Globalisation, accounting critique and the university

Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

Globalisation, accounting critique and the university Chris Poullaos∗ School of Accounting & Finance, University of Wollongong, Wollongong 2522, NSW, Australia Received 15 December 2002; accepted 30 January 2003

Abstract This essay seeks to promote (further) engagement between critical accounting research and the globalisation literature. Specifically, it discusses (1) how that literature can help to characterise our times, (2) its present and potential future engagement with the critical accounting project and (3) some implications for the university. The argument proceeds by exploring the potentially fruitful connections between, on the one hand, the work of Castells [The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 1, The Rise of the Network Society (1996); vol. II, The Power of Identity (1997); vol. III, End of Millennium (1998) Blackwell, Massachusetts & Oxford], Held et al. [Global Transformations (1999) Polity Press, Cambridge] and Hardt and Negri [Empire (2000) Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA & London] and, on the other, work published in Critical Perspectives over the last several years. From Held et al. (1999) is taken the notion of globalisation as a temporal process of world-wide connectedness mapped along the dimensions of extensity, intensity, velocity and impact. Taken from Castells’ volumes is a range of insights derived from the informationalist basis of globalisation. Hardt and Negri’s volume posits the emergence of an apparatus of rule (‘Empire’) that throws into the relief the possibility of an emancipatory globalisation. These various positions now have a particular relevance for academics and students as the impact of globalisation reaches into the inner workings of the university. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Globalisation; Critical accounting; Accounting critique

1. Introduction This essay accepts that critical accounting research has contributed to both the critique of economic rationalism and to the case for balancing economic, social, and ecological ∗

Tel.: +61-2-4221-3727; fax: +61-2-4221-4297. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Poullaos).

1045-2354/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S1045-2354(03)00057-1

716

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

considerations. The essay’s point of departure, and purpose, is to suggest that the contribution of accounting critique might be extended by further engagement with the globalisation literature.1 In particular, I hope to illustrate: (1) how that literature can help to characterise the times we live in; (2) its present and potential future engagement with the critical accounting project; and (3) some implications for the university. The argument is illustrative and suggestive rather than systematic or comprehensive. The basic approach taken is to identify and articulate (in Section 3) some points of contact between the analyses of Held et al. (1999), Hardt and Negri (2000) and Castells (1996, 1997, 1998) and work published in Critical Perspectives over the last 6–7 years, from the special edition on accounting education in 1996 (Vol. 7, No. 1) to the recently published special edition on the university in the new corporate world (2002, Vol. 13, No. 5/6).2 Section 2 offers a brief discussion of the meaning and novelty of globalisation. While these issues are probably incapable of definitive resolution at this time, the works cited above are, in my view, of sufficient interest to ground Section 3. Implications for the university are discussed in Section 4, mostly with a view to highlighting the point that the impact of globalisation on the university brings to the imperatives of praxis ever more directly into the academic workplace.

2. These times Mann (2001, p. 51) defines globalisation as “the extension of social relations over the globe”. The more elaborate version of Held et al. (1999, p. 2) sees globalisation “as the widening, deepening and speeding of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual”. Under both formulations, globalisation is an inherently temporal process whose history—arguably a very long one (ibid.; Hopkins, 2002)—either puts at risk, or requires specification of, any claim to novelty.3 Part of the globalisation debate, then, is about whether and how our era is different. Whilst accepting that the historic novelty of contemporary economic integration is sometimes overstated (Hirst and Thompson, 1999); that globalisation is far from unitary; that a unified global civilisation is neither inevitable nor the harbinger of universal bliss, I am nevertheless persuaded that the advocates of novelty (in particular Castells, 1998, especially pp. 356–373; Hardt and Negri, 2000, passim; Held et al., 1999, especially pp. 424–436) have a point.4 1

See Held et al. (1999) for an overview. Clearly this is an arbitrary choice, but it makes some sense given the themes of the present special edition. Occasional reference is made to other (accounting) work to add perspective to the argument. 3 Another possible objection is that globalisation is either an anachronism or a neologism, or both. It subsumes the history of empires, international trade and finance and the spread of religions and other ideas and cultural practices. A reply might be that analytical categories are not set in stone and that is reasonable for new ones to be constructed—even for historical analysis—that reflect current interests. 4 These same analyses provide strong evidential and theoretical grounds for persevering with the notion of globalisation in the face of Boyce’s concern that it “implies that the scale of change is such that it touches 2

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

717

The interdisciplinary analysis of Held and his colleagues is historically informed and empirically rich. They document the expansion beyond the national and regional levels of governance mechanisms, trade, markets, financial flows, production networks, migration, organised violence and environmental degradation, in conjunction with “a series of decisive shifts in the geographical scale, immediacy and speed of cultural interaction and communication” (Held et al., 1999, p. 363). Whilst acknowledging that globalisation processes have not been unidirectional or uniform, across either time or location, the authors nevertheless provide persuasive evidence of a tendency, over the last 50–60 years, towards a ‘thick globalisation’ (ibid., p. 431) characterised by high extensity, intensity, velocity and impact (ibid., p. 25). Extensity, intensity, velocity and impact5 are all dimensions along which to track how what happens there affects what happens here, and vice versa. Interactions of this kind may occur to such a degree that here and there may usefully be analysed in conjunction perhaps, even, as forming a legitimate unit or level of analysis—possibly even a ‘global’ one. In this case, the relations between here and there become problematic. Do here and there simply become here, and if so, what kind of here do we have?6 Hardt and Negri (2000, hereafter ‘H&N’) provide one kind of answer. Their approach is more theoretical, more philosophical, more explicitly engaged with the discourses of post-modernity. They characterise these times as the formative period of the rule of ‘Empire’. According to them, Empire is emerging out of an international order created by competing imperialisms. “In contrast to imperialism, Empire . . . is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers” (ibid., p. xii, original emphasis). The prototype is the Roman empire and the contemporary exemplar is the American constitution whose “ideological founders . . . were all inspired by the ancient imperial model [and who] believed they were creating . . . a new Empire with open, expanding frontiers, where power would be effectively distributed in networks. This imperial idea . . . has now emerged now on a global scale in its fully realized form” (ibid., p. xiv).7 Associated with the formal constitution of Empire is a material order whose ideal type is premised upon openness. What force is better ready to take advantage than capital? “The tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome” (Marx, cited in ibid., pp. 221–222). Empire, then, is very much a Big Concept. Not merely extensive, it is intensive as well. It “operates on all registers of the social world. Empire not only every corner of the planet. While two-thirds of the world’s people are untouched by the information technology revolution, any notion of global change and globalization is problematic” (Boyce, 2002, p. 583, original emphasis). In the interests of brevity, I note that Boyce does not explicitly address the analyses of either Held et al., or Hardt and Negri (2000) or Castells. In light of those analyses, I would (1) like to see evidence that the lives of two-thirds of the world’s population are not affected by information technology (whether or not they have any access to it) and (2) be reluctant to reduce globalisation to information technology in any case. 5 See ibid., Chapter 1 for conceptual articulation. The remaining chapters provide extensive historical/empirical analysis. 6 All the globalisation theorists discussed here acknowledge the tensions between the local and the global. None of them assume that uniformity will necessarily result. Rather, they argue that globalisation also promotes differentiation. 7 This last phrase—“in its fully realized form”—is qualified repeatedly through the rest of the book. It is written as though what is possible is already here and now. As the authors see it, “Empire is materializing before our very eyes” (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. xi).

