Critical Perspectives on Accounting

Critical Perspectives on Accounting aims to provide a forum for the growing number of accounting researchers and practitioners who realize that conventional theory and practice is ill-suited to the challenges of the modern environment, and that accounting practices and corporate behavior are inextricably connected with many allocative, distributive, social, and ecological problems of our era. From such concerns, a new literature is emerging that seeks to reformulate corporate, social, and political activity, and the theoretical and practical means by which we apprehend and affect that activity.

Research Areas Include:

• Studies involving the political economy of accounting, critical accounting, radical accounting, and accounting's implication in the exercise of power
• Financial accounting's role in the processes of international capital formation, including its impact on stock market stability and international banking activities
• Management accounting's role in organizing the labor process
• The relationship between accounting and the state in various social formations
• Studies of accounting's historical role, as a means of "remembering" the subject's social and conflictual character
• The role of accounting in establishing "real" democracy at work and other domains of life
• Accounting's adjudicative function in international exchanges, such as that of the Third World debt
• Antagonisms between the social and private character of accounting, such as conflicts of interest in the audit process
• The identification of new constituencies for radical and critical accounting information
• Accounting's involvement in gender and class conflicts in the workplace
• The interplay between accounting, social conflict, industrialization, bureaucracy, and technocracy
• Reappraisals of the role of accounting as a science and technology
• Critical reviews of "useful" scientific knowledge about organizations

Benefits to authors
We also provide many author benefits, such as free PDFs, a liberal copyright policy, special discounts on Elsevier publications and much more. Please click here for more information on our author services.

Please see our Guide for Authors for information on article submission. If you require any further information or help, please visit our Support Center

Additional policy from the journal on the use of artificial intelligence in research

In an editorial published in 2024, the editors of the journal developed the following policy the applies to submissions that rely on the use of artificial intelligence.

“As co-editors, we are particularly concerned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) to the authenticity of research. We conceive of authenticity in research as an implicit claim made by the researcher that is empirically and ethically grounded. Empirical authenticity relates to the researcher’s genuine commitment to understand the world reflexively. Ethical authenticity means being original and true to oneself despite prevailing performance pressures in the researcher’s environment. Given what we know about the juggernaut of AI, we do not want Critical Perspectives on Accounting to receive submissions in which AI played a significant role in any step of the research process, except for language translation and copyediting purposes. Also, we do not want reviewers and editors-in-charge to rely in any significant way on AI to produce reviews, make editorial decisions, and write editorial letters. This is a question of authenticity.”

Reference: Gendron, Y., Andrew, J., Cooper, C., and Tregidga, H. 2024. On the juggernaut of artificial intelligence in organizations, research and society. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 100, Article 102759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102759