1st Edition
Accountability Research Ethnographic Methods in Organisation and Accounting
This book discusses (auto- )ethnographies of accountability, undertaken (in close collaboration) by a multinational group of accounting and organization theory researchers over a period of three years. The key assumption underlying the book is that accountability is inherently an identity- creating process where the study of account- making has to be done participatively, with radical openness to the one(s) being researched, as well as to their context. That openness we call ‘ethnography’. The values or assumptions inherent to the practices of account and identity-making, in a specific context, are what (auto- )ethnographies seek to describe and identify. These values and assumptions warrant critical, ethical reflection, and this is what the researchers presented here have tried to provide.
The chapters in this book all are mini- studies of relatedness. The scale of examination is intimate; the reflections provided by the researchers are mainly methodological.
This book is of interest to accounting and organization theory students and scholars who believe that accountability can fruitfully be studied through (auto-) ethnography. The book extends currently existing views on how accountability can be handled and discharged between researchers and their researched, when local, intimate settings are studied.
Part 1
Chapter 1. Introduction
Hugo Letiche, Ivo De Loo, Carolyn Cordery and Jean-Luc Moriceau
Chapter 2. Accountability and Ethnography: An Interview With John Roberts
Hugo Letiche and Ivo De Loo
Part 2
Chapter 3. Accountabilities in Eco- and Sex Tourism in Cambodia
Robert Earhart
Chapter 4. ‘Accountability-With’ and ‘Research-With’? Ethics, accountability, and relatedness in the research act; assisting the homeless in a religious NGO
David Yates and Rita Maria Difrancesco
Chapter 5. Framing the sacred and secular (in search of Justice and Righteousness): chaplaincy in an English University
Carolyn Cordery
Chapter 6. Accounting for political history: reflections on studying museums of recent history
Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Elizabeth Carnegie
Chapter 7. Symmetrical Accountability and Reflexivity: primary school head-teachers
Hugo Letiche and Alexander Maas
Chapter 8. An Emerging Economy’s Engagement with the International Financial Reporting Standards and the IFRS Foundation
Özlem Asma-Arikan
Chapter 9. Sounding an alarm: Ill-fitted proportions and invidious accountability
Bill Lee
Chapter 10. From Accountability to Trust: Developing a Phenomenology of the Emergence of a Sense of Responsibility
Philippe Jacquinot and Arnaud Pellissier-Tanon
Chapter 11. Transforming and being transformed. Autoethnography of an extra-financial reporting coordinator’s quest of resonance at the headquarters of a French multinational company.
Lucas Boucaud, Rémi Jardat and Anne-Catherine Moquet
Chapter 12. Down with the masks: The paradoxes of [In-]habiting accountability
Albert Cath
Chapter 13. Aspirational intellectual ontological positions, de facto ontological positions and felt accountability: autoethnographic narratives from two early career researchers
Bill Lee, David Yates and Mira Lieberman
Chapter 14. Repentirs and the incomplete-able accountability
Jean-Luc Moriceau, Géraldine Guérillot et Isabela Paes
Chapter 15. Account-Ability and the In-Ability to Account: Conversations on Public-Private Tensions Experienced by Two Accountants-Academics
Remko Renes and Herman van Brenk
Part 3
Chapter 16. Ethnographies of Accountability: Some Reflections and the Way Ahead
Hugo Letiche, Ivo De Loo, Carolyn Cordery and Jean-Luc Moriceau
Biography
Hugo Letiche is Research Professor at ISTEC Paris France and Professor Emeritus at the UvH Utrecht (NL). He is also a Visiting Professor at Nyenrode Business University, Breukelen, the Netherlands. He received his doctoral degree in conflict psychology from Leiden University in 1976 and obtained his doctorate degree from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1984. His research is phenomenologically and ethnographically informed and focuses on in-practice responsibilization and accountability. He has written and co-edited some 20 books and contributed to some 40 more.
Ivo De Loo is Professor of Management Accounting & Control at Nyenrode Business University, Breukelen, the Netherlands. He received his doctoral degree in quantitative economics from Maastricht University in 1995 (cum laude) and obtained his doctorate degree from the Open University of the Netherlands in 2008. Ivo is interested in how management accounting and control practices are shaped and changed in organizations, and what this means for discharging accountability. He is part of the editorial board of Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management and of the editorial advisory board of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.
Carolyn Cordery is Adjunct Professor at Victoria University, New Zealand, and Visiting Professor at Nyenrode University in Breukelen, the Netherlands. She is Chair of the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board (NZASB), a member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) and the Practitioner Advisory Group of the IFR4NPO project (International Financial Reporting for Non Profit Organisations). Carolyn is joint editor of Accounting History and associate editor of British Accounting Review and Meditari Accountancy Research. She is also on the editorial board of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal. Carolyn’s research focuses on not- for- profit organizations’ accounting and accountability.
Jean-Luc Moriceau is Professor of Research Methods and Accountability at Institut Mines- Telecom Business School in Évry- Paris in France and member of the LITEM, a Paris- Saclay research lab. He is responsible for doctoral training, and is an associate editor for Culture and Organization and RIPCO. He has organized and animated a large number of national and international seminars and conferences. He advocates a humanistic approach to organizations and research, where he emphasizes the importance of affects, relatedness and performance. He favours qualitative approaches, inventive methods, reflexivity and evocative writing.
