Mitchell Stein

• Graham, C.; Persson, M. E.; Radcliffe, V. S.; Stein, M. J., 2023, "The State of Ohio’s Auditors, the Enumeration of Population, and the Project of Eugenics", Journal of Business Ethics, October 187(3): 565 - 587.
  Abstract: In 1856, the State of Ohio began an enumeration of its population to count and identify people with disabilities. This paper examines the ethical role of the accounting profession in this project, which supported the transatlantic eugenics movement and its genocidal attempts to eliminate disabled persons from the population. We use a theoretical approach based on Levinas who argued that the self is generated through engagement with the Other, and that this engagement presupposes a responsibility to and for the Other. We show that successive waves of legislation relied on State and County auditors along with Township clerks and assessors to conduct the mechanics of the enumeration of the population, which focused on the identification, categorization, and counting of the disabled people of the State. We argue that the accounting-based technologies of enumeration and reporting objectify the enumerated persons and deny the auditor’s pre-existing ethical obligation to this new Other. We show how the financial expertise and structures of the State were engaged in the execution of this mandate, which remained in place for over a century and supported a program of institutionalization. We consider the ramifications of this for our understanding of the ethical role of public sector accounting in the United States over this period, which has been under-explored.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-022-05279-8#citeas

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05279-8

• Andon, P.; Free, C.; Radcliffe, V. S.; Stein, M. J., 2022, "Boundary Work at the Margins of Politics and Auditing: Rationalising Advertising Probity in Ontario", Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal, October 35(8): 1830 - 1861.
  Abstract: Purpose: We examine how political players attempt to rationalise arguments for and against the expansion of auditing into governmental affairs, and how state audit authorities respond to politically motivated boundary work. This study is motivated by growing evidence of political involvement in attempts to both expand, and undermine, state audit oversight of government affairs. Design/methodology/approach: We present an interpreted history (covering relevant events from 1995 to 2016) of political rationales and associated boundary work that led to the expansion of the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario’s (OAGO) mandate to audit government advertisements campaigns for partisanship as well as attempts to modify this new audit remit over time. Findings: We reveal substantive, formal, and practical ways in which political players sought to rationalise/counter-rationalise expanding the OAGO’s authority to the unfamiliar territory of advertising probity. We show how such justification claims ebb and flow in accordance with changeable political interests, and how state auditors react to the fraught nature of politically motivated boundary work. Originality: We conceptualise important forms of rationalising rhetoric (which cannot be reduced to expressions of neoliberal government) that can be mobilised to deem state auditor authority legitimate in overseeing otherwise novel, unfamiliar, and controversial government affairs. We also reveal a hitherto unrecognised resolve in state auditor responses to political intervention and shed further light on generalised forms of rationale that can underpin boundary work at the margins of accounting.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AAAJ-06-2020-4641/full/html

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-06-2020-4641

• Free, C.; Radcliffe, V. S.; Spence, C.; Stein, M. J., 2020, "Auditing and the Development of the Modern State", Contemporary Accounting Research, March 37(1): 485 - 513.
  Abstract: Previous research has highlighted the crucial roles that accounting plays in both the construction and development of the State. However, only limited attention has been paid to how accounting is both conceived and implemented as a technology of government. Taking a historical perspective, and through extensive archival analysis of the Canadian experience, we explore here the ways in which accounting practices were significantly expanded and elaborated over time. Progressively, accounting was successful in increasingly infiltrating the machinery of the State, resulting in greater power and influence being accorded to State accounting professionals. We contribute to existing governmentality research on accounting in two principal ways. Firstly, we demonstrate how the territorializing power of accounting has transnational dimensions. The Canadian initiative was galvanized by simultaneous initiatives taking place in the United Kingdom, the United States and a range of other Commonwealth nations. The similar trajectories of these various initiatives leads to a view of accounting as something that is co-constructed across borders, a process we refer to here as transnational territorialization. Secondly, we demonstrate the crucial role played by key individuals in this transnational territorialization. Auditors-General worked both individually, and in concert, to skillfully sell the evaluative potential of accounting to key power brokers in the State apparatus, thereby creating advantageous positions for themselves. This highlights the crucial role required by skillful and reflexive social agents in the elaboration of accounting technologies, something that hitherto has been under-appreciated in extant literature on government auditing.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12497

• Radcliffe, V. S.; Spence, C.; Stein, M. J.; Wilkinson, B., 2018, "Professional repositioning during times of institutional change: The case of tax practitioners and changing moral boundaries", Accounting, Organizations and Society, April 66: 45 - 59.
  Abstract: © 2017 Elsevier Ltd Recent work has called for more research to be carried out exploring how professional projects develop in conjunction with wider processes of institutional change. We respond to these calls here by analysing the way in which tax professionals have responded to a major disruption at the field level. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's action plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting has proposed far reaching reforms in an attempt to bring corporate tax practice into line with changing moral boundaries in society. Through a combination of documentary analysis, participant observation and qualitative interviews, this paper shows how tax professionals negotiate changing moral imperatives. In doing so, the paper enhances our understanding of tax practice and contributes to extant literature on professionalization and institutional change in three principal ways. Firstly, we show how exogenous field-level changes afford professional groups opportunities for strategic repositioning. Secondly, we illustrate how different professional factions are differentially affected by processes of institutional change, distinguishing between in-house tax professionals and those working in public practice. Thirdly, we demonstrate how this strategic repositioning is made possible by the skillful deployment of the technical-cognitive resources of professional groups.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2017.12.001

