Social accounting's emancipatory potential: A Gramscian critique

Critical Perspectives on Accounting 20 (2009) 205–227

Social accounting’s emancipatory potential: A Gramscian critique Crawford Spence ∗ School of Management, University of St Andrews, Scotland KY16 9SS, United Kingdom Received 15 November 2005; received in revised form 12 April 2007; accepted 20 June 2007

Abstract At the heart of the social accounting project lies a radical and emancipatory intent. Yet social accounting practice, in the form of corporate self reporting, has systematically failed to open up organisations to substantive critique. Rather than rendering transparent the contradictions within capitalism, corporate social accounting primarily obfuscates these. Through corporate social accounting business expresses Moral and Intellectual Leadership, further entrenching its hegemony. This paper offers a theoretical explanation for why this is the case, drawing upon the work of Antonio Gramsci. Corporate social accounting serves a regressive role because it is closely tied to the economic base of society. An emancipatory social accounting would operate relatively autonomously from the economic base and actively expose the contradictions of the current hegemony. Such an accounting could be, indeed is, practiced by civil society. This paper goes further than merely critiquing corporate social accounting and draws attention to some of the different types of social accounting that are practiced by civil society organisations. In drawing attention to these civil society accounts the paper suggests that the social accounting project’s emancipatory intent can still be realised although this would require a reassessment of the faith that has hitherto been placed in the corporation as an emancipatory change agent. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Social Accounting; Hegemony; Political Economy; Emancipation; Gramsci; Civil Society

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1. Introduction The normative rationale for social accounting1 has been crystallised on numerous occasions by Gray et al. (1987, 1995, 1996, 1997), and carried through by many others (see, for example, Adams, 2002; Bebbington, 1997; Buhr, 1998, 2002; Deegan, 2002; Owen et al., 2000, 2001; O’Dwyer, 2002, 2003; Thomson and Bebbington, 2005; Unerman and Bennett, 2004). The basic argument underlying the social accounting project is that organisations have a duty to discharge information pertaining to their social and environmental interactions to a wider group of constituents than simply financial stakeholders. Such information is ideally construed as being instrumental in informing society and, ultimately, in bringing about a more participative democracy (see, in particular, Gray et al., 1996). The social accounting project is concerned with the social dislocations and environmental degradation that arise from advanced capitalism. Whether this implies a transcendence of capitalism or merely its reformation along more socio-democratic lines is not explicitly stated, or is at least left open. Either way, one of the key functions prescribed for social accounting practice is to expose the conflicts inherent in commercial activity. This is something that corporate social accounting practice has systematically failed to do.2 Rather than expose conflicts, corporate social accounting has been deployed in order to obfuscate these and, in doing so, has further legitimises both corporate activity and the societal structures that such activity depends upon. Corporate social accounting practice can therefore be seen to be counter-productive to the academic social accounting project’s aims of enhanced democracy. This paper explores the emancipatory potential of the social accounting project through Gramscian theorising. In particular, David Levy’s use of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony in the context of corporate approaches to environmental management is drawn upon in order to conceptualise both social accounting and its overlaps into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Social accounting is viewed from this perspective as one element of an integrated strategy with CSR that is designed to accommodate social and political pressures, whilst maintaining ideological autonomy for business and markets. Social accounting thus serves a hegemonic function. This conclusion broadly coheres with previous Political Economy theorisations of social accounting, suggesting the form in which corporations undertake social accounting is inevitably highly determined by the underlying economic base. However, the paper argues that an emancipatory social accounting that is not highly determined by the economic base is possible and, indeed, is already being undertaken in different forms. Social accounting that is not undertaken by corporations but by civil society organisations represents a much more substantive attempt to expose the contradictions that permeate current modes of economic organisation. As such, this social accounting has the potential and intent to create a fissure in current structural arrangements, paving 1 The term social accounting is used here to denote all elements of the practice of social, environmental and sustainability accounting and reporting. 2 I refer here to social accounts prepared by corporations themselves. External social audits of corporations, prepared by third parties, have perhaps been more successful in exposing conflicts (see later for a discussion of these). Social accounting in the social economy may also be a different story (see Dey et al., 1995 and Gray et al., 1997).

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the way for a re-organisation of society along more humane and ecologically sensitive parameters. The paper proceeds as follows. Firstly, the emancipatory ideals underpinning the social accounting project will be outlined. Whereas the social accounting project has been largely focused on calling for better quality corporate reporting of socio-environmental interactions, one can infer that the ideals underlying the social accounting project extend beyond this and imply a more participative democracy and some sort of change in the balance of power within society. However, evidence suggests that the information being produced by corporations falls far short of encouraging any sort of substantive dialogue over the role of the corporation in society. This is picked up upon in the subsequent section which introduces Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and seeks to locate corporate social accounting within that theoretical framework. Drawing from the Gramscian work of David Levy in particular, social accounting and CSR are conceptualised as overlapping elements of an integrated strategy to accommodate social and political pressures. More specifically, the work of Livesey (2001, 2002a, 2002b), Livesey and Kearins (2002), Milne et al. (2005, 2006) and Tregidga and Milne (2006) is referred to in order to draw attention to the way in which corporate social accounting ideologises corporate sustainability and essentially closes off debate around the role of the corporation in society. In the fourth section the dialectic between the economic base of society (capital accumulation) and the superstructures (of which accounting is one manifestation) is introduced. There it is argued that because of their strong links to capital markets, corporations have limited discretion to behave responsibly in the first instance and to be transparent about their irresponsibility and partiality in the second. Attempts to reform corporations through regulation will also, it is argued, be unlikely to succeed in giving corporations sufficient discretion to prioritise social and environmental concerns. Thus, an emancipatory social accounting cannot be expected to come from corporations. The fifth section of the paper moves on to describe different types of social accounting that are undertaken by civil society. The paper outlines the nature of some of the ‘anti-accounts’ undertaken by civil society organisations that attempt to depict a very different view of the socio-environmental effects of corporate activity than that projected by corporate social accounting. Described here also are those civil society accounts that work with corporate imagery and corporate social accounting in order to subtly debunk the original message. Adbusting and culture jamming are referred to as examples of civil society social accounting that seek to correct the identities of corporations. The final part of the fifth section reflects on some of the accounts offered by academics that critique corporate social accounting and tentatively considers how those accounts might successfully connect organically with wider civil society. Finally, the paper concludes by arguing that the civil society social accounting described in the paper has an emancipatory nature that is often overlooked by social accounting scholars and calls for a ‘civil society turn’ in the social accounting project if the project is to realise its emancipatory possibilities.

