Exploring the emancipatory dimensions of globalisation: The struggle over IFRS8 and country-by-country reporting

Louise Crawford

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2019, vol. 63, issue C

Abstract: This paper unravels how Publish What You Pay (PWYP), a transnational social movement organisation campaigning for transparency reporting in the extractive sector to improve the lives of women, men and children in resource-rich countries, successfully mobilised emancipatory accounting change in the context of globalisation. Social movement theory helps explain how PWYP used political opportunity structures available in the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) due process, in an attempt to persuade IASB to adopt [a form of] country-by-country reporting for transnational extractive companies. Locating the research on the political and publicised struggle surrounding IASB’s adoption of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 8 – Operating Segments, the research finds PWYP was unsuccessful in persuading IASB to adopt country-by-country reporting. Despite this setback, and assisted by the unfolding drama of the global financial crisis, PWYP’s capacity to frame arguments, form alliances, evolve tactics and shift the target of its agency in response to institutional dynamics, meant they were ultimately successful in innovating, diffusing and instituting [a form of] mandatory country-by-country reporting in Europe and beyond. Such incremental emancipatory accounting change evidences a shift in the balance of power over accounting’s processual development away from IASB and neoliberal hegemonic forces. The findings of this research lend substance to Gallhofer and Haslam’s (2007) rescuing critique of constructing an international emancipatory accounting, emerging from globalisation’s embedded conflicts, consistent with their (2006) post-Marxist thesis of “continuum thinking orientated through struggle” (p. 910).

Keywords: Emancipatory; Globalisation; Social movement theory; Country-by-country reporting (CbCR); Diffusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:63:y:2019:i:c:s104523541730117x

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2017.10.005

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