 The changing role of accounting: From consumers to shareholdersJill Hooks and Ross Stewart CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2015, vol. 29, issue C, 86-101 Abstract: From the view of accounting as a social, political and institutional practice, this study examines the processes of accounting change as a State-sponsored consumer co-operative transformed to a private sector company pursuing profitability and value creation for shareholders. Accounting policy and practice were important aspects of the institutional and regulatory logics as the organisation changed from an entity focused on community service obligations to one that was profit driven. The State was the main factor/agent enabling this change. We frame our study within institutional theory and the political economy of accounting. We use institutional theory to inform our understanding of the institutional terrain and the political economy of accounting to understand the power and coercion of the State. Accounting rules and practices were co-opted to provide legitimacy, resistance, institutional logic, coercive change, and to redistribute wealth and power in society. Keywords: Accounting change; Organisational change; Corporatization; Institutional terrain; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:29:y:2015:i:c:p:86-101 DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2015.03.001 Access Statistics for this article CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING is currently edited by Marcia Annisette, Christine Cooper and Yves Gendron More articles in CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING from Elsevier |
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