2. Social accounting and emancipation The arguments for a more socially and environmentally conscious accounting have been well delineated (see, for example, Gray, 2002, 2005; Gray et al., 1987, 1996). Increased

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corporate disclosure of socio-environmental interactions would better reflect the socioenvironmental nature of organisations, thus constructing a different reality from that which is communicated through financial accounting (Hines, 1988). However, the rendering transparent of an organisation does not set the parameters to the vision of the social accounting project. Increased transparency would, in turn, exhort companies to temper their relentless pursuit of profit and competitiveness by considering their interactions with a wider constituency of stakeholder groups. Transparency is therefore not an end in itself. There is a more radical intention implicit in the social accounting project. Gray (2002) posits that the principal justification for social accounting “must lie in its emancipatory and radical possibilities” (p. 688). Thomson and Bebbington (2005) too exhibit a concern for social accounting to realise its “emancipatory potential”. The explicit intention of greater accountability is, in turn, to enhance democracy (see, in particular, Gray et al., 1996). Furthermore, the social accounting project has concerns that extend beyond a commitment to democratic principles. Underlying the social accounting project is a concern with the social dislocations and environmental degradation caused by organisations in advanced capitalism. Increased accountability, although morally desirable in itself, is more fundamentally seen as a means to move towards a more socially and environmentally benign order. As Gray (2005) notes: “The principal idea is that power and responsibility need to be matched in a fair society. This matching is ensured by the demos who, in turn, require information on which to make the appropriate judgements. The accounts of organisations are this information and without these accounts, democracy is hollow, the demos is powerless and, depending on the circumstances, the power of the (non) accountable organisations significantly outstrips their responsibility.” The social accounting project shies away from outlining how exactly a more socioenvironmentally benign order may come about. It also shies away from specifying the end goal: the type of world that we want to reach.3 The project is not explicitly grounded in a theory of social change. For example, how various stakeholder groups might react to and act upon social and environmental information, if at all, is not dealt with by social accounting theorists (see Lehman, 1999). Nevertheless, the emancipatory ideal underlying social accounting is that enhanced understanding generally of corporate socio-environmental interactions offers the possibility of social change through democratic means. Fundamental to this process of enhanced informatisation is that social accounting substantively exposes the conflicts and antagonisms inherent in corporate activity. For example, Thomson and Bebbington (2005) suggest that a transformative social accounting would reflect a “multiple and subjective understanding” (Thomson and Bebbington, 2005, p. 520) of organisational socio-environmental interactions. Thomson and Bebbington (2005) suggest that this would involve stakeholders in setting the reporting agenda to a significant degree, and would likely result in social accounts that show conflict rather than coherence. Tinker et al. (1991) advocate a critical accounting that examines the basic contradictions of 3 Business, too, shies away from specifying the end goal of sustainability (see Milne et al., 2006), but it is perhaps more explicit about the process of change—gradual, incremental, continuous improvement that for which there is a business case.

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capitalism and speaks about social antagonisms and structural inequalities. Lehman (2001) maintains that social accounting must “critically engage the procedural and structural limitations of capitalism” (p. 728). Similarly, Gallhofer and Haslam (1997) argue that social accounting “should be concerned to make visible exploitation and repression. . .and seek to counter social problems” (p. 164). Cooper et al. (2005) also argue that social accounting be situated within the wider socio-political context within which it operates: “Social accounts that do not make connections with the rest of the social totality will be flawed in terms of their usefulness in making socially effective and efficient decisions” (p. 7). However, current corporate social accounting practice is widely perceived to cherry pick good news; ignore the more fundamental social issues such as wealth distribution (Collin and Gilmore, 2002; Gray, 2000; Gray and Milne, 2002, 2004); refuse to undertake overall environmental impact analysis, instead preferring to focus on disaggregated data and efficiency measures (Gray, 2000; Gray and Milne, 2002, 2004); and engage with a very limited notion of sustainability (see Bebbington and Gray, 2001; Fayers, 1998; Gray and Milne, 2002; Milne et al., 2006). As such, current social accounting practice “falls short of the emancipatory ideal set for it” (Thomson and Bebbington, 2005, p. 530). Why this is the case and how it might be otherwise is something that this paper seeks to explore through Gramscian theorising.

3. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony Gramsci wrote on a wide range of subject, often in fragmentary fashion. However, taken in toto, there is an overall coherence and unity to his thought (Salamini, 1981). His most important contribution is arguably his theory of hegemony, how society comes to be structured around particular power formations. A Gramscian perspective emphasises that the stabilisation of society involves both coercion and consent: “The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. . .A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise ‘leadership’ before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to ‘lead’ as well (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 57–58). Gramsci points toward the significant roles that culture and ideology play in producing and reproducing particular societal arrangements. More specifically, Gramsci was keen to emphasise that Western societies were reproduced through the consent of civil society: “In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 238). These systems of fortresses and earthworks constitute what Gramsci referred to as Historical Blocs. History is characterised by a series of historical blocs, or particular sets of power

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arrangements between civil society, economic and political groups. A historical bloc is no less than a social order within a given historical epoch.4 Levy and Newell (2002) note that there are two meanings of Gramsci’s historical bloc: firstly, it refers to the alliance of social groupings that make up the hegemonic formation; secondly, it refers to the specific alignment of material, organisational and discursive formations which stabilise and reproduce relations of production and meaning. The first presupposes the second and Levy (1997) and Levy and Egan (2003) argue that corporate strategies similarly co-ordinate material, organisational and discursive resources. The political economy perspective developed here relates firmlevel struggles and strategies to wider structures of domination. Individual corporate strategies are constitutive of broader hegemonic structures, as well as a product of them. Historical blocs are shaped by micro-processes of bottom-up bargaining and constrained by macrostructures of production relations and ideological formations (Levy and Newell, 2002). The material, organisational and discursive strategies of corporations overlap considerably in dynamic processes of conflict and compromise: “Large firms are generally unable to dominate a field purely by virtue of brute economic power or governmental connections; rather, control over a field rests on consent from a broader group of actors. Field stabilisation, or hegemony, depends on an alignment of forces capable of reproducing the field” (Levy and Egan, 2003, p. 810). This takes us beyond a notion of centralised power or simple economic determinism, instead encouraging a view of power as diffuse throughout society and the function of contingent alliances between different social groups. Indeed, Levy (1997) talks about a hegemonic coalition of business, government, professional and intellectual elites rather than simply one centralised hegemonic group. Hegemony necessarily involves the co-option of antagonistic groups into the hegemonic coalition. Hegemony becomes more visible when civil society groups previously antagonistic to business, out of frustration or seduction, begin talking the language of business. So, for example, much ‘green’ campaigning now attempts to provide solutions to the ecological crisis from within capitalism (Porritt, 2005). From this a hegemonic shift can be discerned. Previously the ‘sustainability case for business’ was problematised and questioned by many environmentalists. This has now been gradually replaced by the ‘business case for sustainability’. 3.1. A Gramscian conceptualisation of social accounting Levy and Newell (2005) note that corporate approaches to the environment should not be viewed simply as a set of technical practices or ‘greenwash’. “Rather, they represent an integrated political and market response to environmental challenges, in a way that serves to accommodate social and regulatory pressures” (Levy and Newell, 2005, p. 5). Social accounting is viewed here as a distinct yet overlapping strategy with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). More specifically, CSR may be viewed on the material level as a set of practices that seeks to ameliorate some of the more egregious socio-environmental 4 One might describe the historical bloc within which we currently live, in broad terms, as advanced globalised capitalism in which politics has been reduced largely to a technical administration of the economy and where the concept of citizenship has been largely replaced with that of consumerism.

