The context of the contemporary accounting professional

1
Chapter 15

• The context of the contemporary accounting
  professional

2
Environmental changes

• Changes in environmental conditions can be
  characterised by the following trends
• technical and ideological proletarisation of
  accountants in public and private sectors
• the institutional capitalism of the new governing
  class
• the assimilation of academic accountants into a
  flawed universal class
• the manufactured consciousness of users

3
Genesis of emerging structural changes

• Societies are constituted by groups of
  protagonists competing for economic and social
  power and political authority
• Dominant modes of interaction consistently favour
  one category over another and result in
  exploitation of others
• At every societal level, groups of protagonists
  face each other over the contradictions that
  separate them

4
Genesis of emerging structural changes (contd)

• The emerging structural changes in the accounting
  environment are contradictions created by the
  global conflicts and the emergence of new
  protagonists in the accounting and other
  environments

5
Technical and ideological proletarianisation of
accountants

• The first element in the new-era conflict is the
  emergence of new class differences among
  accountants
• Accountants have become proletarianised, working
  according to a division of labour conceived and
  monitored by management, following procedural
  rules and repertoires created by administrative
  processes and/or fiat

6
Technical proletariansation

• Has reflected a shift of control towards
  employers or management and a loss of the
  creative freedom accountants enjoyed as
  self-employed professionals
• In the process, as theorised by Marx, they have
  lost control of both the means and ends of
  labour, a phenomenon labelled as technical
  proletarianisation

7
Ideological proletarianisation

• In addition to technical proletarianistion, the
  emergence of the new working class or
  professional managerial class has led also to
  an ideological proletarianisation, which refers
  to the appropriation of control by management for
  capital, over the goals and social purposes to
  which work is put
• The accountant has lost control of the nature of
  the total product and may be indifferent to the
  outcome of the activities he or she is involved in

8
Results of the proletarianisation

• May lead to the accountant losing the knowledge
  base as capital restructures through management
  the specification of the product and management
  restructures the organisation of work
• Renders the accountant a mere technician of
  functionaries, separate from the major social,
  moral and technological issues of his or her
  profession
• These changes have led to a decrease in the
  number and quality of people going into
  accounting programs the profession lacks
  glamour

9
Effects on the accountant

• The accountant may respond by either ideological
  desensitisation or ideological cooperation
• ideological desensitisation is a denial or
  separation of the self from ideological control
  of the job, disclaiming either interest or
  responsibility for the social uses to which ones
  work is put
• ideological cooperation is a redefinition of
  ones goals to make them consistent with
  institutional imperatives
• In either case, there is a high likelihood of the
  accountant being alienated from his or her work

10
Alienation

• Alienation in the domain of work has a fourfold
  aspect
• a human being is alienated from the objects
  he/she produces, and
• from the process of production, and
• from him or herself, and
• from the community of his or her fellows
• In this condition, the mindset of accountants,
  their consciousness, is to a large extent only
  the reflection of the conditions in which they
  find themselves and of the position in the
  process of production

11
Institutional capitalism

• The second element in the new conflictual order
  concerns the nature of the governing class in
  corporations and accounting firms
• the corporate community is characterised by a
  socially cohesive national upper class
• according to Westergaard and Resler, this
  governing class is composed of those who own and
  those who control capital on a larger scale
  they have a common stake in one overriding cause
  to keep the working rule of society capitalist

12
Class-wide rationality

• This assumes that the corporate elite is largely
  capable of identifying and promoting its common
  political objectives
• Although corporate rationality still
  characterises much of the internal organisation
  of accounting firms, class-wide rationality now
  characterises its highest circles. Old school
  ties and kindred signs of proper breeding greatly
  facilitate access to the highest circles of the
  CPA firms

13
Academic accountants

• The third element in the new conflictual order is
  a new class of academic accountants
• Gouldner advanced two propositions regarding this
  flawed universal class
• the rise of a new class comprising humanistic
  intellectuals and technical intelligentsia, whose
  universalism is badly flawed
• the growing dominance of this class as a cultural
  bourgeoisie and having monopoly over cultural
  capitalism and professionalism from which it
  gains its power

14
Academic accountants (contd)

• This new class forms one speech community,
  sharing a culture of critical discourse. This
  concept is defined as
• a historically evolved set of rules, a grammar
  of discourse which
• is conceived to justify its assertions,
• whose mode of justification does not proceed by
  involving authorities and
• prefers to elicit the voluntary consent of those
  addressed solely on the basis of arguments
  addressed

15
Academic accountants a flawed class

• This new class is flawed because it is considered
  elitist and self-seeking and uses its special
  knowledge to advance its own interests and power
• Gouldner suggests that the new class uses
  cultural reproduction to maintain its power just
  as economic reproduction is used to serve the
  interests of the holders of economic capital
• Academic accountants are motivated by
  self-interest and the pressing need to publish
• Academic accountants have gained a power
  associated with their monopoly over the cultural
  accounting capital

16
Capitalist domination of information

• The capitalist domination of information can be
  expressed in three propositions
• the class rule of management appropriates the
  information product they create
• such domination is maintained by the states
  enforcement of contractual arrangements,
  protection of property rights and maintenance of
  public order
• information tools at the disposition of
  management, such as annual reports and press
  releases, allow management to disseminate
  information useful for the preservation of its
  interests

17
The manufactured consciousness of users

• The three propositions amount to three forms of
  domination
• market exploitation
• legal coercion
• ideological domination
• They allow management to convey its beliefs to
  the users and, in the process, shape users
  consciousness about the firm
• The users acquire a manufactured consciousness
  compatible with the expectations of management

18
Manufacturing of consciousness

• The manufacturing of consciousness is an obstacle
  to the expansion of data that is relevant to the
  users
• The proper task is to announce the truth, expose
  the error, and identify all the constraints that
  can impede enquiring, comprehension and efficient
  action
• A similar approach, the ethical approach to
  financial accounting, rests on concepts of
  fairness, justice, equity and truth

19
Manufacturing of consciousness (contd)

• A user needs to be informed of the wide
  dissemination of accounting reports
• A better strategy with the attribute of better
  informing the user is to expose the user to
  various accounting reports from various sources
• What may result is a shift in the users
  expertise an expansion of the breadth of
  knowledge, that the user may acquire a better
  sense of what is useful and what is not, and an
  evaluation of the different preparers of
  accounting information