Dedicated to the advancement of accounting knowledge, the Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal publishes high quality manuscripts concerning the interaction between accounting/auditing and their socio-economic and political environments, encouraging critical analysis of policy and practice in these areas. The journal also seeks to encourage debate about the philosophies and traditions which underpin the accounting profession, the implications of new policy alternatives and the impact of accountancy on the socio-economic and political environment.

The Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal is dedicated to advancing accounting knowledge by publishing high-quality manuscripts that explore the interaction between accounting/auditing and their socio-economic and political environments. The journal encourages critical analysis of policies and practices in these areas and seeks to foster debate about the philosophies and traditions that underpin the accounting profession, the implications of new policy alternatives, and the impact of accountancy on the socio-economic and political landscape.

《Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal》致力于推动会计知识的发展，发表高质量的手稿，关注会计/审计与其社会经济及政治环境之间的互动，鼓励对这些领域政策和实践的批判性分析。该期刊还旨在促进关于支撑会计职业的哲学和传统的辩论，探讨新政策选择的影响，以及会计对社会经济和政治环境的影响。

Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal

Purpose The purpose of this research was to seek a more refined understanding of the ways beneficiaries are evaluating nonprofit organisations (NPO), from the beneficiaries’ perspectives. Understanding evaluation from beneficiaries’ perspectives is not only important theoretically, but also for enabling evaluation processes to authentically contribute toward enhanced downward accountability. Design/methodology/approach Theorisation of immanent evaluation (Deleuze, 1998), the ontological view that there is no form imposed from outside or above but instead an articulation from within, was drawn upon to direct attention toward understanding beneficiaries’ inherent productive evaluative capacity and agency. This theorisation enabled a different way of observing and understanding beneficiary evaluation within a qualitative case study conducted in an Australian NPO. Data was sourced from interviews, observations and document analysis. Findings Findings suggest beneficiaries largely viewed the NPO’s evaluation processes to be unsatisfactory toward meeting their needs in relation to meaningful engagement. However, beneficiaries’ evaluative capacity was noted to include their own evaluation criteria and evaluative expressions indicating the production of an evaluative account. Here beneficiaries’ evaluative expressions are representations of events of evaluation, initiated by them. Findings enable a more refined understanding of beneficiaries’ engagement in evaluation, moving beyond traditional considerations of participative evaluation, and illustrating beneficiaries’ agency and active role in the production of evaluation. Originality/value This research furthers understandings of downward accountability and participative evaluation by detailing how beneficiaries’ evaluative capacity is part of an NPO’s evaluative environment, and as such, conceives of an immanent theory of beneficiary evaluation. Findings highlight how evaluation, as a mechanism of downward accountability, functions from beneficiaries’ perspectives and the type of organisational environment capable of enabling and better supporting beneficiary engagement.

Kylie L Kingston

Belinda Luke

Eija Vinnari

Accounting Auditing & Accountability Journal

Understanding beneficiary evaluative capacity within nonprofit organisations through an immanent perspective

通过内在视角理解非营利组织中的受益者评估能力

Purpose The paper proposes a place-space duality, rather than a dualism, for accounting research. Design/methodology/approach The discussion is informed by the literature in human geography, which, while developing the concept of space, has made an important distinction between abstract space and place as a site of experiential learning and memory. Findings The lack of a concept of place is a serious omission in the accounting literature and perpetuates an abstract sense of space, which can restrict the scope of accounting research. Research limitations/implications The paper calls for further research to study accounting in place and to explore both the collective and individual senses of place, as well as conscious and unconscious place associations. We recognise that there is limited prior accounting research on this topic and that there are challenges in conducting such interdisciplinary research, especially as there is a lack of common ground between research in human geography and accounting and little integration of the two literatures. Practical implications The paper proposes an accounting research agenda based on a place-space duality, which reflects the strength of people-place relationships, including place identities, place attachment and place dependence. Originality/value The paper provides a critique of the conceptualisation of space in accounting research, identifies place-space as a duality (rather than a dualism) and suggests a novel distinction between studying accounting in context and in place.

