Critical accounting education: teaching and learning outside the circle

Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 565–586

Critical accounting education: teaching and learning outside the circle Gordon Boyce∗ Division of Economic and Financial Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Received 15 December 2002; accepted 30 January 2003

Abstract The development of the corporate university is an element in the suite of “economically rational” public policy changes promulgated in recent decades. Working from a position that the practice of accounting is centrally implicated in these changes, it is contended in this paper that accounting, and accounting education, can in fact play a part in challenging these positions. Extant accounting research is sufficiently well-developed such that we are aware of the conflicts and contradictions both within accounting and flowing from the practice of the discipline, yet the effect of this body of knowledge on the content of teaching and learning within the accounting classroom remains limited. By and large, accounting education continues to be constrained within narrowly defined, but mis-conceived, disciplinary boundaries, focusing on the techniques and “skills” of accounting practice. In outlining a case for broadening the accounting education curriculum, this paper adopts the heuristic of “tangential thinking” as a means of transcending narrowly constructed disciplinary boundaries. In doing so, it is suggested that accounting education reform needs to go well beyond the putative reform agenda of the organised professional accounting bodies. The exploration of tangents lead to areas of knowledge that initially seem to be outside of accounting, but which nevertheless have an integral connection to the realities of the practice of the discipline. The paper outlines a case for tangential thinking in teaching and learning activities in the accounting classroom, within extant accreditation and curricular arrangements. Teaching and learning “outside the circle” in this manner is suggested as a way to make accounting education relevant in its socio-historical context and, particularly, relevant to the lived experience of students. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Critical accounting; Corporate university; Accounting research; Accounting education; Intellectuals

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1. Introduction—the academic condition Contemporary university activity is increasingly centred on the narrow goals of preparing students for work and meeting the needs of business for trained workers. The resultant socialisation of students into disciplined compliance with the values of the present social order (see Aronowitz, 2000, 2001), is in sharp contrast to the “ideal” university as a community of scholars with a role in reflecting on and problematising the pervasive ideas of the times (see Craig et al., 1999; Newman, 1996) and providing an active space for difference, debate, and even dissent (Aronowitz, 2000). The influence of business has become so significant that corporate acceptability has become a yardstick for university operations (Rappert, 1995, p. 388) and corporate “branding” of university activity seems to be the order of the day (Klein, 2001). Parker (2002) considers that the impacts on university financial/funding, education, and research subsystems have been so deep that they are changing the interpretive schemes of the university lifeworld: Core values of universities now include financial viability, vocational relevance, industry relationships, market share, public profile, and customer/client responsiveness. These values are transparently reflective of business enterprise values as private sector business concepts and practices have been increasingly imported into the university sector . . . Scholarship, knowledge development and transmission, and critical inquiry have been transformed from fundamental core values of the university lifeworld into exploitable intellectual capital for the pursuit of the “new” enterprise university core values . . . Knowledge based values formerly comprising the lifeworld have been supplanted by commercial values that now exploit subservient knowledge values for their commercial contribution (Parker, 2002, pp. 612–613, 616). Not only have universities taken on meeting the needs of business as their core mission, universities have increasingly come to resemble businesses themselves (Alexander, 1996; Klein, 2001; Marginson, 2000; Saravanamuthu and Tinker, 2002). Within universities, executive leaders have been key change agents, but their actions are largely “disconnected from the academic and administrative community they supposedly lead” (Parker, 2002, p. 609). All aspects of university activity and academic work, and conditions under which teaching and learning activities occur, have been affected. For example: • Course design: increasing influence of professional and commercial interests; • Course content: increasing commodification of curricula and influence of multinational textbook publishers; • Student context and support: significantly larger class sizes and decreases in student support; • Student numbers: massive growth, transforming many institutions into mass education providers; • Vocationalisation: a shift towards vocationally based training with a decline in socially critical functions; • Service provision: outsourcing and cost shifting to students and academic departments; • Academic work: reduced academic autonomy and restrictions on academic freedom; • Job security: casualisation of university labour and contract teaching;