718

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

manages a territory and a population but also creates the very world it inhabits. It not only regulates human interactions but also seeks directly to rule over human nature. The object of its rule is social life in its entirety, and thus Empire presents the paradigmatic form of biopower” (ibid., p. xv). As the last sentence implies, H&N synthesise Foucaultian and Marxian influences, with the former used to theorise the productive body. They see the era of Empire is involving a transition from the disciplinary society to the society of control (ibid., pp. 22–23). In other words, the disciplinary regimes have, with the assistance of information/communication networks, spread beyond the prison, the factory, the asylum (etc.) to the point where “mechanisms of command [have become] ever more ‘democratic’, ever more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the citizens” (ibid., p. 23; see also Rose and Miller, 1992). H&N acknowledge the bad faith underlying the rhetoric of Empire (e.g. the fighting of just wars in the interests of universal peace) given the “enormous powers of oppression and destruction” that it wields (ibid., p. xv). Nevertheless, their vision is ultimately optimistic. (More on this later.) One challenge posed by Empire, then, is the recasting of critical accounting’s emancipatory project for a world where: resistance on nationalist grounds may be dysfunctional (ibid., pp. 43–46); where resistance must be both local (particular) and global; where “struggles are at once economic, political, and cultural . . . biopolitical struggles, struggles over the form of life” (ibid., p. 56); where “there is no more outside” (ibid., p. 186), where new forms of production create new subjectivities (ibid., p. 205); where new forms of primitive accumulation based on “information accumulation” are evolving (ibid., p. 258); where the ‘immaterial labour’ associated with the information economy is conceptualised as productive (and potentially liberating) (ibid., p. 293); where production is networked, decentered, deterritorialised on the basis of communication and control exercised at a distance (ibid., p. 294); where capital thrives on crisis (ibid., p. 386). And so on. While at least some of these claims may be familiar and some may be contested, it is the suggestion of an emergent combination of such factors into a complex that exercises sovereignty over our world that is particularly provocative.8 H&N’s references to the information economy are based partly on the work of Castells. Castells’ (1996, 1997, 1998) volumes provide a detailed characterisation of—not just an information economy—but an information age. The historical novelty of such an age is touched upon in the conclusion of his 1998 volume. Chips and computers are new; ubiquitous, mobile telecommunications are new; genetic engineering is new; electronically integrated, global financial markets working in real time are new; an inter-linked capitalist economic embracing the whole planet . . . is new; a majority of the urban labor force in knowledge and information processing in advanced economies is new; a majority of urban population in the planet is new; the demise of the Soviet Empire, the fading away of communism, and the end of the Cold War are new; the rise of Asian Pacific as an equal partner in the global economy is new; the widespread challenge to patriarchalism is new; the universal consciousness on ecological preservation 8 For a succinct statement of what Empire looks like by the end of the book, see pp. 309–314. It is clear that, for H&N, the USA still plays a major role in Empire: its military might alone guarantees a dominating position. The present crisis with respect to military intervention in Iraq may turn out to be a test of their claim that we have moved into an era of post-imperialism.

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

719

is new; and the emergence of a network society, based on a space of flows, and on timeless time, is historically new. Yet this is not the point I want to make. My main statement is that it does not really matter if you believe that this world, or any of its features, is new or not. My analysis stands by itself. This is our world, the world of the Information Age. (p. 356, Note 1, original emphasis) The information age, the age of Empire, the era of thick globalisation: these are ways of characterising these times.9 The next section will identify avenues of possible engagement between them and critical accounting research. 3. These times and critical accounting In the first issue of this journal, the editors anticipated submissions whose scope would go beyond the usual staples of stock markets and capital formation to deal with, for example, “nation-states, economic and political confederations, families, governments, not-for-profit organizations and state agencies” (Cooper and Tinker, 1990, p. 2). They also sensed that contributors would move to analyse “culture and global economy” (ibid.), among other things. Over the past 6–7 years the word ‘globalisation’ or (some derivative of ‘glob ’) has appeared in discussion of a host of broad topic areas including: the academy and pedagogy (Boyce, 2002; Cooper, 1997; Dillard, 2002; Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996; Parker, 2002; Saravanamuthu and Tinker, 2002; Tilling, 2002); post-modernism (Cooper, 1997; Martin, 1998; Montagna, 1997); capital markets (McGoun, 1997); the critical accounting project itself (Cooper, 1997; Gallhofer and Haslam, 1997; Montagna, 1997; Sikka, 2000); transfer-pricing (Armstrong, 1998); the future and nature of work (Arnold, 1999; Di Fazio, 1998; Esposito et al., 1998); privatisation and the public sector (Arnold and Cooper, 1999; Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996); the accounting profession (Arnold and Cooper, 1999; Caramanis, 1999; Cousins et al., 1999; Green, 1999; Hanlon, 1999; Humphrey, 2001; Peck, 1999; Sikka, 2000); and accounting practice (Boczko, 2000; Clarke et al., 1999).10 The engagement of the contributors to Critical Perspectives with the notion of the global (if not globalisation) is consistent with the expressed intentions of its editors and the range of issues they address resonates with that found in the work of Held et al., H&N and Castells. Nevertheless, in most of the Critical Perspectives papers cited, globalisation is briefly mentioned in passing, with little explicit articulation of the specific concept employed or of its impact on the conclusions reached or implications derived.11 The remainder of this 9