ChunLei Yang

Robert W. Scapens

Christopher Humphrey

Advocating a place-space duality for an accounting research agenda

倡导会计研究议程的场所-空间二重性

Purpose This study aims to examine whether senior Enron executive emails celebrated, or at least left a space for, corporate irresponsibility. Engaging with prior organizational-focused research, we investigate how corporate emails sent by senior executives help constitute Enron by communicating to employees senior management’s stance about important topics and social characters. Design/methodology/approach The study analyzes the 527,356 sentences contained in 144,228 emails sent by Enron senior executives and other employees in the three-year period (1999–2001) before the company’s collapse. Sentences are used as the base-level speech unit because we are interested in identifying the tone and emotions expressed about specific topics and stakeholders. Tone is measured using Loughran and McDonald’s (2016) financial dictionary approach, and emotion is measured using Mohammad and Turney’s (2013) NRC word-emotion lexicon. Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regressions are used to explore the determinants of senior management tone and emotions. Findings The analysis illustrates that while both senior executives and other employees utilized email to help accomplish task-related activities, they employed different evaluative tones to talk about key topics and stakeholders. Also important is what is left unsaid, with a “spiral of silence” emanating from senior management that created a space for corporate irresponsibility. Originality/value Combining advanced computerized textual analysis with qualitative techniques, we analyze a unique dataset to explore micro details involved in using email to communicate a tone at the top. The findings illustrate how what is said or not said by senior management contributes to the constitution of an organization.

Kieran Taylor-Neu

Abu S. Rahaman

Gregory D. Saxton

Dean Neu

Tone at the top, corporate irresponsibility and the Enron emails

高层基调、企业不负责任行为与安然公司电子邮件

Purpose This paper examines how rank-and-file practitioners react to and negotiate uniformized professional standards imposed by the elites of their profession in order to embody their professional ideal. Design/methodology/approach We explore this topic through the specific case of the Canadian independence rule. We mobilize Freidson’s and Becker’s conceptual tools to make sense of our data, generated through 55 interviews with rank-and-file practitioners. Findings We found that most rank-and-file practitioners override the (spirit of the) independence rule and engage in a process of secret deviance to pursue their professional ideal of accompanying their client in their business. Specifically, our analysis underlines how they find pleasure in fulfilling their professional ideal, seek to protect the secrecy that allows them to pursue this ideal while avoiding sanctions, and convince themselves of the morality of breaking the (spirit of the) rule in order to embody their conception of professionalism. Research limitations/implications Our analysis expands fieldwork on rank-and-file practitioners by offering an analysis of struggles they experienced in their daily practice and by bringing to light their path to secret “professional” deviance. Practical implications Our study points to the necessity for better consideration of the realities of professional segments when developing rules or standards. Originality/value Our study develops a distinctive conceptual construct – the professionalism conception gap – to explain how secret “professional” deviance can unfold within a profession. This construct could be mobilized to further understand the divergences that can exist within broader professional spheres.

Claire-France Picard

Cynthia Courtois

Sylvain Durocher

Angélique Malo

Secret professional deviance: the case of the independence rule

秘密职业越轨行为：独立规则的案例

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how hierarchical accountability can be enacted and accounting control systems mobilized in a way that promotes a sense of felt responsibility. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on interviews, shadowing and observations to explore the implementation of a strategy for “increasing accountability” in a Norwegian Oil Company. The case provided an opportunity to explore the dynamics of hierarchical accountability and felt responsibility, and in particular Roberts (2009) concept of “intelligent accountability”, in an empirical context. Findings The case study explores how the strategy of increasing accountability at OilCo was enacted around three operational issues; the control of costs, roles and relationships in the complex matrix structure, and the operation of the management system. It traces how the long history of Beyond Budgeting practices and philosophy in OilCo resulted both in an explicit recognition of the incompleteness of accounting numbers, and trust-based practices which avoided many of the dysfunctional individual and organizational effects typically associated with the exercise of hierarchical control. Originality/value The paper explores empirically how OilCo’s embrace of Beyond Budgeting practices and philosophy had created the conditions under which a more intelligent form of accountability could emerge. As a European case study, it calls into question the Anglo-American tradition of accounting research which suggests that externally imposed accountability within a hierarchy mitigates against employees’ felt responsibility.