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• Infrastructure: postponement or elimination of building construction and maintenance; and “Internationalisation”: pervasive influence of Western cultural patterns of thinking without reference to appropriateness for students from a range of country settings (see Boyce, 2002; Lewis, 1998; Parker, 2002, for example). Change in universities is often explained or justified as being a result of “globalisation” and a claimed need to comply with market and other external forces. Parker (2002), for instance, variously attributes university change to “external environmental pressures”, “external disturbances” and “the [government] funding crunch” and Latham (2001) sees the need for change as flowing from the “fiscal crisis of the state”. A particular problem with these conceptions is that, in effect, economic rationalism becomes both the “referent and the ideal for change” (see Aronowitz and Giroux, 1993, p. 214). By contrast, analysis of the active role of public policy settings shows the strategic role of the state in reorienting academic activity towards serving the needs of global capital. This demonstrates that university change is driven as much by deliberate government action in support of a particularly narrow set of economic and political interests as anything else (see Boyce, 2002). Indeed, many of the changes in academia are a result of the state’s “direct interventionist role vis à vis the intellectuals . . . to control their activities by using financial and economic incentives” (Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996, p. 201), having the (desired) effect of marginalising oppositional spaces and voices.1 Despite the extent and pace of change to date, the future for universities remains undetermined, and academic action-in-the-present will continue to be significant in shaping that future. The ongoing dialectical tension between education as domination and education as emancipation (see Dillard and Tinker, 1996; McPhail, 1999; McPhail, 2001a) means that possibilities for transcendence are inherent in the present situation, and that educational endeavour has a significant role to play. Individual and collective actions, including those of academics, students and university administrators, can have significant effects within universities and the wider society. In this paper I consider how accounting education—and accounting academics—might respond to the state of affairs outlined above. The practice of accounting is a key element in operationalising the “economically rational” public policy changes referred to above, and it thus follows that accounting may have some part to play in challenging these positions. Indeed, accounting research is sufficiently well-developed such that the conflicts and contradictions both within accounting and flowing from the practice of the discipline are well-known. Yet the effect of this body of knowledge on the content of teaching and learning within the accounting classroom remains limited. Accounting education has traditionally been narrowly defined within disciplinary boundaries that exclude consideration of anything 1 The “fiscal crisis of the state” referred to by Latham (2001) is itself more a symbol of a wider crisis of capitalism that is “structurally determined by social and economic conflicts between classes and groups” (O’Connor, 1973, p. 3) and an outcome of the unequal distribution of social, economic and political power. Specifically, the crisis has arisen as a result of government policy settings promulgated in the interests of an elite, rather than something imposed on the state by uncontrollable external forces. Rhetoric about smaller government and cutting personal taxes is coterminous with policies that minimise taxation on particular groups such as large corporations, which play one country off against another in establishing operations, and wealthy private individuals who are able to arrange their financial affairs in order to minimise their own personal taxation burden.

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outside the policies and practices of the discipline as such. In contradistinction, I outline a case for consciously adopting tangential thinking as a heuristic for the transcendence of mis-conceived, narrowly constructed disciplinary boundaries. The remainder of the paper is divided into four sections. The next section briefly contextualises accounting education by considering the role of universities in changing times and the interplay between universities and social change, showing that the dialectical interplay between the university as a social institution and society itself remains a source of possibility for the creation of alternative futures. This is followed by a short outline of the present state of accounting education, incorporating the now-established reform agenda emanating from the organised accounting profession. The third section, on practising critical accounting education, outlines how academics themselves might respond to this state of affairs in a critical way, making a case for broadening the ambit of accounting education. The notion of “tangents”, as areas of knowledge that seem outside of accounting, but which have an integral connection to accounting, is used to make a case for the practice of critical accounting education within extant broad accreditation and curricular frameworks. It is noted that accounting academics who tread the critical accounting path with their students are likely to encounter resistance in this endeavour, but the implications for academics of not doing so, are discussed in the concluding section.

2. Universities and accounting in changing times In dealing with the turbulence of university change, an informed response from academics requires more than a yearning for a lost past or a passive submission to the present. Universities have always been subject to various social forces, but have always been closely tied at a functional level with the needs of the prevailing hegemonic order, tending to be a tool of social control and social reproduction. Historically, universities have also been a site of social struggle and university change has been integrally related to wider social change (see Boyce, 2002; Tilling, 2002). This means that effective educational reform must be linked to reform in other social spheres, and our present consideration of the corporatised university, and any project for change within universities, must be contextualised within the existing socio-political situation, in all its complexity. Marx’s famous observation that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force . . . ” (Marx and Engels, 1970, p. 64, original emphasis) is apposite here. In a sense, universities always have to be “in tune with the times” but in “new times” (Hall and Jacques, 1989) the possibilities for change remain undetermined. Hall and Jacques (1989) argue that the extant hegemonic position (dominated by economic rationalism) is unsettled and characterised by enormous unevenness and ambiguity. This position, although buttressed ideologically, materially and culturally, and, indeed, backed up with the power of the state and multilateral institutions, remains contingent. “While it speaks the language of choice, freedom and autonomy, . . . society is increasingly characterised by inequality, division and authoritarianism” (Hall and Jacques, 1989, pp. 16–l7). Social change flows from crises that crystallise out of such contradictions, and social and political alternatives have not been obliterated by the supposed “end of history”

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(Fukuyama, 1992). Whilst change-inducing crises can last for long periods, and can be effectively rebutted or suppressed in the short term, they cannot be eliminated in the longer term (Amin, 1998; Habermas, 1973; O’Connor, 1973). Indeed, an open question remains as to whether university change is a tool of capitalism in adapting to new social and economic circumstances or whether a wider project for the creation of a different social order emerges (with universities being a part of this project). The role of intellectuals is important in articulating any movement for change. The quest for a “new society” requires intellectuals to articulate the social and cultural contradictions of the prevailing order and to harness the creative impulses of a range of alternatives: The principal agents are intellectuals who have a specialized responsibility for the circulation and development of culture and ideology and who either align themselves with the existing dispositions of social and intellectual forces (‘traditional’ intellectuals) or align themselves with the emerging popular forces and seek to elaborate new currents of ideas (‘organic’ intellectuals) (Hall, 1996, pp. 432–433). It follows from the above that change in universities is not likely to occur without concomitant change in society. The interplay between the two remains a source of creative possibility. Change in accounting and accounting education represents one small part of this larger picture; consequently accounting academics need to consciously position themselves in the larger social context within which change might occur.