The extensive overlapping of these works with each other is not detailed below. This list could have easily been extended by treating ‘international’ as synonymous, and ‘post-modern’ as overlapping, with globalisation. Furthermore, it drastically under-represents the ‘global’ concerns of those writing about social and environmental reporting. 11 This is not to promote a form of reductionism which claims that these topic areas cannot possibly be analysed in anything other than a ‘globalisation framework’! There are, no doubt, a great many interesting issues where the relevant dynamics are overwhelmingly local, or national or regional. Thus, I have some sympathy with the view that “it is dangerous to attribute too much to globalization, but it is equally dangerous to deny its existence and importance” (Boyce, 2002, p. 583). At a minimum, however, if accounting researchers are going to talk the talk of globalisation they might at least tell their readers what they have in mind and what difference it makes. The globalisation theorists discussed in this essay provide tools that can assist with this task. More to the point, they can enrich accounting research in more interesting ways, as will be argued below. 10

720

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

section will suggest some avenues for further interaction between critical accounting and the globalisation theorists cited. It will also respond to Boyce’s other concerns about the notion of globalisation (Boyce, 2002, pp. 583–584). 3.1. Information networks Castells see globalisation as an attribute of an ‘information age’ where production, experience, power and culture are increasingly organised around networks. Enabled by information technology (including telecommunications), networking logic has spread throughout society to the point where presence in or absence from networks can become “critical sources of domination and change” (1996, p. 469). A “network is a set of interconnected nodes” (ibid., p. 470). Nodes are diverse. They include, for example, “stock exchange markets . . . in the network of global capital flows” and “European Commissioners in the network that governs the European Union”; while coca and poppy fields, clandestine laboratories, street gangs and money-laundering financial institutions are all nodes in the global network of drug traffic (ibid.). Distance “(physical, social, economic, political, cultural)” within a given network may, in effect, approximate zero. On the other hand, distance between a network and an entity excluded from it may be infinite, and damaging to the latter (ibid.). “Switches connecting networks (e.g. financial flows) are the privileged instruments of power”, thus “switchers are the powerholders” (ibid., p. 471). This formulation goes beyond the commonplace observation that there has been an information revolution to suggest that networks forming around it have become loci of power and the source of drastic impacts of the global upon the local. Thus, it is precisely a means of analysing “the exclusionary basis of globalisation” (Boyce, 2002, p. 583, original emphasis). On my reading, there have been no analyses of such information networks in Critical Perspectives in the past 6–7 years.12 Yet accountants are easily conceived as switchers and financial flows as switches and the networks that accountants, in their various forms, are involved in are particularly significant to Castells’ network society even though he barely mentions accountants.13 Furthermore, critical accountants have long been interested in knowledge/power relations. It is reasonable to expect that the construction of global networks based on information flows would have impacts on such relations. 3.2. Information networks, finance capital and Empire According to Castells (1996, pp. 473–474), there now exists “an integrated global capital network whose movements and variable logic ultimately determines economies and influence societies” (ibid., p. 474).14 Capitalism can now shape social relations “over the entire planet” (ibid.). Another distinctive feature of network capitalism is the predominance of networks of finance. Finance is particularly well-suited to the modus operandi of the information age. This is not the same as saying that finance is the dominant fraction of capital. 12

Although Arnold and Sikka (2001) have explored the involvement of accountants in money-laundering. Nor, for that matter, do Held et al. or H&N. 14 According to Castells, this network functions as “a faceless collective capitalist, made up of financial flows operated by electronic networks” which operates “above a diversity of human-flesh capitalists and capitalist groups” (ibid., p. 474). 13

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

721

Rather, it is to suggest that capital accumulation (in whatever industry) “proceeds, and its value-making is generated, increasingly, in the global financial markets enacted by information networks in the timeless space of financial flows” (ibid., p. 472; see also Held et al., 1999, Chapter 4). Even if a surplus is generated in, say, transportation or real-estate, it is either used to “invest in global flows, or [is] the result of investment originated in . . . financial networks” (ibid.). Thus, global financial markets, and their networks of management, are the actual collective capitalist . . . (original emphasis, Castells, 1998, p. 363). However, Financial capital needs . . . to rely for its operation and competition on knowledge and information generated and enhanced by information technology. This is the concrete meaning of the articulation between the capitalist mode of production and the informational mode of development. (Castells, 1996, p. 472) Once again, this position would seem to enhance further the significance of accounting (and its critique). This is particularly so as Castells’ analysis does not appreciate the role of accounting and accountants in interpreting/constructing the goals or logics of capital and making images of ‘surplus’, ‘value’ and ‘profit’. It is a fair guess that accounting is endemic in the nodes of Castells’ finance networks, yet, to date, the contributors to Critical Perspectives have not analysed the contribution of accounting logics, systems, controls and information to the in the subjection of non-financial markets (the ‘real’ economy)—local, national, regional and global—to global financial markets?15 A particularly disturbing vindication of Castells’ position may be found in Stiglitz’s (2002) liberal critique, framed within the debate about globalisation,16 of the IMF and its disastrous ‘solutions’ to crises in East Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Latin America and Africa. Stiglitz describes how the IMF managed to worsen (if not create) these various crises, in part by its concern for the interests of global finance (2002, Chapters 8–9). The link to Empire is that H&N see ‘global’ institutions as the United Nations (the IMF could be included here) as both crude early expressions of the imperial idea and as current constituents of the rapidly solidifying ‘global constitution’ of Empire (H&N, 2000, pp. 309–314). Paralleling Foucault’s argument about the prison (H&N) argue that, under Empire, the failures of such institutions evidence the ‘need’ to strengthen them or multiply them rather than abandon them. Stiglitz’s (2002, Chapter 9) proposals to reform rather than abandon the IMF fit this pattern nicely. Critical accounting researchers could usefully become involved in this debate by examining, for example, the accountability/transparency of the IMF (Stiglitz claims it is terrible), the involvement of accounting firms (an outdated description?) in IMF programs (see Arnold and Cooper, 1999), the surveillance programs used by the IMF to monitor debtor nations and the links between the finance industry (and the US Treasury) and the IMF. Stiglitz claims that the IMF “approached . . . problems form the perspectives and ideology of the financial community, and these naturally were closely (though not perfectly) aligned with its interests” (2002, p. 207). The critical accounting community has been examining the perspectives and 15