• Persson, M. E.; Radcliffe, V. S.; Stein, M. J., 2018, "Elmer G. Beamer and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants: The Pursuit of a Cognitive Standard for the Accounting Profession", Accounting History, February 23(1-2): 71 - 92.
  Abstract: This article investigates Elmer G Beamer’s (1909–2000) activities at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) during a 30-year period beginning in the 1950s, using a theoretical lens from the sociology of professions literature. Beamer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1909 and trained as an accountant with Haskins & Sells after graduating from high school. He stayed with the same firm throughout his career and rose to the position of partner. While in public practice, Beamer gave unselfishly of his time to the profession. As a member of the AICPA, Beamer chaired the Committee on the Common Body of Knowledge of CPAs (Certified Public Accountants), Committee on Education and Experience Requirements, and the Ad Hoc Committee on Continuing Education. The goal of the three committees was to establish a common body of knowledge for accountants in public practice. Beamer’s efforts resulted in the 150 credit-hour requirements for CPAs and the mandate for yearly continuing professional education for accountants to maintain an active CPA license in the United States. The article draws on archival material from the Elmer G. Beamer Papers Collection at the University of Florida. The collection contains over 500 items of Beamer’s personal correspondence, committee memorandums, and writings. The article concludes with a discussion of the empirical narrative and Beamer’s role in the larger context of the professionalization of the accounting discipline in the United States.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1032373216668882

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1032373216668882

• Stein, M. J.; Salterio, S.; Shearer, T., 2017, "Transparency in Accounting and Corporate Governance: Making Sense of Multiple Meanings", Accounting and the Public Interest, December 17(1): 31 - 59.
  Abstract: Calls for greater transparency of accounting and financial information in the aftermath of Enron and other accounting scandals appeared to offer the opportunity for greater public accountability within financial reporting. Our analysis however suggests different emergent meanings from various groups such as senior managers, investors, regulators, and other gatekeepers were associated with these calls, indicating an underlying 'taken for grantedness' concerning the need for increased transparency. We examine these emergent meanings of transparency and their effects on broader issues of accountability within financial reporting. Our analysis, employing sensemaking, shows the mobilization of "transparency" to construct meanings to make sense and rationalize complex, ambiguous and uncertainty events around the accounting scandals and the subsequent financial crises. This meaning construction permitted action that 'restored' confidence in financial markets and in doing so served the interests of senior managers who defined their own public accountability. Our analysis also suggests that accountants and regulators need to provide higher forms of sensegiving around such crisis to offer alternatives to senior managers' accounts of transparency and financial reporting.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.2308/apin-51746

• Radcliffe, V. S.; Spence, C.; Stein, M. J., 2017, "The Impotence of Accountability: The Relationship between Greater Transparency and Corporate Reform", Contemporary Accounting Research, March 34(1): 622 - 658.
  Abstract: This paper explores the role of accounting in the attempted reform of the corporation during the progressive era in the United States. Focusing on the activities of three institutional bodies in the early twentieth century, the paper documents how their repeated recourse to publicity, which relied crucially on accounting technologies, failed to turn the corporation into an entity more sensitive to the public interest. Specifically, two interrelated contributions are made to existing literature on accounting and corporate governance. Firstly, the paper documents the early historical development of the now taken-for-granted phenomenon of accounting and adjudicating at the entity level (Miller and Power 2013). Secondly, the paper offers a rejoinder to present-day projects of corporate governance which identify better and enhanced accountability as key to the successful reform of the corporation. During the progressive era, accounting expanded and territorialized new spaces, bringing trusts out of a hitherto secretive, private realm and into the view of the public. Yet this was not enough to engender substantive corporate reform.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12277

• Persson, M. E.; Radcliffe, V. S.; Stein, M. J., 2015, "Alvin R. Jennings: Managing Partner, Policy-Maker, & Institute President", Accounting Historian's Journal, June 42(1): 85 - 104.
  Abstract: Alvin R. Jennings (1905-1990) was a rare breed of an accountant. He was trained as a practitioner and rose to become a managing partner at Lybrand, Ross Bros. & Montgomery, but he kept a constant watch on the academic field of accounting research. Jennings served on the influential American Institute of Accountants’ Committee on Auditing Procedure (1946-49) and later as the president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (1957-58). This paper explores these activities and Jennings’ contribution to the professional, academic, and institution discourse of the accounting discipline.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2468692

• Stein, M. J., 2008, "Beyond the boardroom: governmental perspectives on corporate governance", Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal, July 21(7): 1001 - 1025.
  Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to examine corporate governance and consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the US from a socio-political perspective. Designmethodologyapproach - The author employs neo-liberalism and its related mentality of governmentality to develop an analysis of how corporate governance and reforms such as SOX are socially constructed through autonomous agents, including managers and accountants, and various power relationships that comprise government. Findings - This paper theorizes that legislative reform, such as SOX, represents pervasive mechanisms of disclosure, surveillance and power, and an insurance rationality designed to manage the new and significant risks of corporate governance. A framework is established which conceptualizes SOX as the intersection of neo-liberalism, political rationalities and governmental techniques, and accounting practices which lead to the elements of security, quantification and shareholder value. Through this framework a model of risk as governance is developed that examines SOX through technologies of the self, calculation and insurance, designed to act upon managers using knowledge about control or financial statement weaknesses. Such mechanisms identify corporate governance risks, which can be acted upon by outside experts, such as accountants. Originalityvalue - The major inference from this paper is that corporate governance research in accounting should pursue new lines of inquiry, which will permit the more profitable extension of existing research. Such inquiry should focus less on empirical corporate governance factors and more on the relationships, and power constructs of corporate governance, as well as how legislative reforms employ tactics to normalize the behaviour of not only managers, but also accountants.

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