustworthiness in cyberspace

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine how auditors sought to establish their trustworthiness as trust providers on the internet; a vision which has remained largely unrealized. The investigation focuses on the WebTrust assurance project, launched by the North American accounting institutes to reinvigorate the alleged declining market for the expertise of external auditors. Design/methodology/approach – An in-depth longitudinal case study drew on a social theory of trust to examine the complexity of relations upon which trustworthiness of professional claims is predicated and investigate how commercialism has influenced the development of WebTrust. Findings – Analysis illustrates the critical role that experts have in professionalization processes in trusting (or not) their own systems of expertise. Also, face-to-face relationships continue to play a key role in establishing the trustworthiness of professionals and their systems of expertise – even in the cyberspace domain. Practical implications – It is argued that the WebTrust case and other commercialistic ventures sustained in accountancy provide a persuasive argument against the benefits of the free-market logic in professional domains. Professional associations should be more vigorous in defending professionalism. Originality/value – The research indicates that elite bodies of the profession, including professional associations, conceived of WebTrust mainly through a commercialistic lens – which is particularly revealing of the mindset that seemed to characterize a number of experienced professional accountants across North America shortly before the collapse of Andersen. The WebTrust saga illustrates how the profession has strayed from its ideals, or myths, of service ethic towards more focused efforts in developing “innovative” services based on a commercialistic logic.

IFRS: On the Docility of Sophisticated Users in Preserving the Ideal of Comparability

This paper questions the ideal of comparability, which is often mobilized by standard setters when justifying new – or ‘improvement’ to existing – accounting standards. The target of our analysis is constituted by the thoughts of sophisticated users of financial statements when reflecting about International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) implementation in Europe. Drawing on the work of Mary Douglas on purity and Michel Foucault on docility, it is argued and shown that sophisticated users tend to interpret aberrations – that is to say indications of incomparability which confront users in the flow of their professional lives – in ways that allow the ideal of comparability to be preserved. Important consequences ensuing from the docility of users in purifying aberrations are discussed.

Qualitative Research on Accounting: Some Thoughts on What Occurs Behind the Scene

Publisher Summary The chapter presents some of the key activities that occur behind the scene in conducting qualitative research projects. The content is mainly based on an ongoing research project on audit committee initiated in 1998. It explores the multiplicity of ethical and institutional constraints that one has to deal with daily as a qualitative researcher. The chapter describes the process of setting the stage for qualitative research—being pressured to publish, starting the project, funding the project, getting access to field data, and obtaining ethics approval. The chapter discusses the process of conducting and analyzing interviews, and writing qualitative papers. It not only addresses the constraints to the undertaking of qualitative research but also discusses how to overcome these constraints. When a research project gets published, a lot remains unsaid. The chapter explains what all goes into making a successful qualitative research paper in accounting.

Sense-Making in Compensation Committees: A Cultural Theory Perspective

Drawing on Mary Douglas’s cultural theory, our research analyzes the cultural schemes or biases mobilized by compensation committee (CC) members, in the context of public companies, when making sense of their committee’s work. Relying on semi-structured interviews mostly conducted with CC members in Canada, our analysis brings to the fore the production of moral and rational comfort within the boundaries of the individualistic and hierarchical culture. Under an individualistic bias, the compensation market is seen as natural, providing conditions of possibility that serve to establish fair compensation through the creation and enforcement of contracts. Under a hierarchic bias which emphasizes principles of objectivity and measurability, members of CCs tend to conceive the design of compensation policies as an act of expertise, relying extensively on consultants and measurement techniques to determine acceptable reward boundaries. Not only does our paper contribute to corporate governance literature by providing insight into a central aspect of CCs, that is to say CC members’ ways of thinking and doing, but the juxtaposition of cultural theory with CC empirics provides us with the opportunity to reflect and theorize on the issue of cultural change.