Analyses of this kind might also serve to test Castells’ claim. For Stiglitz globalisation is “the closer integration of the countries and peoples of the world . . . ” (2002, p. 9). In the abstract this view is broadly compatible with that of Held et al. cited previously. In the execution, Stiglitz’s view of the range of elements in relation to which integration takes place is narrower. 16

722

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

ideology of the financial community—and their relationship to accounting—for some time now, so there is an opportunity (if not obligation) for further accounting praxis (Neu et al., 2001; Sikka and Willmott, 1997). On a more prosaic level (perhaps), and with the technological underpinning of the information age (and Empire) economy more firmly in mind, we might also take more seriously the point that many kinds of data (financial and non-financial) can now be readily integrated within contemporary digital data bases and that accounting logics (like double entry) are of lesser importance, either to information systems per se, or to market and other social exchanges (e.g. Coffin, 2001; Dunn and McCarthy, 1997; Sutton, 2000).17 The issue arising here is whether the scope of critical accounting should be expanded to include the same kind of scrutiny of contemporary information systems presently applied to annual reports, accounting standards, financial and managerial logics, audit practices (and so on). After all, it is these systems that have made possible the increasing surveillance by organisations over their products and employees and the changed relationships with their suppliers, customers and other stakeholders. The possible outcomes are uncomfortably diverse. They range, for example, from a digital version of Weber’s iron cage to significant improvements to corporate accountability. The mandate of Critical Perspectives would seem to be wide enough to encompass consideration both of the dangers of digital surveillance of call centre employees and the possible benefits of a web-based triple bottom line reporting based on ERP systems and XBRL.18 3.3. Capital and labour The impact of globalisation on relations between capital and labour is another broad area of interest. The approaches of Castells and H&N allow for varying kinds of engagements with accounting researchers. 3.4. Informationalism Castells’ informationalism distinguishes sharply between the world of capital and that of labour. The former realises its tendency to global reach through “a meta-network of capital that integrates capitalist interests at the global level and across sectors and realms of activity: not without conflict, but under the same overarching logic” (Castells, 1996, p. 475). Labor, on the other hand, has tended to lose its collective identity as it has become localised; as distinctions between owners, producers, managers and servants have blurred; as it has become “disaggregated in its performance, fragmented in its organization, diversified in its existence, [and] increasingly individualized in its capacities, in its working conditions, and in its interests and projects” (ibid.). Under network capitalism “capital and labor increasingly 17

Thanks to Phil Venables for the references. A related aspect of the mutating identity of ‘accounting’ comes to mind. You may have been to conferences recently where there was discussion about whether such and such a control mechanism, or administrative arrangement, or report, or discourse was really ‘accounting’ or not. My personal view is that we should not be so concerned about this issue so long as the research says something interesting. But the problem of motivating or reviewing a paper submitted to an ‘accounting’ journal remains. This is, perhaps, a minor conundrum, but it is an index of the change which Castells and others are attempting to analyse. 18

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

723

tend to exist in different spaces and times: the space of flows [capital] and the space of places [labor], [the] instant times of computerized networks [capital] versus [the] clock time of everyday life [labor]” (ibid.). Needless to say, this distinction does not necessarily favour labour (ibid., Chapter 4). Accounting (broadly defined) is involved in the spaces/times of both capital and labour. The focus here is on labour. The Foucaultian/Marxian accounting traditions can presumably have much to say on the conditions of labour in the sweatshops and call centres of globalised production where the work is carried out in clock-time in the space of places and the monitoring/supervision articulates with the space of flows and where, in the call centre at least, digital monitoring might take place in instant time. Presumably, accounting connects (translates between?) the two modes of space/time. To date, no studies of call centres or sweatshops have been published in Critical Perspectives. This brings to mind a question raised in Gray’s recent review of social accounting: “Whatever happened to employees? Are they unimportant these days? I should have thought not?” (Gray, 2002, p. 703). Castells’ analysis helps to explain, perhaps, ‘what happened’ to employees. And when Gray poses the further question of: What kind of social accounting is it that can chug along merrily for 25 years or so and only lately wake up to the fact that it must include the issues of ‘fair trade’, ‘exclusion’, ‘imperialism’ and ‘propaganda’. What else is missing . . . ? (ibid.) Castells might reply ‘informationalism’ There is potential for an emancipatory accounting here. In her discussion of the relationship between the sweatshop and the brand Klein (2000) notes that production and marketing have been putatively separated. For example, a form of corporate social responsibility accounting (e.g. triple bottom line reporting) might be developed that makes visible relationships between economic, social and environmental impacts. That is, the time/space differences between capital and labour might be highlighted by creating visibilities that put them on the same plane, so to speak. On a different track, accounting labour is as fragmented as any other. It is not surprising that some accountants might seek to become ‘managers’ (IFAC, 2001) thereby moving themselves into the time/space of capital, whereas others may be caught in the localised place and clock time of labour. In this context, managing professional projects is more complicated (Birkett and Poullaos, 2001, pp. 12–15) as the nature of key areas of accounting work changes, as interests coalescing around different space/time co-ordinates try to coexist within the one association. And, the accommodations, squabbles, and dynamics of the globalising professionalising project that is presumably in train right now have received very little academic attention.19 One might speculate, in this regard, that if the international accounting/professional service ‘firms’ (or franchises, or working arrangements) prove to be more mobile and innovative than the professional bodies in following capital into Castells’ integrated global capital network (by turning themselves into nodes) then the latter may 19 The incursion of ‘foreign’ firms into ‘local’ accountancy markets, with globalisation more or less in the background, has been studied in papers such as Seal et al. (1996), Hao (1999) and Caramanis (1999). Globalisation is more central in Caramanis (2002). The impact of globalisation on the multinational accounting firm is explored in Cooper et al. (1998).