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impacts of corporate activity whilst harnessing socio-environmental concerns to a business agenda. In contrast, the function of social accounting is more ostensibly ideological than material. Social accounting operates as a discursive framework that “actively constitutes perceptions of mutual interests” (Levy and Egan, 2003, p. 683). However, social accounting is not simply a manifestation or mere discursive representation of CSR. Ideologies and discourses have material effects. Social accounting itself has significant overlap into the field of CSR, where it is instrumental in identifying, measuring and rationalising CSR activities. Similarly, CSR is not restricted to a set of material practices. It too operates on the ideological level, constructing images of companies as ‘green’ and ‘responsible’.5 Taken together, CSR and corporate social accounting are viewed here as an integrated attempt to accommodate political and civil society pressures whilst maintaining primacy for business’s fundamental aims. The accommodations offered to civil society by business through CSR and social accounting are of a secondary nature. As far as social accounting goes, rather than rendering transparent the conflicts inherent in corporate activities, it primarily obfuscates these. This obfuscation is undertaken in a relatively sophisticated fashion, by focusing on areas where business and socio-environmental interests coincide, and by carefully controlling and rationalising any areas where they are shown to conflict. Social accounting, in the form of corporate self-reporting, has systematically failed to expose the contradictions and conflicts inherent within capitalism. For example, Adams (2004) has suggested that there is a social and environmental reporting-performance gap in UK companies. In a study of one organisation, it was found that there was a gap between the company’s reporting and externally perceived performance. Issues not mentioned in the reports but highlighted in the media included deaths through pesticide use; misleading advertising; accusations of price fixing; human rights issues and animal testing. UK social accounting practice is described by Thomson and Bebbington (2005) as representing an ‘objective’, singular and business-skewed depiction of reality, thus showing coherence rather than conflict. A growing literature looking specifically at business’s use of language vis-`a-vis sustainability suggests that there is a concerted effort underway to capture the sustainability agenda and rearticulate it into a discourse that does not challenge the fundamental pillars of business-as-usual (see, for example, Livesey, 2001, 2002a, 2002b; Livesey and Kearins, 2002; Milne et al., 2005, 2006; Tregidga and Milne, 2006). For example, Livesey (2002b) and Tregidga and Milne (2006) both outline specific examples of the way in which corporate social accounting might actually be considered regressive or anti-democratic. Livesey (2002b) analyses the social reporting of Shell in the context of the wider discursive struggle over the meaning of sustainability. Shell, it is argued, used its social accounting practices to both accommodate and resist change. Livesey (2002b) argues that Shell’s social report can be read as an “attempt to re-establish discursive regularity and hegemonic control in the wake of challenges by environmentalists and human rights activists” (p. 314). Whilst environmentalism has caused a rupture in the historical bloc, Livesey (2002b) suggests that this rupture is being closed through business beginning to talk the language of sustainability in a way which does not challenge economic growth and other taken-for-granted ‘truths’. An 5 See Levy (1997) for a discussion of how Environmental Management serves both ideological and material functions. The characterisation of both SER and CSR above draws heavily from Levy’s (1997) analysis.

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in-depth discursive analysis of another company’s social accounting is offered by Tregidga and Milne (2006). Tregidga and Milne (2006) undertake a 10-year textual analysis of one of New Zealand’s more ‘progressive’ reporters, Watercare. The results of the analysis suggest that whilst the company’s reporting had increasingly embraced the sustainable development agenda over the 10-year period, the way in which the accounts were framed implied a step backwards as regards to transparency and accountability. Although the company’s reports encompassed an ever greater level and consideration of environmental impacts (up to a point), this was done through an ever more entrenched notion of the ‘business case for sustainable development’. Whereas the earlier company reports presented sustainability as a legal requirement and implied some notion of conflict between business and the natural environment, the latter reports re-framed the environmental ‘problem’ as an economic opportunity, thereby suggesting that sustainability is a business imperative. Moreover, the framing of sustainability within an economic lens leads to the presentation of business as the means by which sustainability can be achieved. Thus, although business has embraced the sustainability agenda in a way that seemed unlikely a decade ago, it appears to be doing so in a way that paradoxically re-enforces business-as-usual and closes off any potential debate over the raison d’ˆetre of many organisations (Milne et al., 2006). In essence, the business response to sustainability can be seen as an attempt to reactualise the discourse of development within the new discourse of sustainability (Livesey, 2001). By reducing sustainable development to little more than the business friendly notions of eco-efficiency and stakeholder relations (Milne et al., 2005), business attempts to project that definition onto other social groups in society in its attempt to exert Moral and Intellectual Leadership. Corporate social accounting is a key discursive framework in this wider ideological struggle. Even as corporate social accounting has become more sophisticated and formalised, it has simultaneously become less transparent as regards to the conflicts between economic and socio-environmental factors. Indeed, corporate social accounting can be read largely as an attempt to close off rather than open up discourse. In turn, this serves to solidify coalitions of business, governmental and civil society groups who each articulate the win–win business case rhetoric.