3. The present trajectory of accounting education Accounting education is in the midst of a reform effort designed to address perceived deficiencies associated with the dominance of a narrow, functionalist view of the discipline (Johns, 1996; Needles and Powers, 1990; Nelson, 1995; Patten and Williams, 1990). The traditional view is manifested in a teaching and learning approach that centres on passive teaching techniques and focuses on the transfer of a discrete body of procedural knowledge, including an ever-growing technical-regulatory content. Accounting education reform efforts are substantially driven by the professional accounting bodies, with their clarion-call for change in accounting education in order to make it more “relevant” to the (changing) needs of the accounting profession (e.g. Accounting Education Change Commission, 1990; Bedford et al., 1986). University accounting departments have invariably responded by seeking to sing the profession’s tune ever louder (cf. Bellamy, 1996; Cooper, 2002; Patten and Williams, 1990), although there is little evidence that the substantive content of accounting education has materially altered. Despite significant resources expended thus far, the reform effort has come to little and, on present indications, this situation seems unlikely to change (see Davis and Sherman, 1996; Dillard and Tinker, 1996; Puxty et al., 1994). The great bulk of accounting education continues to exhibit technical reductionism and develops severely limited perceptions of what constitute “problems” in accounting, excluding any sense of the political agenda of accounting (Booth and Cocks, 1990). Both traditional curricula and the putative reform agenda remain largely rooted in an assumption that university education has no obligations beyond preparation for working life.

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This is at odds with the acknowledged limits of education dominated by vocational considerations (see, for example, Aronowitz, 2000; Preston, 1992; Tinker and Koutsoumadi, 1997).2 The narrowness of the vocational approach to accounting education is doubly flawed because it is based on the mistaken assumption that the future vocation of accounting students will be “professional” careers in accounting per se. This stands in stark contrast to the reality of downsizing and deskilling in accounting work, which means that most accounting graduates will face a markedly different future (see Cooper and Tinker, 1998). Many will never work in “professional” accounting practice, or, indeed, in any form of accounting (see Tinker and Koutsoumadi, 1997, 1998). All will have to face the emergent jobless (diFazio, 1998; Esposito et al., 1998), joyless (Tinker and Koutsoumadi, 1998), and commodified (Tinker and Koutsoumadi, 1997) future. The accounting education reform agenda is ignorant of these aspects of the reality to be faced by current students of accounting. Whilst accounting education is not unique in its vocational emphasis,3 it does present a particular case in point. Whether they recognise or accept it, academic accountants have a particular responsibility that flows from the central role of their discipline in creating and sustaining social reality, including the present dominance of economic rationalism (see for example, Berry et al., 1985; Boden et al., 1998; Davids and Hancock, 1998; Guthrie, 1999; Reiter, 1997). In the present specific context, accounting has been a significant tool in contemporary attacks on universities and on the role of academics (see Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996). Flowing from this, it is reasonable to assign a degree of responsibility to accounting academics for the present state of affairs, not only in accounting education, but in universities themselves, and in society more generally. It is also reasonable to assign to them some responsibility for developing positions that challenge this state of affairs.

4. Practising critical accounting education An effective response to the increasing hold of economic rationalism must draw on the potential, inherent within the historical function of universities in social reproduction, for universities and academics to play a role in building a counterhegemonic position (see Boyce, 2002, pp. 593–597). Academics may perform a range of functions in this regard, but it is their daily attention to teaching and learning that will form the focus of critical accounting educational practice. Intellectual involvement with students is perhaps the most important activity to be undertaken by educators with a commitment to social change (see Freire, 1996, 1998, for example). 2

The vocationalism of accounting education is not a recent problem. Parker (2001, p. 441, drawing on Previts and Merino, 1979) notes that in the United States, when accounting was first taught in universities early in the 20th century, academics were criticised (by practitioners!) for taking a narrow, technical, practice oriented focus at the expense of a more conceptually based analytical education. The technicist, vocational approach prevailed at the time, and has dominated university accounting education ever since. 3 University teaching across the board at the present time seems to be increasingly focussed on training students in occupational skills, socialising them into the extant social arrangements, and preparing a ready supply of future labour (Aronowitz, 2000). Gray and Collison (2002) suggest that the malady in accounting education affects a number of comparable professional domains.