Grete Helle

John Roberts

Accountability for responsibility: a case study of a more intelligent enactment of accountability

责任的责任：一个更智能的责任履行案例研究

Purpose This paper examines “how” an organisation, over time, responded, and “what strategies” were mobilised, to conform to a specific audit society-inspired model introduced in Italy by the Decree 231 (D231). D231 requires implementing an internal control and audit model and performance accounting to oversee business activities and prevent misconduct. Design/methodology/approach A case study approach was adopted for in-depth analysis of the response strategies (i.e. avoidance and compromise) and related initiatives, which were mobilised in ITAGAS, a public organisation leader in the methane gas distribution sector in Italy. Participant observation, interviews and document analysis were the primary data sources. Theoretically, our analysis is informed by insights drawn from the institutional complexity perspective (Thornton et al. , 2012; Pache and Santos, 2013a, b) and Oliver’s (1991) model concerning strategic responses to institutional pressures. Findings Adopting D231 generated institutional complexity in our case organisation. The analysis highlights two phases: the voluntary and compulsory adoption of the D231 model. The voluntary adoption occurred via a compromising strategy that involved forms of “selective coupling” (Pache and Santos, 2013a), which allowed the organisation to strategically adopt only those structures/practices that were seen as appropriate and consistent with its organisational logics. The compulsory phase was characterised by broader adoption of the D231 model through symbolic conformity. The case organisation adopted “avoidance” strategies (Oliver, 1991) and “co-habiting means-ends” decoupling initiatives to protect the basic organisational coherence from the regulative prescriptions. Originality/value The paper presents original insights into how the D231 model, an example of an audit society-inspired model, unfolded over time in a specific organisation to achieve the desired change towards more responsible and accountable practices. Our analysis suggests the compulsory phase was less effective than when the model was voluntarily adopted. The paper also reveals that, in contrast to the voluntary phase, decoupling strategies were mobilised in the compulsory phase to reach an organisational equilibrium, which facilitated corporate survival; decoupling was the only effective solution to the imbalance generated by the compulsoriness of the D231 model.

短名	AAAJ
Journal Impact	4.74
国际分区	BUSINESS, FINANCE(Q1)
期刊索引	SCI Q2中科院 3 区

ISSN	0951-3574, 2051-3151
h-index	121
国内分区	管理学(3区)管理学商业财政与金融(3区)

涉及主题	经济政治学业务法学社会学计算机科学会计心理学哲学社会科学管理社会心理学人类学数学生物定性研究创造力独创性公共关系认识论统计历史地理机器学习考古语言学价值（数学）财务工程类艺术政治物理
出版信息	出版商: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.，出版周期: ，期刊类型: journal，开源期刊: 否
基本数据	创刊年份: 1988，原创研究文献占比: 93.90%，自引率:17.40%， Gold OA占比: 24.32%

Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal

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Understanding beneficiary evaluative capacity within nonprofit organisations through an immanent perspective

Advocating a place-space duality for an accounting research agenda

Tone at the top, corporate irresponsibility and the Enron emails

Secret professional deviance: the case of the independence rule

Accountability for responsibility: a case study of a more intelligent enactment of accountability

Understanding beneficiary evaluative capacity within nonprofit organisations through an immanent perspective

Advocating a place-space duality for an accounting research agenda

Secret professional deviance: the case of the independence rule

Tone at the top, corporate irresponsibility and the Enron emails

Audit society, organisational response and (de-)coupling: an Italian story