4. The base and the superstructure Within a Gramscian Political Economy perspective, this discursive-ideological function of corporate social accounting can be understood by reference to the base and superstructures of society. The economic base, being the capitalist mode of production, exists in a dialectical relationship with the superstructures, being the surface elements of society such as law, ideology, culture. Accounting is one such superstructural element. A Political Economy perspective recognises that the superstructures are essential in protecting, legitimising and perpetuating the economic base. Furthermore, it is also presumed that the economic base often determines the very form that the superstructures take (see, in particular, Cooper, 1995).6 Such a perspective has been employed in the literature to argue that corporate social 6 This point is explicitly dealt with by Cooper (1995) when she states that “there is probably only the remotest possibility that accounting could have a revolutionary potential” (p. 176). Thus, it is presumed in previous the-

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accounting serves to further stabilise structural arrangements (see, for example, Cooper, 1992; Puxty, 1986, 1991; Tinker et al., 1991). Thus, expecting emancipatory change to come from the accounting domain is, from this perspective, misguided: “it does not follow. . .that an improvement in accounting policy can necessarily be achieved within the accounting domain. Rather, there is the implication that the politically determined nature of the value of accounting prevents any such resolution within accounting itself” (Cooper and Sherer, 1984, p. 208) Underlying these political economy critiques is not a concern with accounting per se, but a concern with the extent to which the form that accounting takes is determined by the economic base and the structural arrangements which emanate from and stabilise that base. The key notion here as regards to social accounting relates to who is doing the accounting. The failures of corporate social accounting to substantively expose conflicts and contradictions can be explained by who the purported agent of change is. It is here that we could usefully draw a distinction between social accounting and corporate social accounting. The latter has been the focus of the majority of literature in the area and the social accounting project has been largely concerned with the production of social and environmental accounts of corporate activity undertaken by corporations themselves. This, as has been argued elsewhere (Lehman, 1999, 2002), is the fundamental flaw of the social accounting project. We seek to offer a theoretical explanation here of why this is the case and, in turn, point toward alternative conceptions of social accounting that have been undertaken by other social groups yet which have received only minimal attention in the literature (see Cooper et al., 2005; Everett, 2004; Gallhofer and Haslam, 2005; Shenkin and Coulson, 2007). 4.1. Regulating the pathological profiteer In a world increasingly shaped and saturated by big business, with all of the social and environmental dislocations that this brings, it is hard to imagine a less likely white knight than the multinational corporation. Multinational corporations are increasingly depicted as the epitome of capitalist excess and in many ways have become the primary enemies of the anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements. Yet visibility does not necessarily denote power. Corporations themselves are largely powerless entities, merely the playthings of capitals markets, a bundle of assets and liabilities thrown together in order to maximise shareholder wealth (Blackburn, 2006). The frequency with which mergers and bankruptcies take place implies that corporations are, rather being than being the great behemoths as they are often portrayed, actually disposable at the whim of investors. The argument being put forward here is that power lies not with corporations but with capital and that the former is subservient to the latter. Or better, that these two levels are inextricably linked and that there is a need to view the corporation as a political actor (Levy and Newell, 2005). Corporations are the primary organisational form through which orisations that the superstructure of accounting cannot radically alter the economic base. As stated above, other Political Economy theorisations of accounting also presume this. However, those theorisations do not consider other forms of accounting that may operate relatively autonomously from the economic base. Thus, this paper seeks to go beyond extant Political Economy critiques of accounting.

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the economic base expresses itself. As such, any superstructural element (e.g. accounting) that is enacted through the corporation will be primarily tied to that base. The corporation adopts a necessarily pathological character that precludes consideration of social and environmental criteria insofar as these do not bolster shareholder returns in some fashion (Bakan, 2004). The role of corporate accounting in this context, whether social or financial, constitutes a direct attempt to translate into practice the needs of the underlying mode of production: capital accumulation. As argued above, corporate social accounting serves both material and ideological roles: a material role as a means of instituting CSR activities that bolster shareholder returns; and an ideological role of rationalising those CSR activities, and corporate activities in general, as rational and commensurate with (or even necessary pre-requisites for) social and environmental welfare. Attempts to bring corporate behaviour under social control and to problematise and re-articulate these material and ideological roles are unlikely to be successful due to the structural strength of capital. Any attempt at regulating or attempting to reform corporations so that they promote social or environmental criteria above economic success would be fraught with difficulty. Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that corporations are incapable of being subject to democratic or regulatory control. Firstly, attempts at industry self-regulation as regards to the environment have generally done little to substantively improve organisational behaviour. For example, King and Lenox (2000) describe the way in which the Chemicals industry implemented its Responsible Care programme. The Responsible Care programme was designed to promote continuous improvement in company environmental and health and safety performance. However, the whilst the ten key guiding principles of the Responsible Care programme are very aspirational, no specific targets are set for waste reduction or more benign production methods. Indeed, King and Lenox (2000) note how 10 years into the Responsible Care programme there is no discernible difference in the environmental performance of member companies in comparison with non-member companies. King and Lenox (2000) conclude that this attempt at ‘self-regulation’ smacks of opportunism and that for improvements in environmental performance to come about there would be a need for some form of regulatory sanctions, probably imposed by the state. Gunningham (1995) argues that self-regulation schemes will only bring about substantive improvements in corporate environmental behaviour under very specific circumstances: where there is congruence between business and public concerns; where businesses can be encouraged to act collectively; and where there are enforcement measures. Firstly, there needs to be an overlap between public and private interest. Win–win scenarios have been shown to exist, but evidence also suggests that there are many instances where social or environmental responsibility does not have a business case (Spence and Gray, 2007; Walley and Whitehead, 1994). The limits of the business case have not been recognised by business and it would appear that corporate social accounting is more concerned with communicating what business can do rather than what it cannot (Spence and Gray, 2007). Whereas the ideal for social accounting is to discharge accountability and open up the possibility for a democratic reconsideration of current forms of organisation, social accounting projects a win–win reality that undermines the ideological basis for any such reconsideration. This obfuscation of conflict is a necessary element in stabilising the field, or in maintaining the current hegemony (see, in particular, Levy and Egan, 2003).