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Foundationally, accounting educators must address whether their allegiance is to the accounting profession (whatever that may be) or to accounting education (see Tinker and Feknous, 2001). If all that university accounting academics do is teach the practices and procedures of the discipline, they are doing something that logically seems unnecessary. In a situation where so much accounting work can be and is performed by accounting workers who do not have any formal training in accounting (see Baker, 2001), formal university level education is not a prerequisite to the technical practice of accounting. We should therefore seek something more from university accounting education than mere skill development for the practice of accounting. This would necessitate a dramatic redrawing of the horizons of accounting and accounting education. 4.1. A broader definition of accounting The problems in accounting education may well start with the conventional portrayal of accounting as a process of “truthfully” or “fairly” (or even “legally”) representing financial and economic reality. Critics identify problems fundamental to the craft itself and the way it is practised and regulated. Clarke et al. (1997), for example, make an argument that conventional accounting representations result in nothing like the portrayal of anything even approaching “commercial reality”. Their argument is a “reformist” one, ironically sharing with the official rhetoric surrounding the promulgation of accounting frameworks, standards, regulation, and law, the goal of making changes to the system of accounting in order to produce “better” representations. But beyond representation per se, it is now well-recognised that the power of accounting and its techniques of notation, computation, calculation, and evaluation are indispensable in the operation of power and rule in society (Miller and Rose, 1990). There is ample research evidence that ties both present social and economic injustices and the sustaining of the system that produces these injustices to the practice of accounting (e.g. Adams and Harte, 2000; Arnold and Hammond, 1994; Chwastiak, 1998; Hoogvelt and Tinker, 1977; Neimark and Tinker, 1986; Tinker, 1985, 1991). The ideological role of accounting in legitimating the extant social and political order is particularly significant (see Richardson, 1987). Expertise associated with the practice of accounting is important in its use as a translation device between authorities and individuals, shaping conduct not through compulsion but through the power of ostensible truth and rationality, and its promised effectiveness (Miller and Rose, 1990; Robson, 1991). Eagleton (1991) identifies six different strategies through which an ideology can serve to legitimate dominant social interests: A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting beliefs and values congenial to it; naturalizing and universalizing such beliefs so as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable; denigrating ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself. Such ‘mystification’, as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the conception of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions. In any actual ideological formation, all six of these strategies are likely to interact in complex ways . . . (Eagleton, 1991, pp. 5–6, original emphases)

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A growing stream of accounting research literature explores these areas, demonstrating how accounting is implicated in all of the ideological strategies identified by Eagleton (e.g. Cooper, 1995; Lehman, 1995; Lehman and Tinker, 1987; Murray, 1990; Neimark, 1995, 1996; Reiter, 1998). Dominant forms of accounting promote, naturalise and universalise economically rational, profit-centred, corporatist values. These values are not problematised and are unquestioningly presented as the primary concerns of accounting and accountability. Alternatives are systematically denigrated, marginalised, and obscured (Chua, 1996; Clarke et al., 1999; Mitchell et al., 2001; Reiter, 1997; Reiter and Williams, 2002) and social conflict and contradictions are masked (Lehman, 1995). By contrast, the “theatre and intolerance” (Clarke et al., 1999) that characterises the mainstream research agenda is reflected in the classroom, where accounting education presents a decidedly illiberal, uncritical, economically rational and market-centred perspective on the discipline (see, for example Craig et al., 1999). Students are rarely given the opportunity to discover that accounting is less the neutral language of business serving the economic good than it is the partial language of social power serving particular interests. Given the constructed, partial and partisan nature of accounting (see Tinker, 1991; Tinker et al., 1982), and the one-sided and one-dimensional reality-production in which accountants are actively engaged (see Hines, 1988), a pretence of neutrality in accounting cannot hold. It seems unarguable that the areas of knowledge of accounting outlined above are indeed central to the practice of the discipline, and should be central to education in relation to that same discipline. Whilst enhanced skills and knowledge deemed suitable for participation in the workforce are not to be ignored, the inclusion of these areas of accounting knowledge requires classroom activity to go beyond the conventional bounds of accounting education. 4.2. Using tangents to redraw the boundaries of accounting (education) To be sure, effective accounting critique must be grounded in a solid understanding of the techniques and practices of the discipline, but when this is not infused with a thorough appreciation of the social and political context and consequences of accounting, students are effectively blinkered, or worse blindfolded, to the realities of the actual practice of the discipline. For accounting education to be socially relevant, it must be infused with an exploration of areas that may prima facie seem tangential to the “main game” of accounting. A “tangent” is defined as “touching” (Macquarie Dictionary, 1991). Geometrically, a tangent is a line or surface that is “touching, as a straight line in relation to a curve or surface”. To “fly off at a tangent” involves “a sudden divergence from one course, thought, etc., to another”. Something “tangential” is “pertaining to or of the nature of a tangent . . . divergent or digressive”. Figs. 1 and 2 illustrate how what is referred to here as conscious “tangential thinking” can be used in accounting education to broaden the definition of accounting to include its socio-historical elements, and to incorporate critique. Fig. 1 portrays a typical conventional depiction of a business (or other) organisation, and the limited role of accounting within it, consistent with the portrayals of conventional accounting which see it as serving strictly limited economic and decision-making functions. Notable features of this characterisation are: definite and solid entity and disciplinary boundaries; a large perceived area of interest within each system and subsystem boundary; and a description of everything outside the perceived organisational boundary under the simple general notion of “external

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Fig. 1. A typical portrayal of a business entity and its environment.

environment”. This external element is broadly outside the purview of the disciplines inside the organisation, including accounting conventionally conceived, except insofar as there is a direct impact inside the (perceived, constructed) boundary. By contrast, Fig. 2 develops the depiction in Fig. 1 to include within the purview of accounting its socio-historical setting. Notable features of this characterisation are: indefinite and permeable entity and disciplinary boundaries (broken lines); only a small area of interest contained within the boundaries (however, drawn) of each system and subsystem— this smallness being relative to what might be referred to as the universe of interest; and a specific recognition of what is outside the organisational boundary (wherever it might be) under various specific topics of interest. This latter aspect is perhaps the most significant: the “environment” is no longer a nefarious or amorphous “thing” outside the organisation to be “dealt with”, but something that takes on a distinct and explorable form, with definite and identifiable conditions and effects. The range of (environmental) topics of interest outside the (perceived boundaries of the) organisation are tangentially connected (the emphasis being on the connections) to what happens inside the organisation, and, specifically, inside accounting. In this sense, what may have initially seemed outside of accounting turns out, on exploration, to be integral to it. As Dillard comments, such considerations are, indeed, an important part of the subject matter of accounting: . . . a faculty member must critically, logically, analytically and continually explore all aspects of the subject matter including the theoretical base, historical and social context,