724

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

find themselves to be of decreasing relevance. This helps to explain recent attempts by professional bodies to form global alliances and negotiate reciprocal recognition agreements. 3.5. Empire It is H&N’s approach that connects more directly to the concerns raised in the Critical Perspectives issue on ‘accounting in a post-work era’ (1998, Vol. 9, No. 1). The most interesting connection is with Martin (1998) who, in turn, examines the relationship between post-modernism and Marxism. In doing so he reflects upon globalisation, in order “to account not only for the mobility of capital, but also the socialization of labor” (Martin, 1998, p. 77). For Martin, globalisation (conceived narrowly as “the organization of capital mobility across or beyond national borders”, ibid., p. 90): demands organizational forms that foster control over socialized wealth in the service of the ability to form those human arrangements that collectively satisfy what are voiced and lived as our wants, needs, and aspirations. This politics of globalization does more than invite participation over decisions to allocate what is, [it would also attempt] to self-consciously constitute what the material form of human association, or society, in all its internal differentiation, will be.. . . (ibid., p. 91) . . . To my mind, this process needs to reclaim the name of socialism, to underscore that it is by means of what the accumulation of capital creates—the scope and the brilliant life of detail of life made through laboring together. . . . . . . The limits of a productionist perspective lie less with the range of activities to which some socially useful action for others upon material (i.e. labor) [might be put], than [they do with] the extent to which there are dispositions to desire, fantasy, imagination, or want that cannot be treated so literally or discretely as objects of a production. Conversely, that people in the world are coming to know their differences from each other through an increasingly shared matrix of classifications, constitutes an historic extension of material social relations, and not their truncation. (ibid., p. 92) I have quoted Martin at length here, because the progressive globalisation that he envisages bears an uncanny resemblance to the program for the takeover of Empire that H&N have spent 400 pages on. They apply resolutely the principle of immanence as against that of transcendence. They persistently attribute the productivity of Empire to the multitude rather than to finance capital, or the market, or neo-liberalism, or technology (as disembodied force-of-production)—not to mention to management accounting, Foucaultian disciplines, or managers generally.20 They are prepared to apply, depart from, extend and supplement Marxist concepts and categories.21 They insist that, although today Empire may hold the upper hand, tomorrow belongs to the multitude. In my view, those with faith in accounting’s 20 Not that these factors are trivial or necessarily ‘false’. Rather, H&N’s position seems to be that even they are— ultimately, or potentially—expressions of the liberating desire and productivity of the multitude. (The ‘multitude’ is their post-modern, information economy-based recasting of the Marxian industrial proletariat.) 21 An example of the latter is the already-cited synthesis of Marxian and Foucaultian concepts, a subject that has occupied the time of a number of Critical Perspectives contributors. Indeed, H&N’s synthesis resonates strongly with that of Marsden (1998).

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

725

emancipatory or enabling potential would do well to examine H&N’s work and take from it what they will. 3.6. Worrying about globalisation Perhaps this is an appropriate time to respond further to Boyce’s concerns. One is that globalisation “can be used in such a way as to imply a sense of [inevitability]; it also implies a sense of progress and universal benefit” (2002, p. 583). Of the work discussed in this essay, that of H&N comes closest to fitting the bill. But even they acknowledge that in its present form (Empire) globalisation is far from benign and that it will take an enormous and sustained effort to turn things around. Castells (1998, Chapters 2 and 3) documents extensively the dysfunctional impacts of informationalism and is too jaded to be prescriptive (ibid., p. 379). Like that of Held et al. (1999), Castells analysis might be described as transformationalist. In general terms, the transformationalist position conceives of globalisation as “a central driving force . . . reshaping modern societies and world order” (Held et al., 1999, p. 7). However, the direction of this ‘shake-out’ remains uncertain, since globalization is conceived as an essentially contingent historical process replete with contradictions . . . At issue is a dynamic and open-ended conception of where globalization might be leading and the kind of world order which it might prefigure. [The] . . . transformationalists make no claims about the future trajectory of globalization; nor do they seek to evaluate the present in relation to some single, fixed ideal-type . . . Rather, transformationalist accounts emphasize globalization as a long-term historical process which is inscribed with contradictions and which is significantly shaped by conjunctural factors. (ibid.) Although then, transformationalists see globalisation as a Big Thing, it is not clear that it is a totalising discourse that obliterates alternatives (Boyce, 2002, p. 583)—apart from the likelihood that they would probably find it difficult to countenance the view that the changes in train are trivial or non-existent or easily reversible. Like Boyce (ibid.), they are concerned about the relationship between the global and the local (as are H&N), and they agree with Boyce (ibid.) that globalisation is inherently contradictory and provokes resistance (ibid.). Indeed, Castells second volume (1997) is dedicated to the mapping of resistance; while the basic premise of H&N is that ‘we shall overcome’. As a result, these works resonate with the concerns of critical accounting. Apart from relations between capital and labour (alluded to above), gender issues, environmental and other forms of social responsibility accounting have been part of the critical accounting agenda for some time; thus there is already a link to the new resisting historical subjects of Empire/the information age/thick globalisation.22 Castells’ analysis in particular underlines the point (previously made by Foucaultians from a different starting point) that resistance will be diverse, particular to location, and suffer from the constraint that it must work with “the codes of information and the images of representation” circulating generally 22 Although the reach of environmental awareness into educational institutions and the profession is still limited (Gray et al., 2001). Gray (2002) also discerns a tense relationship between the social accounting project and the critical literature more generally, an example of the tension between optimism and pessimism in evidence in both the critical accounting and globalisation literature.

