Postcoloniality in corporate social and environmental accountability

Abstract

Using a discourse analysis of interviews with corporate managers and their published corporate sustainability information, this paper argues that corporate social and environmental accountability (CSEA) in a postcolonial context (Sri Lanka) is a textual space wherein local managers create a hybrid cultural identity through mimicking. It examines how local managers embrace and appropriate global discourses to reimagine their local managerial circumstances. They deploy a set of textual strategiesimitation, redefinition, innovation, and codification -to translate CSEA into a hybrid 'textual(real)ity' (i.e., interspace and duality between accounting text -textuality -and material practices -reality) whereby the global context is textualized as local and the local is contextualised as global. Nationalism, cultural ethics, and poverty enter this textual(real)ity as discursive elements that reactivate locality. A cultural notion of philanthropic giving, dana, gives local cultural authenticity to this textual(real)ity while the national politico-economic identity of poverty textualizes CSEA as a national development strategy. The paper also critiques whether these postcolonial dynamics can promote agonistic accountabilities. It contributes to the accounting literature on postcolonialism, imperialism, and globalization discourses.

Progress: engaging with organisations in pursuit of improved sustainability accounting and performance

“…They found sustainability reporting to be more complex than is usually assumed in the literature, with preparers interested in gaining legitimacy through those disclosures vis-à-vis the MNC, but also compromising with local values, which "discourages corporate self-praise (…) and promotes a climate of secrecy in business" (p. 225). Their results concur somehow with those of Alawattage and Fernando (2017), in that global business standards used in sustainability accounting have an intricate role when translated into the reality of LDCs: progressive social change, wrecking local social arrangements and possibly sustaining colonial structures.…”

Behind the World Bank’s ringing declarations of “social accountability”: Ghana’s public financial management reform

“…It is no exaggeration to say that the ' critical' accounting agenda in LDCs has largely involved theorising the way global development discourses have penetrated their cultural-economic and political spaces. Since its mid-1990s beginnings by a set of Manchester PhDs (e.g., Annisette 1996;Uddin 1997;Wickramasinghe 1996), this project has grown significantly, encapsulating various issues pertaining to, for example, accounting implications in structural reforms (e.g., Alawattage and Alsaid 2017;Uddin and Hopper 2001); accounting and indigenous cultural practices (e.g., Davie 2000Davie , 2005Gallhofer and Chew 2000;; development of the accounting profession in postcolonial contexts (e.g., Annisette 2000Annisette , 2003Dyball et al 2007); accountability in the civil society (e.g., Wickramasinghe 2008, 2009;Jayasinghe and Wickramasinghe 2007); post and neo-colonial dynamics in public sector accountability (e.g., Lassou and Hopper, 2016;Lassou et al, 2019); and corporate social and environmental accountability (e.g., Alawattage and Fernando 2017;Belal et al 2013;Kamla 2015). Recently, however, perhaps because of accountability' s increasing political significance in this neoliberal time, the accountability dynamics of development has received much more explicit and concentrated effort (e.g., Alawattage and Fernando 2017;O'Leary 2017;O'Dwyer and Unerman 2008;Roberts 1991;Roberts and Scapens 1985).…”

“…Though providing only very tenuous accounts of democracy, this model has been instrumental in establishing functional accountability regimes across the world, privileging shareholders' interests over democratic societies' pluralistic need and, thereby, helping the economy to colonise the polity and society. Deliberative and agonistic conceptions of democracy are mobilised against this hegemony to locate accountability within a more democratic, pluralistic, and participative social order (see Alawattage and Fernando 2017;Brown 2009;Dillard 2013a, 2015).…”

The Politics and Struggle of Accountability: A Case Study of Bangladesh’s Ready-Made Garment (RMG) Industry

“…Dialogic accounting is used as the theoretical framework to examine controversies surrounding the design and operation of COCs within their socio-political context. As discussed in Section 3.1.2, dialogic accounting focuses on diverse socio-political perspectives and engagement strategies (Alawattage and Azure, in press;Alawattage and Fernando, 2017;Brown and Dillard, 2015) to address conflicts and commonalities among stakeholders, to engage multiple viewpoints, and to address power asymmetries (Brown, 2009;Denedo et al, 2017;O'Dwyer, 2005;Thomson and Bebbington, 2014;Vinnari and Dillard, 2016). Accounting and accountability practices are unavoidably value-laden and political.…”

“…Drawing on the work of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Brown (2009) introduced the concept of dialogic accounting, based on agonistic political theory, to the accounting literature (Alawattage and Azure, in press). By taking divergent perspectives seriously, Brown (2009) questions dominant ideologies (e.g., the prioritisation of business and shareholders) in mainstream accounting and accountability practice and instead she advocates inclusive, participatory, and pluralistic approaches (Alawattage and Azure, in press;Alawattage and Fernando, 2017;Dillard and Roslender, 2011).…”