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Secondly, Gunningham (1995) argues that there needs to be a shared interest among business itself in order to ensure collective action. What can be seen in the Responsible Care programme is an industry that is populated by heterogeneous actors, creating an unlevel playing field where the big chemicals companies are reluctant to engage in continuous environmental, health and safety improvement because they see the SMEs in the industry either free-riding on their efforts or simply feel that there is no incentive for those smaller organisations to engage with Responsible Care because they do not have the same reputational concerns to manage (Gunningham, 1995). Thirdly, without enforcement measures to ensure compliance, evidence suggests that organisations will be unlikely to initiate significant environmental improvements. Fineman (1996) observes that managerial decisions are wired to consider only what makes good business sense and that it is only when managers are shocked or forced to feel fear, shame or embarrassment from antagonistic stakeholders (such as campaign groups of regulatory agencies) that a meaningful level of organisational greening might occur. Even where regulation does succeed in being implemented and enforcement measures are in place, businesses often find it more in their interest to spend time searching for legal loopholes to avoid compliance than in actually meeting regulatory requirements (Fineman and Clarke, 1996). Fineman (1997) and Fineman and Clarke (1996) argue that regulation is seen as a game by business. Rather than viewing regulatory demands as some sort of moral imperative they are translated into technical management issues. The regulator is an issue to be ‘managed’. Businesses respond to coercive pressures, not to environmental or social issues for what they are in themselves. Even formal sanctions that are greater than the cost of compliance do not necessarily encourage companies to comply with legislation (Thornton et al., 2005). Most self-regulation schemes amount to little more than a symbolic sham. Self regulation is also taking place to some extent in corporate social accounting with the development of reporting standards and mechanisms such as the GRI and AA1000. However, in spite of the increasing standardisation in the area, in fact because of these institutional developments (Moneva et al., 2006), social accounting appears to be increasingly communicating a watered-down, business friendly version of sustainability. More emphasis is placed upon comparability and uniformity than with any deeper exploration of truth or morality (Livesey and Kearins, 2002). Could reporting legislation bring about a change of affairs? Where disclosure has been mandated in the past compliance has been generally low and the quality of information produced very poor (see, for example, Freedman and Stagliano, 1995, 2002 and Day and Woodward, 2004). Even with more stringent enforcement measures organisations are always free to provide additional legitimating disclosures (Deegan, 2004), whether that be through formal social accounting or other means of ideology dissemination such as advertising. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how such legislation would ever be brought about by state agencies captured by capital. The development of regulation itself is never a neutral process. Business has, since the 1960s, created a grass roots network of industry associations, pseudo think tanks and civil society groups that systematically lobby against any attempt to impose regulation on business that would restrict competitive advantage. Financially impoverished environmental groups have only a limited hope of challenging this counter intelligentsia (Beder, 2001). Given this backdrop, reporting legislation appears unthinkable.

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As accountants we should also think about the corporate form and the role that financial markets play in shaping corporate activity in particular ways, ways which set companies at odds with substantive notions of social responsibility. Moreover, recognising the impact of business on political processes it is difficult to see how, unless there is a change to the corporate form and ownership structures, corporate social accounting and CSR could serve any other purpose than to mythologize the crises generated, at least in part, by capitalism. Capitalism may yet prove to produce its own gravediggers but it would appear to be incapable of a discursive and ideological capitulation by exposing its own contradictions. Indeed, the lobbying activities behind the scenes are designed to ensure that those contradictions remain well obfuscated. Capitalism has proven to be extraordinarily dynamic at re-inventing itself and resilient in absorbing critique. Resisting teleological interpretations of Marx (see, for example, Abercrombie et al., 1980; Bocock, 1986) that view capitalism as inevitably undermining itself,7 Gramsci argues that the passage to a more just order cannot be automatic but the result of a deliberate, collective effort in the cultural and intellectual spheres. That is, change must first come about at the superstructural level: an ideological revolution is a necessary precursor to political revolution (Salamini, 1981). Such an ideological revolution could only realistically come about through superstructural elements that operate relatively autonomously from the economic base. Social accounting undertaken by corporations will always be, as argued above, tied closely to the economic base and therefore tend towards the ideological pacification of civil society. However, if we conceive of social accounting in broader terms than simply corporations producing accounts of their own activities and operating in a realm that is not always directly influenced by the economic base, then there may be more potential for social accounting practice to actively contribute to the construction of a radically different historical bloc. Thus, the problem with social accounting is not that there is no role for social accounting per se in emancipation, but that the emancipatory change agent must come from the realm of civil society, rather than a social group that is inextricably tied to the economic base.

5. Hegemonic civil society accounting The phrase ‘hegemonic accounting’ is used here rather than what might have been called ‘counter-hegemony’. ‘Counter hegemony’ is a phrase that is often used by Gramscian scholars to denote a movement against the current hegemony. However, the phrase also implies that progressive social change comes about by somehow standing outside of the political logic of hegemony per se. Recent work on Gramscian thought suggests that hegemony is politics: that the construction of political alliances and umbrella coalitions encapsulating a diversity of particular political demands is the means by which a new order can be constructed (Laclau, 2000, 2005). We cannot stand outside of hegemony or power, nor should we want to. A radical political project can be constructed through antagonism and

7 This is not to argue that capitalism does not create the conditions for its own demise, only that such a demise should not be viewed as a historical inevitability.

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the hegemonic construction of the ‘movement’ or the ‘people’ as a historical actor. It is a countervailing power that is needed, but not a counter-hegemonic one. The role of civil society is twofold in the historical process of constructing an emancipated society: firstly, the role of critique is itself constructive in exposing the contingency and contradictions upon which the current historical bloc is based; secondly, beyond critique there must be the articulation and dissemination of an alternative hegemonic project that is capable of re-aligning the current historical bloc around different power interests. These two historical tasks may be usefully distinguished from each other for analytical purposes although it is recognised that these two historical tasks must ultimately overlap if a new historical bloc is to be constructed. Critique may be considered the initial phase of a hegemonic re-articulation. However, for reasons of space the focus of this paper is on critique primarily. The paper therefore now turns to consider civil society critiques of the current historical bloc, looking at activist ‘anti-accounts’, the debunking of corporate rhetoric and academic critiques of corporate self-reporting. Each of these provides accounts which attempt to expose the current historical bloc’s partisan nature and the methods that it employs in order to sustain itself. Such critique invites consideration of the way in which society is organised, prompting concomitant consideration of how we might organise differently. 5.1. Activist anti-accounts There has been a tradition of formal external social audits of corporate activity that is at least as long as the history of formal corporate social accounting. Although corporations have been active in shaping the public mind since the dawning of the public relations industry in the early twentieth century (Collison, 2003), formal corporate social accounting really can be understood as having arrived on the scene in the 1970s. This might be interpreted as an ideological response to the well organised mass civil rights movements of the 1960s and the questioning of corporate power that was part of that (Beder, 2001). External social audits are prepared about an organisation by people out with that organisation. Examples of this particular type of social accounting are evident in the work of Social Audit Ltd in the 1970s who, without the cooperation of the organisations whom they were auditing, constructed a series of detailed exposes of the social and environmental impacts of those organisations in the UK. In a similar vein, though rooted much more firmly in class-based politics, Counter Information Services compiled a series of Counter Reports of large multinational organisations in the 1970s (see Gray et al., 1987, for examples of these). Similar exercises have been carried out recently by Christian Aid and Friends of the Earth who have produced ‘alternative’ accounts of organisations such as Shell and Exxon. Friends of the Earth, for example, have been producing an annual ‘Other Shell Report’ since 2002 that documents Shell’s social and environmental impacts in various contexts. The ‘Other Shell Reports’ (2002, 2004, 2005, 2006) engage the voices of communities affected by Shell around the world in order to highlight the company’s poor CSR practice and outline where Shell is failing to comply with guidelines and international human rights laws. Friends of the Earth produce anti-accounts on other organisations as well, including Anglo American, Barclays and BP. These reports tell a somewhat different story from the sanitised portrayals of socioenvironmental performance projected by the companies’ own social accounting (see also Christian Aid, 2004).

