Counter accounts of profit: outrage to action through “just” calculation

Abstract

Purpose Profit is often moralized by activists, but scant research has carefully examined what profit is for these activists or how they use it to create a more just world. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social movements use counter accounts of profit as tools of resistance. Design/methodology/approach A multiple case study design, informed by framing theory, is used to trace the framing of profit from activists’ counter accounts to actions they precipitated. Specifically, the study examines counter accounts of profit from the UK abolition movement, Médecines Sans Frontières access to essential medicines campaign and Brigitte Bardot Foundation’s opposition to the Canadian seal hunt, and how their framings of profit influenced change. Findings Activists reframe profit to create visibilities and bridges to the suffering of distant others. Reframing the calculation and boundary of profit is a strategy to elicit moral outrage, hope and ultimately a more just world. Through these reframings, activists in three different social movements were able to change the possibilities of who and what can be profitable, and how. Social implications The inherently incomplete nature of accounting frames give rise to accounting’s vulnerability to non-accountants to assert their views of a moral profit. Accounting therefore is both a means of control at a distance but also “emancipation at a distance.” Originality/value Scholars have asserted that accounting can be used for resistance, few studies have examined how. By examining how activists assert what profit is – and should be – the paper documents and theorizes profit as contested and highlights accounting’s emancipatory potential.

Accounting's role in resisting wage theft: a labour process theory analysis

“…Cooper et al, 2005;Irvine and Moerman, 2017), we discuss one resistance initiated by a small number of university students in the regional Australian town of KC. In terms of the forms of counter accounts, while prior studies highlight the importance of telling stories (Laine and Vinnari, 2017;Himick and Ruff, 2019), in KC's case, we find that counter accounts are not simply workers' own narrative in form but included the restoration of the missing accounts from businesses. The students involved in the case are a small proportion of KC's student workforce.…”

“…Tregidga (2017), for instance, studies a mock sustainable report a community group created to challenge corporate (over)development. Both research streams show corporate accounts can be selective, incomplete and self-serving and that counter-accounts can provide alternative calculations of profits (Irvine and Moerman, 2017;Himick and Ruff, 2019) and reveal corporations' negative social impacts (Apostol, 2015).…”

A research agenda for problematising profit and profitability

“…Himick and Ruff (2020) in “ Counter accounts of profit: outrage to action through ‘just’ calculation”, analyses accounting and associated calculative practices that were applied within the slavery abolitionist movement in England in the 1820s. She also examines later activist movements involved in animal protection and in the campaign of Médecines Sans Frontières to make medicines available to the poor.…”

“…She also examines later activist movements involved in animal protection and in the campaign of Médecines Sans Frontières to make medicines available to the poor. Himick and Ruff (2020) uses the concept of counter accounts as it may be used to counter the, often dubious, moral view of profits proclaimed by powerful institutions. Similar ideas can be applied to leading firms in multiple industry sectors.…”

“…These are particularly good examples where the impact of severe “externalities” for social well-being are best documented. Himick and Ruff (2020) structures her analysis using processual theorising, overflows, the artificiality of boundaries and the moral dimensions of action at a distance. Her story is essentially about how accounting profit can be and was problematised by careful forensic analysis.…”