726

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

(Castells, 1997, p. 359). The ongoing interest of critical accounting in the problematisation of accounting codes and associated images of representation (financial statements, accounting and auditing standards, ethical codes, etc.)23 resonates with Castells analysis. The challenge posed by the globalisation theorists is the critique of the global aspects of accounting codes, with the relationship between the global and local levels a particular concern. A related challenge is the creation of new codes and images (accountings included) suited to the information age. The environmental reporting movement within accounting has begun to embrace this challenge (Gray, 1998, 2002).24 Not surprisingly, it is a globally-oriented movement, potentially linkable to a multitude of localities. 3.7. Education and inequality Castells makes an analytical distinction between generic and self-programmable labour. The former is readily expendable, interchangeable, or vulnerable to replacement by new technology—therefore relatively powerless in the world of networks. The latter is betterplaced to move into nodes and networks. The differences between them is a major contributor to the “increased social inequality and polarization” of the information age (1998, p. 364). Education is crucial in creating it; especially if we succeed in helping students to learn how to learn, to be innovative and adaptable (ibid., p. 361; see also p. 365). This ostensibly underlines how academics, accounting academics especially, are in the uncomfortable position of being producers of inequality, possibly at an accelerated rate. The emancipatory project of critical accounting (e.g. Cooper and Sherer, 1984; Dillard, 1991; McPhail, 2001; Tinker, 1985) is under pressure. The disruptive visibilities that critical accountants can create, the support for resistance they can provide, the capacities for reflection—and, hopefully, socially responsible action—they can engender on the part of the privileged students they send out to the networks of capital, are all the more crucial. This last point bring us to the university. As the next section argues, the place of academic work has itself become the site of the very pressures analysed above.

4. Concluding remarks: these times, critical accounting and the university The previous section illustrated the possibility of a fruitful relationship between globalisation theorists and critical accountants. This section gives some attention to the university as an institution affected by globalisation, one where at least some accountants receive instruction, some of them from academics sympathetic to the critical project. One interpretation might be that globalisation simply provides more grist for the critical accounting mill, another topic for teaching, learning and research. That, however, is too sanguine a view, for the university is now both in the world and of the world (see Hinkson, 2002, pp. 234–236). Held et al. (1999) identify a neoliberal view of globalisation which “generally privileges an economic logic . . . and celebrates the emergence of a single global market and the principle of global competition as the harbingers of human progress” (p. 3). 23 24

See, for example the papers in Chapter 5 of Jones et al. (1995) and any issue of Critical Perspectives. See also Roslender (1996), Gallhofer and Haslam (1997), Broadbent (1998), Lehman (2001) and Pant (2001).

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

727

Neoliberals also hold (along with some radicals) that “the needs of global capital impose a neoliberal economic discipline on all governments such that politics is no longer the ‘art of the possible’ but rather the practice of ‘sound economic management” (ibid., p. 4). This provides the link to economic rationalism/managerialism in the public sector, well recognised in the accounting literature (see, for example, Olson et al., 1998). It is but a short step from here to the university cornered by globalisation and managerialism (Braun and Merrien, 1999; Coady, 2000; Cooper et al., 2002). Yet again, the antennae of the critical accounting community have detected the movement.25 The titles of some of the contributions in Cooper et al. (2002) capture some of the agonising taking place: “ ‘Funny You Should Ask for That’: Higher Education as a Market”; “The University: Is it Finished?”; “Towards a Politics of the Enterprise University”; “The University in the Knowledge Economy”; “The University and its Metamorphoses”; “PostIntellectuality? Universities and the Knowledge Industry”; “Perspectives on the Crisis of the University”; “The Idea of the Intellectual and After”. In the introduction, one of the editors writes that “the university as a place for the discussion of ideas, and the transmission of tradition; a cultural institution which can sustain the cultural framework for social interpretation, is . . . [being] undermined by an embracing structural change: the fusion of intellectual practices and market forces” (Cooper, 2002, p. 1). He also notes the irony that “the further we progress towards a ‘knowledge society’ the harder it is for universities to sustain themselves. Almost universally, universities have been subject to cuts in government funding which, together with the massification of the tertiary education system has overstretched their diminishing resources” (ibid., p. 2). It is precisely in this context that my employer (to take one example) is promoting itself as a Castells-style node, in particular, as, being rationally managed, strategically-planned, knowledge-creating, knowledge-disseminating, tolerant, multi-cultural, innovative, cognisant of globalisation and internationally competitive.26 Another contributor (Hinkson, 2002) analysing the impact of forces like the ones identified by Castells, discerns a quiescence on the part of both staff and students that is a result of sustained (since the mid-1980s) and “systematic onslaught by political and social forces against the conditions of staff and students . . . as well as the [university] as such” (ibid., p. 233). He paints a picture of the university as a powerful contributor to the new information society, which, partly through that very contribution, is losing its critical nerve at precisely the wrong time: “Just as this social world emerges, the means to study and reflect upon its meanings and contradictions begins to disappear” (ibid., p. 266). It is over the same period that critical accounting has emerged. Perhaps this is no co-incidence (Hopper et al., 1995). In Hinkson’s analysis, one of the major causes of the stresses on the university, given that the rise of the information economy is happening just as governments are slashing funds, is that the instrumental reasoning of the techno-sciences is driving out the social and cultural critique of the humanities. Critical accounting has been dealing with a variant of this tension since its inception (Hopper et al., 1995). The 25 Apart from the recently published Critical Perspectives special edition on the university in the new corporate world (2002, Vol. 13, No. 5/6, see also Cooper, 1997; Davies and Thomas, 2002; Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996; Fogarty, 1997; Gurd, 2000; Harley, 2000; Tinker, 2002). 26 Adapted from the University of Wollongong (2002) Strategic Draft Plan, 2001–2005, available at the time of writing at http://www.uow.edu.au/about/stratplan/2002/process.html. Perhaps your university has a similar offering.

