پژوهش حسابداری بحرانی: مشاهده از انگلستان

This paper seeks to provide a review of the state of critical accounting in England. The paper first seeks to define the role and nature of critical accounting, demonstrating the breadth of the area of concern yet arguing for the importance of theory. The interested nature of accounting is demonstrated. Following this, an argument is made as to why accounting is important. This argues that accounting information can be used as a steering device to impose and control the interests of particular groups. It suggests accounting is both a tool and a creator of modernity. Accounting information is argued to be malleable. The paper differentiates the programmatic use of accounting and its technologies, providing some examples of their usage in the public services, particularly the Private Finance Initiative in the UK. Finally, the paper reviews the state of critical accounting in England, arguing for the need to ensure that a new generation of critical accounting researchers is supported. The need for research into the impacts of funding and regulative regimes in the higher education sector is highlighted.

This paper seeks to provide a review of the state of accounting in England,exploring the work of those who have taken a more critical approach to the understanding of accounting data and its effects on society. In reviewing what has been labelled “critical accounting1, we should recognize that “critical” accounting is not separate from accounting practice in general. Instead, it is simply a means of reflecting or interacting with accounting information in order to challenge the understandings that are conventionally generated. Nevertheless there is a commonplace recognition of a body of work that is loosely coupled under this title and hence it is reasonable to accept and work with this label. The paper provides a personal view and the review is therefore partial. Although it seeks to be inclusive of a range of work that has developed in England it uses as its main foundation the area of accounting in the public services2. The bounding of the geographical area itself is rather difficult to operationalize and I have sought to look at work generated in England. This is somewhat arbitrary and will also mean that some relevant work is perhaps not discussed; for this I apologize.In developing this review, the paper seeks to make an argument as to why critical accounting must be regarded as important. In the first section I seek to clarify what I mean by “critical accounting”, accepting that this may not be everyone’s view, but also seeing this as a means by which to ground the argument. Next the paper will consider why accounting matters, because if accounting is insignificant then the idea of critical accounting is also trivial. The paper closes with an argument for critical accounting and some discussion of its state in England from the perspective developed.