Toward dialogic accounting? Public accountants’ assistance to works councils − A tool between hope and illusion
| Autor: | Emmanuelle Nègre, Marie-Anne Verdier, Christophe Godowski |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Laboratoire Gouvernance et Contrôle Organisationnel (LGCO), Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Dialogic
Information Systems and Management Sociology and Political Science business.industry media_common.quotation_subject 05 social sciences Illusion Social rights Accounting 050201 accounting 16. Peace & justice Democracy Political science Financial information 0502 economics and business [SHS.GESTION]Humanities and Social Sciences/Business administration Ideology business 050203 business & management Finance ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS media_common Qualitative research |
| Zdroj: | Critical Perspectives On Accounting Critical Perspectives On Accounting, Elsevier, 2020, 69, pp.102095. ⟨10.1016/j.cpa.2019.102095⟩ |
| ISSN: | 1045-2354 1095-9955 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.cpa.2019.102095⟩ |
| Popis: | French law allows works councils (WCs, mandatory bodies representing employees and having both economic and social rights in firms with more than 50 employees) to be assisted by public accountants (PAs) to help them understand the accounting and financial information received from managers. The aim of this assistance is to strengthen the democratic role of the WCs in firms. The purpose of this research is to examine whether and how the PAs’ assistance to WCs leads to the emergence of a form of agonistic democracy by contributing to an evolution in firms’ uses of accounting. We conducted a qualitative study with 36 semi-structured interviews with both PAs and WC members. Our results indicate that, under certain circumstances, the assistance provided by PAs can support dialogue between the WC members (“laypersons”) and the managers (“experts”) in WCs, which can be viewed as “hybrid forums” (open spaces where heterogeneous groups come together to debate socio-technical choices). The confrontation between different ideological orientations that inevitably arises can contribute to a dialogic use of accounting, which is promising for developing an agonistic democracy within organizations. However, PA assistance to a WC must be carefully handled because of the risk that managers will instrumentalize it. When this happens, accounting is still used in a monologic (as opposed to dialogic) form in firm management. The risk is that genuine participation by WC members remains illusory. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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