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Vaughan Radcliffe is Professor of Managerial Accounting and Control at the Ivey Business School. He is a Past President and former Research Committee Chair of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA), the publisher of the Financial Times ranked journal Contemporary Accounting Research. He has twice been an elected member of the Council of the American Accounting Association. He has served two terms as Editor of the Journal of Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting, a journal of the American Accounting Association. He is a winner of Ivey's school wide MBAA teaching award for excellence in MBA teaching; he is also a multiple winner of the school’s Research Merit award.
His work has appeared in Accounting, Organizations and Society; Contemporary Accounting Research; the Journal of Business Ethics; Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal and others. Professor Radcliffe has served as an Editor of Contemporary Accounting Research and is a member of seven editorial boards including Accounting, Organizations and Society, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, and Contemporary Accounting Research.
Before joining Ivey, he was an Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University in the United States. His PhD was completed at the University of Alberta, Canada. Professor Radcliffe's current research focuses on the role of accounting and auditing in society, especially the development and use of efficiency auditing in the Federal Government of Canada and the history of accounting’s role in American corporate governance in the early twentieth century. He has in addition studied changing mandates for the Auditor General of Ontario concerning the audit of government advertisements. He is also studying the history of the Auditor of State of Ohio's work in enumerating population in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Vaughan Radcliffe has served as Chair of the Public Interest Section of the American Accounting Association (AAA) and is presently the Section’s Vice President of Research. He has twice served as a Trustee of the Academy of Accounting Historians. He was a member of CPA Canada’s Academic Research Advisory Committee and of CPA Canada’s Digital Archives Advisory Committee. He has twice served as Chief Judge of CPA Ontario's Voluntary Sector Reporting Awards.
He has written multiple cases on topics including balanced scorecards in nonprofit settings (London Public Library); cost behaviour in the service sector (AT&T Wireless: Text Messaging); and the effects of changing accounting standards (Starbucks: Venti Leases). A recent case concerns Restaurant Brands International's (RBI's) use of management control systems at Tim Hortons.
Vaughan Radcliffe is a member of the Management Committee of Western University's Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children (CREVAWC). He has served as a member of Western University’s Senate.
Teaching
MBA Program: Accounting and Control for Managers (one year program core class)
MBA Program: Accounting, Strategy and Control (elective course)
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.
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.
Radcliffe, V. S.; Ferry, L.; Steccolini, I., 2022, "The Future of Public Audit", Financial Accountability and Management, August 38(3)
Abstract: Public sector audit is a vital activity within democratic states, which underpins the relationship between the government and the governed, the executive and the legislature, and different parts of the government. While there has been a lot of exceptional work in recent years on public sector audit, the sector faces new challenges. These challenges include regulatory space considerations, digitalization, the impact of service delivery design change, how audit and accountability arrangements address crises such as austerity, Brexit, black lives matter, climate change, disease in the form of COVID-19 and war, and increased skepticism about the role of audit in society more generally. In this special issue, a group of scholars came together to describe this crisis in public audit, how the current literature addresses different facets of it and show how future research can contribute to analyzing it. This introductory article provides a brief summary of the current context of the "what, why, when, how, where and who" of public audit, before considering the contribution of each individual paper in this special issue to assisting in understanding the crisis of public audit, and finally setting out a conclusion and future directions.
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.
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.
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.
Abstract: This study examines participation in helping networks among MBA students and its impact on subsequent ratings of influence by peers. Helping networks reflect the mobilization of social capital where network contacts exchange social and material resources. As such, helping networks are distinct from friendship networks which represent access to social capital but not necessarily its use. We identify three dimensions of social capital mobilization with different effects on status, specifically, mutual helping, non-mutual help-giving, and non-mutual help-receiving. Findings indicate that social capital mobilization through non-mutual help-giving is a positive predictor of influence among peers at a later point in time. Non-mutual help-receiving and mutual helping are unrelated to influence when non-mutual help-giving is controlled. Gender moderates this relationship but international student status does not. Non-mutual help-giving does not enhance the perceived influence of women, particularly among domestic men. These findings support theories of status devaluation for marginalized groups and have implications for the value of the MBA for female students relative to their male peers. Future research on the predictors and outcomes of social capital mobilization can enhance understanding of the organizational experiences of diverse identity groups.
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.
