Accountability Research: Ethnographic Methods in Organisation and Accounting

This book discusses (auto- )ethnographies of accountability, undertaken (in close collaboration) by a multinational group of accounting and organization theory researchers over a period of three years. The key assumption underlying the book is that accountability is inherently an identity- creating process where the study of account- making has to be done participatively, with radical openness to the one(s) being researched, as well as to their context. That openness we call ’ethnography’. The values or assumptions inherent to the practices of account and identity-making, in a specific context, are what (auto- )ethnographies seek to describe and identify. These values and assumptions warrant critical, ethical reflection, and this is what the researchers presented here have tried to provide.

The chapters in this book all are mini- studies of relatedness. The scale of examination is intimate; the reflections provided by the researchers are mainly methodological.

This book is of interest to accounting and organization theory students and scholars who believe that accountability can fruitfully be studied through (auto-) ethnography. The book extends currently existing views on how accountability can be handled and discharged between researchers and their researched, when local, intimate settings are studied.

Hugo Letiche is Research Professor ISTEC Paris France and Professor emeritus UvH Utrecht (NL). He received his doctoral degree in conflict psychology from Leiden University in 1976 and obtained his doctorate degree from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1984. His research is phenomenologically and ethnographically informed and focusses on in-practice responsibilization and accountability. He has written / co-edited some twenty books and contributed to some forty more.

Ivo De Loo is Professor of Management Accounting & Control at Nyenrode Business University, Breukelen (the Netherlands). He received his doctoral degree in quantitative economics from Maastricht University in 1995 (cum laude) and obtained his doctorate degree from the Open University of the Netherlands in 2008. Ivo is interested in how the praxis of management accounting and control is shaped and changed in organizations, and what this means for discharging accountability.

Carolyn Cordery is Adjunct Professor at Victoria University, New Zealand and an Honorary Professor at Nyenrode University, The Netherlands. She is Chair of the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board (NZASB), a member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) and the Practitioner Advisory Group of the IFR4NPO project (International Financial Reporting for Non Profit Organisations). Carolyn is Joint Editor of Accounting History and Associate Editor of British Accounting Review and Meditari Accountancy Research. She is also on the editorial board of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal. Carolyn’s research focuses on not-for-profit organisations’ accounting and accountability.

Jean-Luc Moriceau is professor of research methods and accountability at Institut Mines-Telecom Business School and member of the LITEM, a Paris-Saclay research lab. He is responsible for doctoral training, and associate editor for Culture and Orgaization and RIPCO. He has organised and animated a large number of national and international seminars and conferences. He advocates a humanistic approach to organisations and research, where he emphasises the importance of affects, relatedness and performance. He favours qualitative approaches, inventive methods, reflexivity and evocative writing.