The accounting profession today: A poststructuralist critique

ISSN： 1045-2354

Source： Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol.11, Iss.5, 2000-10, pp. : 607-626

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Abstract

This paper addresses recent critiques of the accounting profession by the authors in Critical Perspectives on Accounting(CPA) (Vol. 9, No. 5, 1998); Briloff (1990), Briloff (1993), Briloff (1994); and Francis (1994), from Jean Baudrillard’s poststructural semiotics perspective. Relying on his phases of the image and orders of simulacra schemes, the paper concludes that (1) theCPA authors merely reiterate arguments and Whiggish remedies that have been around for a long time, (2) the profession no longer has any sacred covenant with society, (3) the Income sign produced by accountants no longer refers to nor has any rapport with any real referent, and (4) that auditing working papers are simply mirror images of other mirror images. The paper then draws out some of the possibilities of poststructuralist analyses for revitalizing the Critical Accounting project. In response to Moore’s (1991) observation that the project is “politically conservative" and has “placed nothing at stake," our analysis manifests the stake as no more nor less than the profession’s near-monopoly on accounting services.