Abstract: We present Part 3 of a historical review and analysis of the role played by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) in accounting and auditing from the 1960s onwards. Part 1 dealt with the period from the 1960s to 1985 (Zeff and Radcliffe, 2010a). Part 2 reviewed the work of the first four Chief Accountants, from 1986 to1996 (Zeff and Radcliffe, 2010b). This third and final part reviews the work of the fifth Chief Accountant, John A. Carchrae, from 1996 to 2008. It began with the reorganization of the OSC and the reassignment of functions. The Chief Accountant position was now that of a permanent employee, albeit still as head of a very small department. The second part of Carchrae’s tenure was dominated by the need to respond to the financial crises of the early 21st century with extensive regulatory change as well as addressing the shift to international accounting standards in Canada.
Abstract: This paper investigates the key drivers behind the origins of value-for-money (VFM) audit in Canada and the aims, intents and logics ascribed by the original proponents. Drawing on insights from governmentality and New Public Management (NPM), the paper utilizes analysis methods adapted from case study research to review a wide range of primary documentation (e.g. Hansards from the Public Accounts Committee, House of Commons debates, the so-called Wilson report and the FMCS study) and secondary documentation (newspaper articles, Office of the Auditor General internal publications, journal articles). Major findings indicate a rise of a management consulting culture within the Auditor General’s office following the appointment of James Johnson Macdonell. VFM legislation effectively operationalized practices drawn from management consulting expertise by invitation of the consultant. It was offered as an answer to the growing scope and size of government, which had become problematized by the Auditor General in terms of parliament losing control over the public purse. The Auditor General’s invocation of financial crisis led to a substantial broadening of mandate and increase in resources for that office.
Abstract: Though in many countries government auditors are appointed, often in an all-party process designed to emphasize a preference and hope for accounting information to be prepared in an independent manner, many such office holders in U.S. state governments are directly elected. This paper examines one such election, which occurred in the State of Ohio in 1994, and uses this case to explore how the electoral process fosters an interaction between the professional claim and political platforms. The paper follows earlier work concerning special’ government audits in using Weber’s discussion of formal and substantive rationality to interpret events. The election of government auditors is seen as providing an unusual opportunity to consider the mixture of auditing and politics. The paper provides observations on the proximate operation of professional claims and political dynamics, and discusses these in terms of the roles of government auditing and of accountancy as a profession. Further research is called for into the operation of auditing in public life.
Abstract: This paper returns to the topics raised in Radcliffe (2008) 'Public Secrecy in Auditing: What government auditors cannot know.' It presents evidence that Funnel’s critique involves misreading and factual error. Crucially, the 2008 paper focuses on the role of the Auditor of State of Ohio Funnell criticizes the piece as conflating the role of auditor and politician, as he puts it, policy matters 'are the democratic right of the elected government to determine not an unelected public servant.' This is in conflict with the institutional detail of the case: as is stated at various points in the paper, the Auditor of State of Ohio is directly elected in partisan political elections, one of the many such state auditor positions in the United States that follow this practice. The office holder during the time in question, James Petro, was a Republican politician elected Ohio’s Auditor of State in 1994. This paper goes on to argue that, notwithstanding these matters, it is naïve to argue that auditors are essentially divorced from the world of politics and policy. Instead, auditors work within discursive frameworks of what is possible in ways that are more nuanced and practical. The paper reviews key elements in a stream of related work that draws on history and fieldwork to support this view and analyses contemporary events related to the operation of public secrecy in auditing, policy and law. The piece closes with discussion of the academic publishing process.
Abstract: 'The World Has Changed: Have Analytical Procedure Practices?' provides important insights into the state of practice. It further incorporates qualitative research into the auditing literature, and it offers an opportunity to consider the topical issue of diversity in accounting research. I seek to address all of these areas here, looking to properly address contextual issues while doing justice to the paper and its contributions. Accordingly I begin with a brief review of the authors’ findings and then provide discussion along the following themes: treatment of qualitative data matters of interpretation and technique understanding the narrative qualitative research in auditing qualitative research in CAR and finally the way forward. I turn now to each of these areas in turn.
Abstract: This article, Part 2 of a historical review and analysis of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), describes the role played by the first four Chief Accountants in the regulation of accounting and auditing from 1986 to 1996. Part 1 dealt with the period from the 1960s to 1985. Part 3 will treat the role played by the fifth Chief Accountant, from 1996 to 2008. As the principal Canadian stock exchange in recent times has been the Toronto Stock Exchange, the OSC has been the most important securities market regulator in Canada. Prior to this article, the academic and professional accounting literature has been largely barren on the OSC’s evolving role on accounting and auditing issues.