728

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

emergence of critical accounting may, then, be seen as an early (maybe even pioneering) exemplar of resistance within academe. However, as argued by Castells, it will need to innovate, particularly with respect to the issue of how scattered and fractured local resistances can respond in a significant (co-ordinated?) fashion to global capital. The contemporary university (if, indeed, its predecessors ever were) is no safe place from which assistance might be offered to those in peril outside its walls. Just as there is ‘no more outside’ (of Empire) as H&N argue, so there is ‘no more inside’ (safe haven) as Hinkson might put it. Even those of us who would have preferred to remain in the cloisters have ended up in the trenches.27 In short, academics are now part of H&N’s ‘multitude’—the proletariat of the information age, of Empire. A contrast here between their work and that of Castells is apt. In Castells’ view, there is no overarching logic of resistance to parallel the surplus-seeking logic of global capital. H&N (2000, see especially Part 4) beg to differ. They insist that the productive capacity of the multitude, its (our) desire to be makers of our lives and subjectivities free from the shackles and deceptions of Empire and, even, to see love triumph over fear, will win out in the last resort. But they can’t say just how, or just when: “Only the multitude through its practical experimentation will offer the models and determine when and how the possible becomes real” (ibid., p. 411). Whether this makes a mockery of their argument remains to be seen. I suppose its back to us, then. Acknowledgements Thanks to Rosina Mladenovic, Branka Mraoviæ and Kala Saravanamuthu for comments on earlier drafts. References Armstrong MA. The political economy of international transfer pricing, 1945–1994: state, capital and the decomposition of class. Critic Perspect Acc 1998;9(4):391–432. Arnold PJ. From the union hall: a labor critique of the new manufacturing and accounting regimes. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(4):423. Arnold PJ, Cooper C. A tale of two classes: the privatisation of medway ports. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(2):127– 52. Arnold PJ, Sikka P. Globalization and the state–profession relationship: the case of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Acc Organ Society 2001;28(6):475–99. Birkett W, Poullaos C. From accounting to management. a global perspective. In: Birkett W, Poullaos C, editors. IFAC Financial & Management Accounting Committee Study 11. A Profession Transforming: From Accounting to Management, IFAC. New York; 2001. p. 3–20. Boczko T. A critique on the classification of contemporary accounting: towards a political economy of classification—the search for ownership. Critic Perspect Acc 2000;11(2):131–53. Boyce G. Now and then: revolutions in higher education. Critic Perspect Acc 2002;13(5/6):575–601. Braun D, Merrien F-X. Towards a new model of governance for universities? A comparative view. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers; 1999. 27 This point is accentuated by the tendency of accounting departments in the Australian university of my acquaintance to be used as ‘cash cows’ to cross-subsidise other parts of the university.

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

729

Broadbent J. The gendered nature of “accounting logic”: pointers to an accounting that encompasses multiple values. Critic Perspect Acc 1998;9(3):267–97. Caramanis CV. International accounting firms versus indigenous auditors: intra-professional conflict in the Greek auditing profession, 1990–1993. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(2):153–96. Caramanis CV. The interplay between professional groups, the state and supranational agents: Pax Americana in the age of ‘globalisation’. Acc Organ Society 2002;27(4/5):379–408. Castells M. The information age: economy, society and culture. vol. 1. The rise of the network society. Massachusetts & Oxford: Blackwell; 1996. Castells M. The information age: economy, society and culture. vol. II. The power of identity. Massachusetts & Oxford: Blackwell; 1997. Castells M. The information age: economy, society and culture. vol. III. End of millennium. Massachusetts & Oxford: Blackwell; 1998. Coady T, editor. Why universities matter. A conversation about values, means and directions. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin; 2000. Clarke PJ, Thorley Hill N, Stevens K. Activity based costing in Ireland: barriers to, and opportunities for, change. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(4):443–68. Coffin Z. The top ten effects of XBRL: the future of internet reporting. In: Hannon N, Coffin Z, editors. Introducing XBRL: decision making in a digital economy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; 2001. 15 pp. Cooper C. Against postmodernism: class-oriented questions for critical accounting. Critic Perspect Acc 1997;8(1/2):15–41. Cooper S. Introduction. In: Cooper S, Hinkson J, Sharp G, editors. Scholars and entrepreneurs. The universities in crisis. North Carlton, Vic.: Arena Publications; 2002. p. 1–6. Cooper DJ, Sherer M. The value of corporate accounting reports: arguments for a political economy of accounting. Acc Organ Society 1984;9(3/4):207–32. Cooper DJ, Tinker T. Editorial. Critic Perspect Acc 1990;1(1):1–3. Cooper DJ, Greenwood R, Hinings B, Brown JL. Globalization and nationalism in a multinational accounting firm: the case of opening new markets in Eastern Europe. Acc Organ Society 1998;23(5/6):531–48. Cooper S, Hinkson J, Sharp G, editors. Scholars and entrepreneurs. The universities in crisis. North Carlton, Vic.: Arena Publications; 2002. Cousins J, Mitchell A, Sikka P. Auditor liability: the other side of the debate. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(2):283– 312. Davies A, Thomas R. Managerialism and accountability in higher education: the gendered nature of restructuring and the costs to academic service. Critic Perspect Acc 2002;13(2):179–93. Di Fazio W. Poverty, the postmodern and the jobless future. Critic Perspect Acc 1998;8(1):57–74. Dillard JF. Accounting as a critical social science. Acc Aud Acc J 1991;4(1):8–28. Dillard JF. Dialectical possibilities of thwarted responsibilities. Critic Perspect Acc 2002;13(5/6):621–41. Dominelli L, Hoogvelt A. Globalisation, the privatisation of welfare, and the changing role of professional academics in Britain. Critic Perspect Acc 1996;7(1/2):191–212. Dunn CL, McCarthy WE. The REA accounting model: intellectual heritage and prospects for progress. J Info Systems 1997;11(1):31–51. Esposito D, Aronowitz S, Chancer L, Di Fazio W, Yard M. The (in)spectre returns! global capitalism and the future of work. Critic Perspect Acc 1998;9(1):7–54. Fogarty TJ. The education of accountants in the U.S.: reason and its limits at the turn of the century. Critic Perspect Acc 1997;8(1/2):45–68. Gallhofer S, Haslam J. Beyond accounting: the possibilities of accounting and “critical” accounting research. Critic Perspect Acc 1997;8(1/2):71–95. Gray R. Imagination, a bowl of petunias and social accounting. Critic Perspect Acc 1998;9(2):205–16. Gray R. The social accounting project and accounting organizations and society: privileging engagement, imaginings, new accountings and pragmatism over critique? Acc Organ Society 2002;27(7):687–708. Gray R, Collison D, French J, McPhail K, Stevenson L. The professional accountancy bodies and the provision of education and training in relation to environmental issues. Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, Edinburgh; 2001. Green DL. Litigation risk for auditors and the risk society. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(2):339–53. Gurd B. (Re)living the researched experience. Critic Perspect Acc 2000;11(2):255–8.