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Fig. 2. Many tangents to travel: a broader, tangential view of a business entity’s system and its environment.

technical content and societal implications. As a consequence, inequalities, power structures and systemic weaknesses become more difficult to rationalise. (Dillard and Tinker, 1996, p. 222) Going off on what may seem to be tangents is therefore an essential element of a meaningful and comprehensive consideration of accounting itself. In establishing and interrogating these connections and the “divergent” aspects of accounting, “flying off at a tangent” represents socio-historically informed critique in a very real sense. In this model, going off on tangents become an essential aspect of accounting, just as accounting practice has a range of immediate and not-so-immediate effects. This divergence from the established norm of what is deemed to be “within” accounting simply recognises integral connections between accounting and elsewhere. In sum, by comparison with Fig. 1, Fig. 2 more closely reflects the reality of the influence and power of accounting in society and in the lives of participants in accounting classes (teachers and students). This approach brings a range of relevant issues into the accounting

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classroom, and provides the opportunity for the critical discussion of a range of issues that are often “no-go” areas within any subject area normally included within commerce or business degrees (not just accounting). Perhaps most importantly, tangential thinking facilitates exploration of a range of areas impacting on the daily lives of academics, students, their families and colleagues—impacts that flow from the uses of accounting. Tangential thinking presents the ideal opportunity for the kind of dialogical education advocated by Freire (1996), where teachers and students jointly explore, discover, and grow in consciousness. The range of possible tangents for consideration facilitates much more exploratory and interactive forms of knowledge acquisition, validating the voice of the learner in interaction with that of the teacher (see Aronowitz and Giroux, 1991, pp. 100–103; Freire, 1996).4 All of this provides the possibility that learners will: . . . appropriate critically the best dimensions of their own histories, experiences, and culture . . . in an institution that breaks down the wall between vocational and academic education, bringing students to the threshold of the world of work with a broadly based education in both aspects of . . . knowledge. (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1993, p. 23) Tangential approaches to teaching and learning can utilise a range of classroom strategies and tactics in a number of different teaching modes. Perhaps most significant in this context is not specific strategies and tactics per se, but the teaching and learning philosophy which sees classroom activity as much more than “training for work” and “skill development”. Classroom activity in this approach connects the domain of specific study—accounting—to the wider real world as experienced, but perhaps not well understood, by all involved in the activity. Drawing tangentially, with a diverse array of areas for considered exploration, it is possible to connect with the ordinary feelings and experiences which students have in their lives outside the classroom and thereby to get in touch with lived reality and bring the historical and contemporary social underpinnings of accounting practice into the classroom. Students can articulate their own common sense knowledge with a more encompassing and enlightened social consciousness (see Hall, 1988, p. 171), whilst seeking to transcend the limitations of their pre-existing understandings. As McLaren points out, these connections to common sense and lived experience are important because: Knowledge is relevant only when it begins with the experiences students bring with them from the surrounding culture; it is critical only when these experiences are shown sometimes to be problematic . . . and it is transformative only when students begin to use the knowledge to help empower others, including individuals in the surrounding community. (McLaren, 1998, p. 192) Fig. 3 provides some examples of specific tangential connections that might be explored in accounting classes. All of these connections, which might initially seem tangential, are now well-established in the accounting research literature as being a part of the practice of accounting. Thus, this research literature represents an established and developing 4 Although the value of “instruction” and even “propaganda” (in the non-pejorative sense) as a part of education as consciousness-raising should not be entirely ignored in a rush to dialogic pedagogy (Freire, 1996; cf Gramsci, 1971, pp. 35–36; Gramsci in Forgacs, 1999, pp. 67–68).

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Fig. 3. Examples of tangential connections.

“knowledge base” that can form the basis for exploration and further building in the accounting classroom. 4.3. Acting within present curricular arrangements Many accounting educators have made a start, with the presentation or exploration of alternative and critical perspectives in some specialist or elective courses in subject areas such as environmental and social accounting (see Bebbington, 1995, 1997; Gibson, 1997). However, such courses are invariably taken by a relatively small number of students who are already motivated and at least to some degree aware of pertinent issues (Collison et al., 2000). This limits the potential of such courses to bring critical accounting to a “mass” accounting audience. Whilst the potential value of such courses in presenting alternative views and in sowing small seeds for change cannot be denied, it should also be recognised that even education under the rubric of “social and environmental accounting” might have the effect of sustaining the status quo (see Tinker et al., 1991). In any case, opportunities for individual academics to offer specialist elective courses are constrained by specific departmental situations within which individuals work. Many

