Introduction to special issue on ethnographies of accountability
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 4 August 2023
Issue publication date: 31 October 2023
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to outline the motivation for this Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) Special Issue, providing an overview of the six selected papers. This study seeks to inspire further ethnographic research on accountability.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors reflect on why ethnographic investigation is essential to accountability research and the boundaries that constrained and enabled both this Special Issue and which occur in ethnographic research.
Findings
The contents of this issue do not merely describe or analyse one or more “accounts”, but also consider how the accounted for reflects its surroundings and its role in the social world. The authors argue that such research should progress from ethnographic descriptive data to infer meaningful conclusions and move from the everyday natural settings of behaviour to examine inter-relatedness. This requires the researcher to maintain their intra-relatedness. These boundaries, inherent to human existence, are actively created and operate at different aggregation levels to include and exclude.
Research limitations/implications
In this introduction and the papers selected for this AAAJ special issue, with few exceptions, accountability shifts from the researched to the researcher as research accounts are produced. Yet, ethnographies of accountability are epistemologically and ontologically weighted towards accepting the possibility of shared social meaning requiring researchers to manage the interactions, relationalities and presuppositions between these places. The authors urge future researchers to experiment more explicitly than has often been the case with published accounts of these demands.
Originality/value
This AAAJ Special Issue provides a set of original empirical and theoretical contributions to support and advance further ethnographic research into accountability which acknowledges the boundaries that may include and exclude.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate the support of James Guthrie and Lee Parker in the formulation of this Special Issue, and the authors and reviewers of the papers herein. The authors also are grateful for the feedback from to anonymous reviewers on this introduction.
Citation
Cordery, C.J., De Loo, I. and Letiche, H. (2023), "Introduction to special issue on ethnographies of accountability", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 36 No. 7/8, pp. 1697-1706. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-07-2023-6546
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited