The Views of ‘Knowledge Gatekeepers’ About the Use and Content of Accounting Textbooks

Abstract

This study examines financial accounting educators' views about, and use of, recommended course textbooks in the UK. In particular, this research explores the factors that influence the selection of a recommended text, the role it plays on the course, and educators' perceptions of the worldview that underpins their chosen text. Drawing on the results of a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews with introductory financial accounting educators, this study draws attention to ideological issues concerning accounting textbooks. In particular, findings from this research suggest that a number of educators feel that their recommended textbooks should discuss the information needs of a broad range of stakeholders and supplement their text with materials that provide alternative perspectives or which draw attention to current issues in accounting. Moreover, a number of the participants indicated that their textbook had ideological characteristics in so far as they had an overly technical focus which ‘obscured’ the values that underpinned them.

Keywords:

• Textbooks
• ideology
• stakeholders
• maximization of shareholders' wealth

Notes

The authors wish to draw a distinction between what have been broadly categorized as Anglo-American models of capitalism (for example, the UK and the USA) and ‘Rhenish’ capitalism (for example, social market Europe and Japan) (Dore, Lazonick and O'Sullivan, 1999, p. 102). This distinction is often neglected in extant critiques of accounting and accounting education, which often imply that ‘capitalism’ is a relatively monolithic and homogenous economic structure. While the Anglo-American variant is ‘commonly regarded as the most individualistic and libertarian of all’, the Rhenish model is less driven by the capital market and exhibits a greater deal of co-operation between capital and labour (Hutton, 1996, p. 258; see also, Collison, 2003; Dore et al., 1999). One specific distinction between these models is of particular significance to the arguments developed throughout this paper: that a ‘key’ feature of Anglo-American capitalism is its ‘preoccupation with maximising shareholder value’ (Collison, 2003, p. 854). In other words, Anglo-American capitalism institutionalizes the maximization of the interests of one particular constituency in society; it is how accounting textbooks deal with such ‘highly contestable ideas and values’, and how they are perceived by educators, that forms the basis of this paper.

The primacy accorded to shareholders could be regarded as occurring in spite of the explicit acknowledgement by accounting standard setters of the usefulness of accounting information to a range of stakeholders (see, for example, FASB, 1978). It could be argued that the dominant imperatives of capital markets may be more influential than the normative aspirations of standard setters in this regard.

Ideology is used in this paper in accordance with Thompson's (1990) application of the concept. More specifically, ideology is used in this study in a critical or pejorative sense to refer to ‘meaning in the service of power’. However, whilst this use of the term retains the ‘criterion of negativity’ inherent in a number of contemporary Marxist approaches to ideology, Thompson's (1990, p. 56) account differs in that it does not imply that ideology need be ‘erroneous or illusory’. Whilst acknowledging that ideology ‘may operate by concealing or masking social relations,’ Thompson (1990, pp. 56–57) notes that these are only ‘contingent possibilities,’ adding: What we are interested in here is not primarily and not initially the truth or falsity of symbolic forms, but rather the ways in which these forms serve, in particular circumstances, to establish and sustain relations of domination.

This point is also stressed in the sociology of education literature, in particular, in the work of Michael Apple. According to Apple (2004) one must be careful not to view the education process in terms of a simplistic ‘input-output’ model—i.e. where students (the input) become socialized by an ideological curriculum that reflects the interests of dominant groups within society and go on to reproduce those values in varying aspects of their lives (the output). Research in this tradition often speculates on the consequences of the educational process by analysing the content of the curriculum alone—i.e. without attending to the views and understanding of the participants in the process. Moreover, according to Apple (2004) such a perspective overlooks a number of pertinent issues; more specifically, it fails to consider the role of contestation and the contingent possibility that students may resist or appropriate the messages they encounter (Apple 2004). For Apple (1995, p. 26) the role of contestation and resistance in the cultural sphere suggests that ‘[not] all aspects of curriculum and teaching are reducible to the interests of a dominant class’. In this sense, in order to maintain hegemony, dominant interests in society must engage in a ‘continual process of compromise, conflict and active struggle’ (Apple, 1995, p. 27). However, the very existence of contestation and resistance, according to Apple (1995, p. 23) allows for the opportunity to harness or exploit such conflict in order to ‘win people to the other side’.

Krueger and Casey (2000) state that interviews are often employed to identify issues that may be explored further in questionnaires, etc. However, they also emphasize that interviews can be used where the ‘researcher needs information to help shed light on quantitative data already collected’ (p. 24). This is how the semi-structured interviews were employed in this study.

Given the constraints imposed by the questionnaire format, respondents were asked to check off items from a list which they deemed to be a desirable component of an ideal accounting course. In this respect, respondents could check off more than one item. There are inherent limitations to this approach, insofar as respondents may check off a number of items that might exceed the time constraints of the course. An alternative approach could have been to give respondents the opportunity to select items, while also noting topics on their course which they were willing to decrease in coverage in order to accommodate new material. However, the aim of this part of the questionnaire was to get a picture of some of the issues respondents would like to see on an ‘ideal’ course.

Of the 280 recipients of the survey, 110 were female and 170 male. Therefore, the gender profile of respondents is not representative of the sample. While this is clearly a limitation to the present study, Bryman and Bell (2003) suggest that when other research methods are also employed (as is the case with the present study) then non-response bias is less significant.

Of course it is important to emphasize that newspaper clippings and professional magazines may not offer an alternative perspective to the worldview offered in the textbook. The business media typically operates within the dominant paradigm, and the specialist accountancy press is unlikely to offer serious scrutiny of conventional values or even of vested interests within the ‘accountancy industry’. The specialized accounting press comprises organs which are largely dependent on advertising, or which are essentially house magazines of professional bodies.

We use the term critical thinking to imply, in the words of Popkewitz and Fendler (1999, p. 46), ‘how to express and critique the logic of arguments that underpin our everyday activity’. In this respect, in order to critique, or form an opinion about, the assumptions which underpin accounting theory, one would expect students to be exposed to alternative/competing theories.

Thus, the relationship between the educator and his/her recommended textbook was not in one direction. The educators selected a textbook which presumably accorded with their view of financial accounting but the text also influenced these views to some extent. This point would of course apply to questionnaire respondents as well as to interviewees. Arguably then, a restricted consideration of stakeholders in a text could result in a similar perception by an educator who has adopted it.

Such empathy should not of course be regarded as necessarily problematic: students are as entitled as anyone else to their normative position. It may, however, be precisely because of a dominant discourse that the scope for a more reflective and critical approach to degree studies is constrained (see Collison, 2003).