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academics spend much of their teaching time in core or compulsory courses in introductory, financial, or managerial accounting, and it is here that the challenge of developing a critical accounting education remains. Fig. 3 indicates how this can be done within the broad parameters of standard or core courses such as management accounting, accounting systems, or auditing. Care is required, however. The adding-on of “professional ethics” or similar modules (see, for example, Clikeman and Henning, 2000; Fulmer and Cargile, 1987) may help, but may also reinforce a vocational orientation if ethics are themselves uncritically presented in an instrumental or vocationally oriented fashion.5 In short, where critical accounting education is an elective or add-on to otherwise unchanged mainstream content, it might also be deemed to be “peripheral” to the main game of an accounting qualification (Humphrey et al., 1996) and therefore of marginal import. However, there is considerable scope for accounting academics, within the rubric of the current accounting curriculum and curricular and accreditation arrangements to directly draw on and explore socio-historical knowledge of the functioning of accounting in an integral and integrated manner. While educators at all levels have been subject to systematic and sustained attempts to disempower them in relation to their control over teaching and learning,6 much control remains in the hands of academics, particularly at university level. Continued academic control over teaching and learning is “crucial to the long-term health of universities” (Aronowitz, 2000, p. 34). The role of lecturers in syllabus design, text selection, setting assessable work, assessment of student work, and, importantly, fronting classes, remains significant, and the challenge is to make space in all of these activities for critical work. In accounting, it is perhaps contradictory that the capacity of accounting academics to act may be enhanced by the accounting profession’s official accreditation of university accounting courses. Parker (2001, p. 443) makes the important point that, even under relatively tight accreditation arrangements, “the quantum of technicist material that we currently deliver in undergraduate courses is not sacrosanct . . . ”; this means that there is considerable room for innovative practice within existing constraints.7 The profession has emphasised the development of “generic skills” in its accreditation requirements. These skills include analytical and critical thinking skills, judgement and synthesis skills, personal and interpersonal skills, management and organisational skills, and the ability to apply these skills in a range of unique situations (e.g. see Accounting Education Change Commission, 1990; Bedford et al., 1986; Deppe et al., 1991). Taken in any meaningful sense, the wide ambit of this list of skills precludes the adoption of a narrow objective-based, vocationally oriented training model, and the specific inclusion of “critical thinking skills”, which involve “skillful judgement as to truth, merit, etc. . . . a 5

But cf. McPhail (2001b), Puxty et al. (1994) and Neimark (1995), for example. These attempts have been characterised by the imposition of standardised curricula and testing in primary and secondary schools, and have had the effect of deskilling teaching work and reducing teacher autonomy to a particular degree, to the substantial detriment of education itself (see Aronowitz and Giroux, 1993). 7 It will be noted that this discussion relates the significant control academics retain in relation to many of those elements of university life that have “changed” in recent times, as outlined in the introduction to the paper. This signals the possibility that a degree of academic passivity and resignation in the face of seemingly powerful forces may be partly to blame for the current state of affairs (but c.f. Tinker and Feknous, 2001, for example). 6

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critical analysis” (Macquarie Dictionary, 1991), provides not only the opportunity, but the necessity for developing a capacity for critique. Any critique in and of accounting must involve upsetting received notions. This has been described as making the familiar strange (see Chua, 1998; Merino, 1998), and may include locating the development and use of accounting systems, technologies, and associated policies, procedures, and practices in their organisational, social, and ethical contexts. It may involve identifying and questioning underlying assumptions and examining and interrogating the justifications and explanations offered by others. This should involve subjecting accounting systems, technologies, policies, procedures, and practices to scrutiny insofar as they have real direct and indirect consequences for social actors and groups. The interests of various (different) parties (including students, in varying aspects of their lives) should be considered and challenged. The distinction drawn by Aronowitz and Giroux (1993) between “intelligence” and “intellect” is useful in considering the development of higher order critical skills. The development of critical skills in the classroom must reach beyond the narrowness of the “intelligence” of routinised, instrumental knowledge. Intelligence is employed within a narrow, immediate range to “grasp, manipulate, reorder, adjust” while intellect is critical and creative insofar as it “examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines”. In this sense, intellect—the stuff of “intellectuals”—and not expertise or credentials, is central to critical accounting. 4.4. Encountering resistance2 Accounting academics who seek to broaden the perceived disciplinary boundaries within which they work will face undoubted resistance in this endeavour—from both students and academic colleagues. 4.4.1. Student resistance The great bulk of accounting students may not initially seek or appreciate the consciousness-raising, engaging, enlightening, and emancipatory critique that might be offered in “critical” accounting classes. They may even resent being confronted with it. Indeed, it is likely that this will be the case, given the non-creative, rote-learning, practice-oriented, bean counting stereotype, which many students seem to associate with accounting (see Cory, 1992; Inman et al., 1989). Prior education and self-selection into accounting programs means that accounting students are likely to be well-versed and oriented to the links between accounting and their possible roles as investors and managers of various sorts, but less so to the links with their roles as citizens, family-members, and workers.8 This means that the ideological function of accounting, which attaches itself to the former, can be at least partially overcome by making the explicit links to the latter. 8 Students choosing an accounting major are predisposed to view the learning of accounting as consisting of rote memorisation and are least likely to believe that an important or essential goal of education is to increase self-directed learning, to develop clear thinking capability, or to develop creative capacities (Gow et al., 1994; Inman et al., 1989, p. 44). Students who choose social and environmental accounting electives tend to be more concerned about ethical issues, than the greater number of students who choose not to undertake such electives. Research suggests this latter group are much more career oriented and they feel social and environmental accounting will be of less relevance to them in this arena (Collison et al., 2000).

