CSR after Enron: A Role for the academic accounting profession?

Abstract

Post-Enron, there has been a particularly dramatic increase in the production of substantial corporate social responsibility and sustainability reports. Significantly, issues of reputation, risk management and competitive advantage, rather than the discharge of accountability, appear to be the driving forces behind such a phenomenon. This paper discusses the contribution academic accounting, within both research and teaching realms, can make towards addressing this perceived imbalance. Drawing upon a review of recent literature, attention is drawn to the potential for pursuing a strategy of critical engagement. In the research domain, this entails academics being prepared to extend their scholarship from a generally prevailing managerialist perspective to the point where less comfortable areas of real conflict lie. Equally important, on the teaching front, there is a pressing need to challenge more robustly the tenets of modern day business, and specifically accounting, education which have elevated the principles of property rights and narrow self-interest above broader values of community and ethics.

Keywords:

• Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• Enron
• critical engagement
• the ‘business case’ for CSR
• CSR and teaching