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There are now a plethora of civil society organisations that exist primarily in order to provide critical and independent information on corporate activity. For example, Corporate Accountability International (http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/page1090.cfm) are an organisation that has been going for over 25 years who regularly publish accounts highlighting specific corporate abuses of power and the generally destructive effects on civil society of corporate activities. These accounts are an integral part of Corporate Accountability International’s wider mission to campaign for “enforceable standards and policies that will rein in these abuses and put people first” (http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/). Irrespective of whether such a reformist agenda goes far enough, the information provided by Corporate Accountability International attempts to open up dialogue over the role of companies in society and elucidates their irresponsible characteristics. For example, one recent account from Corporate Accountability International highlights the role of Suez and Coca Cola corporations in pushing for privatisation of water supplies around the globe, situating those actions within the context of the struggle to maintain water as a basic human right as opposed to an expensive luxury. Such information is rarely, if at all, disseminated by the corporations themselves. It is certainly never contextualised in this way. A similar organisation exists in the UK called the Centre for Corporate Accountability (http://www.corporateaccountability.org/). The Centre for Corporate Accountability has more specific aims, to promote health and safety in the workplace, through campaigning for more stringent regulation to be imposed upon business as well as providing legal advice to employees and their families with a view to ensuring that companies fulfil their legal obligations. The Centre provides statistics for work related deaths and injuries in the UK and compiles a Corporate Crime Database which lists the safety and conviction record of every company in Britain since 1996. The database permits comparison of different companies in terms of their frequency and level of convictions or enforcement notices. As Adams (2004) points out companies often do not report this information themselves, thereby making it more difficult to hold them to account. CorpWatch (http://www.corpwatch.org/), based in the US, is another civil society organisation that has been working since 1996 to hold corporations to account. Its mission is to: “investigate and expose corporate violations of human rights, environmental crimes, fraud and corruption around the world. We work to foster global justice, independent media activism and democratic control over corporations.” (http://www.corpwatch.org/) CorpWatch regularly provides information on a wide range of issues, including working conditions in Nike factories in Vietnam (ultimately responsible for Nike exercising greater oversight and improving conditions in some factories), the corporate influence over the United Nations, industry impacts on the environment, the social and health effects of consumerism, executive compensation, international financial institutions, compliance with regulation and many more. The information provided by CorpWatch represents an attempt to comprehensively outline the more disastrous social and environmental effects of corporate activity. More recently, since 2004, CorpWatch have been providing accounts of the way in which companies have been profiteering from the reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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CorpWatch also produces an annual set of spoof awards for the top ten ‘greenwashers’, companies whose environmental rhetoric is deemed furthest from reality. The 2005 award went to Ford motor company for their advertising which promotes the environmental credentials of their new hybrid Sports Utility Vehicle, pointing out that it was built in a factory with green ‘eco-roofing’ and using renewable energy. What the adverts do not say is that the car’s fuel economy is still significantly lower than a diesel engine for a standard vehicle. Spoof awards are becoming an increasingly common way to draw media attention to some of the more pernicious aspects of corporate behaviour. For example, the Prescription Access Litigation Project, an umbrella organisation of 118 consumer health advocacy groups in the US have been running an annual awards scheme called Bitter Pill awards. The award scheme was set up in order to highlight aggressive and misleading marketing by the pharmaceutical industry. In 2006, the award in the ‘truth is stranger than fiction category’ went to the industry lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America for underwriting a book that would scare Americans from buying Canadian drugs. $100,000 was spent by the lobbying group commissioning a thriller in which Islamic terrorists put poison in Canadian generic drugs in order to kill American consumers (see Dyer, 2006). The information provided by these anti-accounts is partial and selective. This partiality it has in common with corporate social accounting. However, without falling into a relativistic truth debate, there are a number of key differences between the information presented by anti-accounts and the information presented by corporate self-reporting that arguably give the former the moral high ground. Firstly, these anti-accounts do not pretend to be objective or neutral. They are transparent about their partisan nature, making it clear from the outset what the political agenda is that underlies the accounts. In contrast, corporate social accounting projects a myth of objectivity and completeness. One can infer from corporate social accounting pretensions to balance, transparency and dialogue (Livesey, 2001, 2002a, 2002b). It is the denial of its own partiality that ascribes to corporate social accounting its regressive anti-democratic nature (Spence, 2005). Secondly, and related to the first point, the anti-accounts listed above attempt to open up dialogue by exposing contradictions and conflicts. In contrast, corporate social accounting attempts to either deny conflicts outright or mystify them by bringing them together within the higher unification of the ‘business case’: a fantastical context where social and environmental concerns can be managed away (Spence and Gray, 2007). In sum, the anti-accounts offered by civil society organisations are more in line with the social accounting project’s concern to democratically consider the role of corporate power. Whereas the anti-accounts tend to expose the contingency and interests that are served by the current historical bloc corporate social accounting obfuscates these. 5.2. Debunking corporate rhetoric The accounts referred to above represent something of an external social audit of corporate activity, relying largely on information unearthed by civil society organisations themselves. A number of other types of accounts are also emanate from civil society that actually use the information provided by corporations in a way that undermines the original intention of the message. Even though corporate social accounting projects a highly controlled, partial and skewed discourse, the fact that such a discursive space exists at all