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The seeming natural, but narrow, connection of the accounting discipline to the world of commerce and management amplifies the problem, and students may well be motivated by career-focused, economically centred aspirations. Nevertheless, this is in itself a product of ideology, given that “the major way in which ideologies (in the pejorative sense) have traditionally maintained themselves is by harnessing what are in themselves perfectly legitimate human aspirations . . . ” (Geuss, 1981, p. 25), in this case, the aspiration for individual, social and economic well-being. Further, the very nature of the broader system of education includes the fundamental socialisation of students to the values of the extant social system, including notions of individualism and individual responsibility and an acceptance of inequality as “natural” (Byrne, 1999, especially Chap. 1; Gramsci in Forgacs, 1999, pp. 64–67). Students are denied the opportunity (which can also be a life burden) for self-formation and self-actualisation (Freire, 1996; McPhail, 2001a). The prior “submersion” of students in the reality of an oppressive system and their internalisation of the values of that system means that they are initially unable to see that reality, and they “fear the freedom” that a challenge to it entails (Freire, 1996, Chap. 1). Anything that seems to challenge the present social arrangements is, at least initially, upsetting, and is likely to be resisted. The resentment is an understandable response, given the internal self-contradiction many students are asked to face between the varying roles they play in life: Class conflict is not a conflict between “individuals” but between social role aggregates in which individuals participate in several, often conflicting, roles as investors, workers, community members, consumers, managers etc. By engaging the same dispute through conflicting roles, an individual may ultimately contribute to his/her own exploitation . . . (Tinker et al., 1991, p. 30) Accounting is conventionally portrayed as being unproblematically connected only to a narrow spectrum of these conflicting roles, but the interconnections, conflicts, and immanent contradictions of accounting itself mean that this is not a sustainable position. Whilst the stereotypical view of the accountant as bean counter does little to attract creatively oriented students to accounting studies in the first instance (Cory, 1992; Saemann and Crooker, 1999), the perceived “quality” of students themselves is not the key issue. Ruminating about this lack of quality (e.g. Cory, 1992; Graves et al., 1992; Inman et al., 1989; Sharma, 1998) fails to address the here-and-now: how can we best serve the students we have, and society, in the time we have with them?9 4.4.2. Academic resistance Accounting academics, too, play conflicting roles. Most, of course, are themselves the product of conventional accounting education programs, into which they self-selected, with pre-existing stereotypes about accounting, and they have been socialised into the existing system through their own education. While accounting educators (and practitioners) are 9 I should note that my own experience suggests that a cross-section of students from a wide variety of professional, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds are highly receptive to critical content in accounting curricula and capable of engaging with it. This is particularly the case where the material is incorporated in a way that resonates with the daily experiences of students, including their interaction with the world around them, and elaborates the contradictory aspects of those experiences and that world.

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implicated in the reproduction of the social system, it does not necessarily follow that they are themselves committed to that system: “. . . they also experience ideology in its various material forms” (Roslender, 1992, p. 202). As Marx commented: “. . . it is essential to educate the educator himself . . . self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice” (Marx, 1970, p. 121, original emphasis). This means that there are considerable personal barriers to be overcome before the consciousness-raising potential of accounting education is likely to be able to be meaningfully tackled by any accounting teacher. Principal amongst the barriers is the very orientation of many academics themselves, who consciously or unconsciously align themselves with the social reality that conventional accounting reproduces10 (see Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996). Committed “disturbers of the peace” (Craig et al., 1999) or “confronters of orthodoxy and dogma” (Sikka et al., 1995) are few and far between: This is a rapidly dwindling residue of academics who remain wedded to their conception of themselves as change agents and critical thinkers working with social groups or communities for a better world. Their task is to mobilise those in favour of changing the status quo. This group is relatively impotent at the moment because they have limited grassroots support and critical intellectual activity has become a devalued activity, carried out in their spare time, at night and on weekends. (Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996, pp. 208–209) Transformational education cannot take place unless academics themselves are transformed (see Dillard and Tinker, 1996, p. 221). Facing students who are uncomfortable with the challenge of critical accounting is only part of the problem; our greater challenge lies with ourselves and our colleagues. The challenges and choices are open: accounting academics, as intellectuals, can make their expertise principally available to and for professional bodies, the accountancy industry, big business, and government; or they may seek to engage more directly with the values of fairness, justice, democratic participation, openness and accountability (see Sikka et al., 1995). Resistance to critical accounting from within the accounting academy itself is unlikely to be overcome in the short term, but there remains considerable scope for critical accounting educators. Whatever the state of the accounting academy generally, and the prior expectations of accounting students, there is much that can be done by the individual lecturer or tutor within their own classes. In addition to the priors students bring, perceptions about accounting are formed in the accounting classroom (Friedlan, 1995). Consequently, teaching and learning activity can do much to bring students to a conscious awareness of the socio-historical aspects of accounting, its contingency and partisanship, and of their own place within that system. 5. Implications: accepting intellectual responsibility Wherever, and however, accounting students work in their post-graduation lives, the practice of accounting will be used in ways that have direct effects on them, their local communities, and communities of interest across the globe. Accounting students/graduates are as 10 In Gramscian terms, these are those who seek the role of traditional intellectuals or hegemonic organic intellectuals (Gramsci, 1971).

