Adam Smith Business School

Professor Trevor Hopper, University of Sussex.

"Doing Critical Dialogic Accounting and Accountability-based Participatory Action Research: An Analytic Framework and Case Illustration"
Wednesday, 7 June. 2 pm
Wards Library, Main Building

Abstract

The paper presents an analytic framework for conducting critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research to further democratisation, social change, and empowering marginalised groups, and to reflect on its application in a Bangladeshi nongovernmental organisation’s microfinance program.
The framework, synthesising prior CDAA theorising and agonistic-inspired action research, is described, followed by a discussion of the methodological challenges when applying this during a ten-year, ongoing intervention seeking greater voice for poor, female borrowers.
Six methodological issues emerged: investigating contested issues rather than organisation-centric research; identifying and engaging divergent discourses; engaging marginalised groups, activists and/or dominant powerholders; addressing power and power relations; building alliances for change; and evaluating and disseminating results. We discuss these issues and how the participatory action research methods and analytic tools used evolved in response to emergent challenges, and key lessons learned in a study of microfinance and women’s empowerment.
The paper addresses calls within and beyond accounting to develop critical, engaged and change-oriented scholarship adopting an agonistic research methodology. It uses a novel critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research approach. The reflexive examination of its application engaging NGOs, social activists, and poor women to challenge dominant discourses and practices, and build alliances for change, explores issues encountered. The paper concludes with reflective questions to aid researchers interested in undertaking similar studies in other contentious, power-laden areas concerning marginalised groups.

Bio

Trevor Hopper is Emeritus Professor of Management Accounting at Sussex University, and an honorary professor at Victoria University of Wellington, and Essex University. Previously he was a cost accountant in industry, a lecturer at Wolverhampton and Sheffield Universities, and a professor at Manchester Business School. He has co-edited eight books, including A Handbook of Accounting in Developing Countries and Issues in Management Accounting, and has published over one hundred articles in major accounting, management, and sociology journals and book chapters on management control, accounting theory, accounting and development, accounting education, accounting history, corruption, and sustainability. The empirical contributions, mainly intensive case studies, cover Bangladesh, Benin, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Japan, USA, Portugal, and the UK. Professor Hopper cofounded the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference, has co-edited of the British Accounting Review, and has guest-edited numerous special issues in leading accounting journals. He is an editorial board member of several. His visiting academic appointments span the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Holland, France, Sweden, and Indonesia. He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the British Accounting and Finance Association and the Global Accounting and Organisational Change Network, the Platinum Award from the African Accounting and Finance Association, an honorary doctorate from the Stockholm School of Economics, and membership of the Interdisciplinary Accounting Hall of Fame.

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First published: 21 March 2023