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represents an accommodation by business that can be exploited by civil society. The formation of hegemony always brings with it counter-hegemonic possibilities (Levy, 1997, 2005; Levy and Egan, 2003; Levy and Newell, 2002, 2005; Levy et al., 2003). The constantly shifting alliances and ideologies characteristic of historical blocs occasionally present windows of opportunity for marginalised social movements: “corporate adoption of the rhetoric of sustainability has enabled environmentalists to call attention to discrepancies between PR and reality. Corporate concessions over the reporting of Toxic Release Inventory data in the US enabled environmental groups to construct league tables showing the worst performers and exert further pressure to reduce emissions” (Levy, 2005, p. 60). Working with the messages and information produced by corporations themselves is something that adbusting has done very well. ‘Adbusters’ engage with corporate advertisements in an attempt to subvert the original message. The ‘subvertising’ of corporate billboards is a growing feature of cities in the west. Whilst often amounting to humourless defacement of billboards, adbusting works best when its execution appears to be indistinguishable from the original. So, for example, a Shell billboard reading ‘how many miles per gallon’ can be quickly and imperceptibly changed to ‘how many lives per gallon’ (Shenkin, 2005) or a L’Oreal advert can be changed from ‘because you are worth it’ to ‘because you are stupid’. Adbusters make use of parody and humour in order to tap into people’s consciousness and draw attention to the absurd mythologizing that is projected by corporate advertising (see Everett, 2004 for a more in-depth theoretical explanation of this). Legally, most adbusting constitutes vandalism. However, it can also be considered a form of social accounting that tries to project a different socio-environmental reality onto corporate imagery. Indeed, many of the groups that are engaged in systematic adbusting, whether it be the California Department of Corrections (http://www.geocities.com/billboardcorrections), the 30-year-old Billboard Liberation Front (http://www.billboardliberation.com/), Anti-Billboard Brainwashing Action or the New Advertising Standards Authority are quite clear that they are engaged in “cultural warfare” (Kingsnorth, 2003, p. 140). Adbusting is one form of culture jamming, a wide and diverse movement that expresses resistance through protests that seek to engage people in cultural events, whether those be theatrical performances inside a Disney shop, impromptu parties held on six-lane motorways, throwing custard pies at establishment figures or the production of spoof TV advertisements. In Gramscian terms, adbusting is one manifestation of the wider activist struggle to detach the superstructural realm from the economic base by creating culture “from the ground up, not top down” (ibid., p. 140, see also Klein, 2000). Culture jamming is entertaining, but there are serious politics behind it. One interesting culture jamming duo that has succeeded in causing controversy and confusion are the Yes Men http://www.theyesmen.org/. The Yes Men are two activists from the US who routinely pose as corporate leaders or business representatives. They see themselves as engaged in a process of “identity correction” (http://www.theyesmen.org). In other words, the Yes Men seek to provide an account of corporate identity that is much closer to reality than the identity constructions enacted by companies themselves. Their meticulously well planned and well executed activities constitute something of an external social audit of corporate activity. For example, the Yes Men once gave a talk at an industry conference posing as the

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WTO8 and argued that slavery should not have been abolished because the market would have solved the problem naturally in its own time. Another time they were interviewed by the BBC and presented a very blatant argument that the WTO operates only in the interests of rich people, making no attempt to argue that this was in the wider public interest, as CSR discourse tends to do. They have also posed as Dow Chemical company and made a press release that the Bhopal Victims would all be compensated, a charge which the company was forced into publicly denying. One of their more extreme stunts was to pose as representative of McDonalds and to present publicly a proposal to take human excrement from developed countries, process it and then sell it to people in Africa. What the Yes Men do happens to be theatrically absurd and highly entertaining. This is the form of politics that they have chosen and indeed that runs through the entire culture jamming movement. The content of the politics is very serious at the same time, showing that accounts of corporate identity can be given that are free from the strictures of the economic base and, moreover, throw into question the mythological identities that are projected by accounts that are tied to that economic base. In some ways this type of identity correction is an attempt to take the hegemonic power out of corporate rhetoric. Corporate rhetoric is hegemonic because it presents business interests as in the interests of all of society, it discursively aligns business and non-business interests. These alternative accounts of corporate identity unharness business from any public interest claims, instead showing how business operates on a more blatantly self-interested basis, to the detriment of wider society and the environment. Thus, by exposing the partisan nature of business activities these accounts undermine business attempts to exert Moral and Intellectual Leadership, rendering business discourse non-hegemonic. 5.3. Organic academic accounts Whilst the primary focus of this paper is on accounts that critique corporate activity and discourse, it might also be worth illustrating accounts that go beyond corporations. Civil society critique of corporations is important in exposing the partisan and destructive nature of the current historical bloc, yet we might also need to move beyond a horizon dominated by the lurking multinational corporation. Corporation-centric critiques might even be considered conservative if they lead to the reification of corporations. A refreshing example of a different type of critique is offered by Cooper et al. (2005) who undertook a social account of student hardship during the tuition fees debate in Scotland at the beginning of the century. The account produced appeared to have an influence on the political debate and whilst presenting one particular political demand – student support – such an account was contextualised within wider debates concerning social justice, educational opportunity and equality. Displaying the wider hegemonic potential of such accounting Cooper et al. (2005) point out the need to construct accounts that make connections between particular political demands and the “social totality”. In order to achieve this, such an account would transcend

8 The Yes Men often get invited to give talks as the WTO by unsuspecting conference organisers and media personnel. This is due to their having set up a spoof website (http://www.gatt.org/) which is very close to the actual web address of the WTO (http://www.gatt.com/).