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likely to have accounting done to them as by them. The narrowness of conventional accounting education, which prepares students only for an assumed future career in the practice of the discipline, focusing on a managerial, corporate perspective, and privileging the preparers and immediate users of accounting reports hardly seems relevant in these circumstances. The perspective of accounting from a broad user perspective, or, even, that of accounting’s victims, including those not involved in ownership or management, is more directly relevant. Rather than an excessive focus on the minutiae of “this and that” aspect of technical accounting procedures, relevant accounting education must prepare students for informed action in and on the world. This must include a developing understanding of the relation of accounting to the mundane activities, language, and interactions of daily life engaged in by both academics and students, and how these relate to the larger social system within which they are embedded. It is in this realm that ideas, conceptions, and consciousness itself are produced, effected, and reproduced (Marx and Engels, 1970, p. 47). However, critical accounting thought extends well beyond the life of individuals: social life and the lives of others, including their ideas, hopes and sufferings, are equally important considerations, because every person is “a citizen of a wider world” (Gramsci in Forgacs, 1999, p. 68). The social implications of accounting education have assumed greater significance in recent times, as a growing proportion of accounting practitioners carry formal university qualifications. This has meant that “an accounting mentality consistent with the dominant world view throughout society is growing in importance” (Booth and Cocks, 1990, p. 400; see Gray and Collison, 2002). Indeed, in the present context, it is evident that the monolingual mentality and worldview represented by mainstream accounting (see Chua, 1996) is writ large in the corporatised university. Individual accounting academics might deny responsibility by asserting that it is “someone else’s job” to consider the social, environmental, ideological, and political dimensions of accounting, but the obvious response to such a position is “who could be regarded as more responsible for this than accounting educators themselves?” The professional accreditation arrangements, which facilitate the inclusion of critical content within a broader purview of what accounting actually is, do represent something of a contradiction: . . . there is the question of how creative to those who employ accountants really want them to be? Few if any prospective employers would deny that they are seeking adaptable, dynamic, inventive, open-minded, lateral thinking, etc., staff. But . . . these qualities, if widely distributed, might prove problematic given the existence of the social and technical divisions of labour, the general application of accounting formulae, the intrusion of politics and so on. One of the dangers of encouraging students to think about accountancy is that they might be tempted to think about other things as well. (Roslender, 1992, p. 208) In this regard, the ostensible and official commitment to the development of accountants as broadly educated and creative critical thinkers could be motivated by rhetoric, ideology, or a genuine commitment to criticism and critique. Whatever the motivation, formal accreditation arrangements, along with the academic freedom that remains with academics, allow for the traditional socialisation roles of accounting education to be transcended. Extant social structures will be nurtured, on the one hand, in an absence of consciousness of their causes, effects, and contingency, and, on the other hand, action based on that consciousness. For accounting educators, the acknowledged role of accounting in social production and

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reproduction means that accounting itself is a part of this domain. An “educational project” for change in accounting can interact with broader social change which, in turn, brings systematic change to education (see Freire, 1996; Gramsci, 1971). Those academics who fail to consciously make choices between reproducing the system (and its inherent problems and injustices) or taking an active role in the creation of alternatives, or who endeavour to take pragmatic “middle of the road” or pluralistic positions, “championing moderation, consensus and compliance”, will tend to act in ways that have the effect of sustaining, protecting, and preserving the status quo (Tinker, 1986; Tinker et al., 1991, p. 29). It is not possible to assume away the political content of education: Educators at all levels . . . have to be seen as intellectuals, who as mediators, legitimators, and producers of ideas and social practices, perform a pedagogical function that is eminently political in nature. (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1993, p. 31) None of this should be taken to suggest that enlightened accounting educators can “save the world”. But they can play a part, and accounting educators must constantly address the question of how their own time, effort, and dedication as intellectuals might make a contribution to a larger process: The fact is that only by degrees, one stage at a time, has humanity acquired consciousness of its own value and won for itself the right to throw off the patterns of organization imposed on it by minorities at a previous period in history. And this consciousness was formed not under the brutal goad of psychological necessity, but as a result of intelligent reflection, at first by just a few people and later by a whole class, on why certain conditions exist and how best to convert the facts of vassalage into the signals of rebellion and social reconstruction . . . (Gramsci in Forgacs, 1999, p. 58) In the accounting classroom, teaching and learning outside the circle—“going off on tangents”—is a way that accounting educators can bring a broader, socio-historically informed definition of accounting to students and teachers alike, creating possibilities for the development of a socially relevant accounting education. Exploring and explaining what might seem prima facie tangential to accounting itself actually creates space for considering the links between accounting and the lived reality faced by students. Such educational content and process has the potential to be transformational for students and teachers, and, through them, for the larger social system. It can thereby be genuinely critical.

Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Cindy Davids, Bill Blair, and Kala Saravanamuthu for their helpful comments.

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