730

C. Poullaos / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 715–730

Hao Z. Regulation and organisation of accountants in China. Acc Aud Acc J 1999;12(3):286–302. Hanlon G. International professional labour markets and the narratives of accountants. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(2):199–221. Hardt M, Negri A. Empire. Cambridge, USA & London: Harvard University Press; 2000. Harley S. Accountants divided: research, selectivity and academic accounting labour in UK universities. Critic Perspect Acc 2000;11(5):549–82. Held D, McGrew A, Goldblatt D, Perraton J. Global transformations. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1999. Hinkson J. Perspectives on the crisis of the university. In: Cooper S, Hinkson J, Sharp G, editors. Scholars and entrepreneurs. The universities in crisis. North Carlton: Arena Publications; 2002. p. 233–67. Hirst P, Thompson G. Globalization in question. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1999. Hopkins AG, editor. Globalization in world history. London: Pimlico; 2002. Hopper T, Annisette MA, Dastoor N, Uddin DP, Wickramasinghe DP. Introduction. In: Jones S, Romano C, Ratnatunga J, editors. Accounting theory. A contemporary review. Sydney, Fort Worth, London, Orlando, Toronto: Harcourt Brace; 1995. p. 517–50. Humphrey C. Audit research: looking beyond North America. Critic Perspect Acc 2001;12(3):369–76. IFAC Financial & Management Accounting Committee Study 11. In: Birkett W, Poullaos C, editors. A profession transforming: from accounting to management. New York: IFAC; 2001. Jones S, Romano C, Ratnatunga J. Accounting theory. A contemporary review. Sydney, Fort Worth, London, Orlando, Toronto: Harcourt Brace; 1995. Klein N. No logo. London: Flamingo; 2000. Lehman G. Reclaiming the public sphere: problems and prospects for corporate social and environmental reporting. Critic Perspect Acc 2001;12(6):713–33. Mann M. Globalisation and September 11. New left review 12, Nov/Dec; 2001. p. 51–72. Martin R. Fragmentation and fetishism: the postmodern in Marx. Critic Perspect Acc 1998;9(1):77–93. McGoun EG. Hypperreal finance. Critic Perspect Acc 1997;8(1/2):97–122. McPhail K. The dialectic of accounting education: from role identity to ego identity. Critic Perspect Acc 2001;12(4):471–99. Montagna P. Modernism vs. postmodernism in management accounting. Critic Perspect Acc 1997;8(1/2):125–45. Neu D, Cooper DJ, Everett J. Critical accounting interventions. Critic Perspect Acc 2001;12(6):735–62. Olson O, Guthrie J, Humphrey C, editor. Global warning: debating international developments in new public financial management. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag As, Oslo; 1998. Pant LW. The growing role of informal controls: does organization learning empower or subjugate workers? Critic Perspect Acc 2001;12(6):697–712. Parker LD. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you: a strategic analysis of university change management. Critic Perspect Acc 2002;13(5/6):603–19. Peck JJ. Proportionate liability: the emerging global standard. Critic Perspect Acc 1999;10(2):377–86. Rose N, Miller P. Political power beyond the state: problematics of government. Br J Sociology 1992;43(2):173– 205. Roslender R. Relevance lost, and found: critical perspectives on the practice of management accounting. Critic Perspect Acc 1996;7(5):533–61. Saravanamuthu K, Tinker T. The university in the new corporate world. Critic Perspect Acc 2002;13(5/6):545–54. Seal W, Sucher P, Zelenka I. Post-socialist transition and the development of an accountancy profession in the Czech Republic. Critic Perspect Acc 1996;7(4):485–508. Sikka P. From the politics of fear to the politics of emancipation. Critic Perspect Acc 2000;11(3):369–80. Sikka P, Willmott H. Practising critical accounting. Critic Perspect Acc 1997;8(1/2):149–65. Stiglitz J. Globalization and its discontents. London: Allen Lane/Penguin; 2002. Sutton S. The changing face of accounting in an information technology dominated world. Int J Acc Info Systems 2000;1(1):1–8. Tilling MV. The dialectic of the university in times of revolution: echoes of the industrial revolution? Critic Perspect Acc 2002;13(5/6):555–74. Tinker T. Paper prophets. New York: Prager; 1985. Tinker T. Critical research in the United States. Critic Perspect Acc 2002;13(4):517–26. University of Wollongong, Strategic Draft Plan, 2001–2005, http://www.uow.edu.au/about/stratplan/2002/ process.html, accessed September 2002.