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its particularism and involve, or become a resource for, other civil society organisations in wider processes of coalition building and structural critique. Cooper (2002) and Cooper et al. (2005) also exemplify the ways in which academic work can percolate out into civil society and become part of the struggle for a new historical bloc. The Gramscian conceptualisation of the intellectual as organically connected to civil society struggles represents a further challenge to academic accountants concerned with a more emancipatory form of accounting. The critiques of corporate social accounting offered by, for example, Adams (2004), Livesey (2001, 2002a, 2002b), Milne et al. (2005, 2006) and Tregidga and Milne (2006) in different ways show how successfully debunking corporate rhetoric benefits from careful academic analysis. Adams’s (2004) work, for instance, outlines the specific issues which companies decide to ignore when producing social accounts. This type of systematic analysis is rarely, if at all, undertaken by NGOs that do not apply the same methodological principles and techniques that academics have been trained in. The counter accounts described above, whilst presenting a refreshing and alternative vision of reality, might more readily withstand counter-critiques from corporations if grounded in a deeper knowledge about the specifics of the “reporting-performance gap” (Adams, 2004). Similarly, the work of Livesey (2001, 2002a, 2002b), Milne et al. (2005, 2006) and Tregidga and Milne (2006) highlights the sophisticated and intricate way in which language is employed in order to close off the debate around corporate sustainability. These studies employ theoretical lenses that few apart from academics are prepared to engage with. Certainly few corporate managers would understand or be prepared to engage with the intricacies of discourse analysis. However, academic engagement with civil society organisations that produce anti-accounts might put those organisations at an advantage for at least two reasons. Firstly, a greater awareness of the specific ideological functions of language permits more penetrating critique of corporate rhetoric. Secondly, such awareness increases the possibility of civil society groups outflanking corporations and constructing more appealing and convincing discourses themselves as part of the wider discursive struggle to articulate a new historical bloc. As academics we need not just to produce work that is critical and exposes the contingency of modern day globalised capitalism, we need also to ‘speak that truth to power’ (Said, 1994) and, where power is incapable of responding, to make connections with civil society that actively work towards the reconstruction of the historical bloc. In making those connections academics may learn something from another set of accounts that emanate from civil society: the expos´es of corporate wrongdoings and injustice undertaken by investigative journalists. The work of Klein (2000), Pilger (2003, 2006), Monbiot (2000, 2006), Palast (2002) and Moore (2002), to name but a few, are much more popular and used as reference points by activists than academic articles will ever be. What these works offer is an accessible and quick exposition of some of the sleaze, corruption and self-interest that goes on behind the scenes of public policy processes and corporate activity. As academics we have the ability to situate the findings of these people within appropriate theoretical contexts and therefore help identify the targets for action. With research assessment pressures academic work might do this but from a detached position, allowing us to stimulate ourselves intellectually meanwhile the sleaze continues and civil society is left to struggle without potentially useful collaborators. We need to resist the rationalised specialisation that is being imposed upon us and stop merely dreaming of a better world but actively take part in its construction as part of an invigorated civil society. This section has

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offered some tentative starting points to think about how academics can make those organic connections. 6. Conclusions Social accounting and CSR are implicated in stabilising the current historical bloc and maintaining the hegemony of business. Levy (1997) notes that corporations have “accommodated the environmental challenge through compromise and co-option, ameliorating their environmental impact sufficiently to blunt serious challenge to their hegemonic position” (Levy, 1997, p. 131). In this sense, corporate social accounting is implicated in a process that is counter-productive to the social accounting project’s aims of accountability and democracy. However, this does not imply that the social accounting project has failed, nor that social accounting does not have a role in emancipation. On the contrary, social accounting might be one of the key practices in shaking civil society out of its public relations-induced, consumerist slumber and in forming a countervailing power out of the fragmented demos. Presuming that the demos cannot do this without a paternalistic push from corporations is both unlikely in the first instance and potentially anti-democratic and elitist in the second (Everett, 2004). Gramsci’s dialectical view of the relation between base and superstructure implies that the latter is not a mere logical consequence of the former. Rather, the base can be influenced by the superstructure. Social accounting can realise its emancipatory potential if it can construct and disseminate new ideologies,9 if it is concerned with exposing and addressing social and environmental problems rather than obfuscating and perpetuating these. Given the limited discretion that corporations have to diverge from the interests of the economic base, the more autonomous elements of civil society may be the most appropriate change agents in enacting an emancipatory accounting. Such a reawakening of civil society may demand a change in focus for social accounting academics, looking to build accountability relationships from the ground up (Cooper, 2002; Cooper et al., 2005; Lehman, 1999, 2002). From a Gramscian perspective we are inescapably engaged in a war of position with business. The move to a more socially and environmentally conscious historic bloc will not come about of its own accord. Rather, it may require incremental measures that take into account the structural limitations of the current historic bloc at the same time as developing strategies for more radical change (Levy and Newell, 2005). When faced with resource rich adversaries, intelligent agency and strategy can exploit the dynamic nature of social systems in order to gain ground. The war of position is a long-term strategy “co-ordinated across multiple bases of power, to gain influence in the cultural institutions of society, develop organisational capacity, and to win new allies. As in a game of chess, power lies not just in the playing pieces, but in the configuration of forces relative to each other and to adversaries, and each set of moves and countermoves opens up new fissures and presents fresh possibilities to prise open the seams of a historic bloc” (Levy and Newell, 2005, p. 51). 9 Just as we might not be able to stand outside of the political logic of hegemony neither can we stand outside of ideology. The question therefore becomes: what kind of ideologies do we want?

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The anti-accounts and debunking activities of civil society organisations are attempts to prise open the historic blocal by exposing its contingency and the interests that sustain it. In this sense the civil society accounts outlined here are diametrically opposed to corporate social accounting’s intention to shield the current historical bloc from critique. Corporate social accounting moves us in the opposite direction of where we need to go, further entrenching the status quo by the disingenuous discursive alignment of business concerns with notions of the public interest and environmental sustainability. In turn, this wins business new allies and allows it to gain influence in the cultural consciousness of civil society. Activist accounts that debunk corporate rhetoric expose these hegemonic processes and also highlight the social and environmental dislocations that are engendered by corporate activity. Purely by highlighting these dislocations, the possibility of the ideological bases of the historical bloc becoming dislocated increases. With dislocation comes the need for a new historical bloc. Capitalism has proven to be adequately skilled in re-articulating the historical bloc in ways that do not threaten the basic modus operandi of business and markets. The changes that have come from business constitute only second order concessions (Levy and Egan, 2003). As long as business led processes of superficial change persist we are left to experience the frustration of Gramsci’s paradox: the old order appears to be dying yet the new order cannot quite be born. It is clear that a substantively new historical bloc will not be handed down to us by business. It is incumbent upon civil society to transcend the structural constraints that prevent ‘the people’ from emerging as an historical actor (Laclau, 2005) and actively construct a new historical bloc from the ground up. This represents a fundamental challenge to the social accounting project. Future research might look at ways in which civil society accounting not only critiques corporate behaviour but actively is, or can be used in, the formation of a countervailing power. If the social accounting project is to be geared towards emancipation then, from the Gramscian perspective presented here, it must take a ‘civil society’ turn and start to think about ways in which accounting can contribute to an invigorated public sphere outwith the direct influence of the economic base.

Acknowledgements The author is grateful to comments received on earlier drafts of this paper from Rob Gray, John McKernan, Mark Shenkin, Matthew Haigh, Markus Milne, Jeffrey Unerman, Nola Buhr and participants at the International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility, 22–23 October, 2004, Nottingham; participants and a discussant at the Critical Perspectives on Accounting conference, 28–30 April, 2005, New York; and participants at a University of Glasgow, Department of Accounting and Finance seminar on 12th October, 2005. The comments of two anonymous reviewers also played a significant role in improving the paper.

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