Publications Database

Welcome to the new Schulich Peer-Reviewed Publication Database!

The database is currently in beta-testing and will be updated with more features as time goes on. In the meantime, stakeholders are free to explore our faculty’s numerous works. The left-hand panel affords the ability to search by the following:

  • Faculty Member’s Name;
  • Area of Expertise;
  • Whether the Publication is Open-Access (free for public download);
  • Journal Name; and
  • Date Range.

At present, the database covers publications from 2012 to 2020, but will extend further back in the future. In addition to listing publications, the database includes two types of impact metrics: Altmetrics and Plum. The database will be updated annually with most recent publications from our faculty.

If you have any questions or input, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

 

Search Results

Elif Izberk-Bilgin and Russell W Belk (2024). "Religion in Neoliberal Times: The Global Spread of Marketization, Implications for Religion, and Future Research Directions", Marketing Theory, 0(0).

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Abstract Marketization is a profound force transforming societies, including how people relate to and practice religion. Drawing from a synthesis of interdisciplinary studies, we approach marketization as a megatrend, explicating how its global spread beyond the advanced economies of the United States and Western Europe is leading to significant changes in religion and its marketplace articulations. We identify four specific ways in which marketization’s global spread influences religion: detraditionalization, re-publicization, dedifferentiation, and deterritorialization. We map these four areas of influence at the intersection of religion and consumption. In so doing, we identify several under-theorized areas in consumer research and offer six future research directions: (1) new non-institutional stages of religious performance, (2) transhumanism as a new religion, (3) new religious authorities, (4) transnational networks of religious service movements, (5) prosperity religion in non-Western and non-Christian contexts, and (6) resistance to marketization. We advance marketing theory by drawing attention to the megatrend of globalizing marketization that we argue should inform the future of the study of religion in consumer research.

Jeffery Everett (2024). "Patriarchy, Capitalism, and Accounting: A Herstory", Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 99, 102733.

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Abstract The emergence of double-entry bookkeeping has been traced back to roughly the same period as the emergence of practices which are today broadly understood as capitalist. This has led some to suggest that capitalism and accounting are interdependent. This thesis, however, neglects an important set of similarly-paired developments that occurred much earlier: around the same time as the first traces of accounting appeared in ancient Mesopotamia, patriarchal forms of social organization were also spreading across that region. In this paper, we propose that accounting practices are less a function of the rise of capitalism and more a function of the expansion of patriarchy, which itself fuelled the widespread adoption of capitalism. Drawing on anthropological insights and the work of feminist scholars, the paper offers an alternative perspective, one that we hope will help fuel resistance against the current, damaging hegemony: a ‘herstory’ of accounting. In addition, this study has implications for how we understand a number of topics of importance to critical accountants, including accountability, violence and subjugation, women’s rights and working and living conditions, capitalism (and neoliberalism), environmental degradation, spirituality, and the rise of political states.

Christine Gilbert, Jeff Everett (2023). "Resistance, Hegemony, and Critical Accounting Interventions: Lessons from Debates Over Government Debt", Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 97, 102556.

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Abstract Reflecting on how critical academics intervene in the public sphere, this paper explores how accounting is mobilized to reinforce and counter neoliberal hegemony in a public-policy debate over the role and size of government debt. The paper draws on the work of Gramsci, Laclau, and Mouffe to analyze case-data derived from three decades of media articles, research reports, and government financial documents in the Canadian province of Québec. The study finds that hegemonic actors seek consent from the population by exciting emotions (esp. fear and guilt), referencing the common sense, and aligning their arguments with people’s everyday experiences. While counter-hegemonic actors initially relied on conceptual reason and logic in their arguments, positioning accounting as an ‘ammunition machine’, they too came to adopt an approach aimed at exciting emotions, translating accounting concepts into non-economic fields, and rearticulating hegemonic signifiers, in an effort to refine and reshape the common sense. Highlighting the limitations of purely rational modes of argumentation, the study has implications for the manner in which accounting academics intervene in the public sphere and how they need to be skilled translators and re-articulators of hegemonic discourse.

Alawattage, C., Graham, C. and Wickramasinghe, D. (2019). "Microaccountability and Biopolitics: Microfinance in a Sri Lankan Village", Accounting, Organizations and Society, 72, 38-60.

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Abstract Based on a micro-level study of microfinance, this paper explores how basic accounting technologies and interpersonal accountability are used to make lending to poor village women profitable and low risk. We argue that “microaccountability,” our term for the structuring and formalization of convivial relationships into a capillary system of accountability, must be recognized as a central tool of social governance under neoliberalism. Our field research in Sri Lanka allows us to analyse how microaccountability is employed by for-profit banks to create from poor villagers a legion of bankable individual entrepreneurs, trained to invigilate each other’s savings and credit behaviours. Using the theoretical lens of biopolitics, we show how microaccountability enables the extension of the finance industry into untapped sectors of the global population.

Zwick, D. (2018). "No Longer Violent Enough?: Creative Destruction, Innovation and the Ossification of Neoliberal Capitalism", Journal of Marketing Management, 34(11-12), 913-931.

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Abstract My goal is to suggest that it is useful to distinguish analytically between capital’s primal, often direct violence against bodies and a systemic form of violence that is at the same time reproductive of the capitalist system and directed against its own creations. I suggest that this analytical separation allows us to see that on the one hand capitalist violence is intensifying and with it processes of exploitation, class bifurcation, downward mobility and environmental, political and social degradation. On the other hand, however, capitalism appears to be ossifying as it loses its ability to self-reproduce. The violent act of (periodically) destroying its own creation to make room for new production and formation is becoming stifled and nothing appears capable of blowing up the dead weight of capital that is suffocating living labour. Drawing on the work of David Graeber and Mariana Mazzucato I propose that, paradoxically, it is the logic of the market that causes the stifling of real innovation and thus capitalism’s ability to reproduce. It is in this sense that I claim that capitalism is no longer violent enough.

Veresiu, E. and Giesler, M. (2018). "Beyond Acculturation: Multiculturalism and the Institutional Shaping of an Ethnic Consumer Subject", Journal of Consumer Research, 45(3), 553-570.

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Abstract Prior consumer research has investigated the consumer behavior, identity work, and sources of ethnic group conflict among various immigrants and indigenes. However, by continuing to focus on consumers’ lived experiences, researchers lack theoretical clarity on the institutional shaping of these individuals as ethnic consumers, which has important implications for sustaining neocolonial power imbalances between colonized (immigrant-sending) and colonizing (immigrant-receiving) cultures. We bring sociological theories of neoliberal governmentality and multiculturalism to bear on an in-depth analysis of the contemporary Canadian marketplace to reveal our concept of market-mediated multiculturation, which we define as an institutional mechanism for attenuating ethnic group conflicts through which immigrant-receiving cultures fetishize strangers and their strangeness in their commodification of differences, and the existence of inequalities between ethnicities is occluded. Specifically, our findings unpack four interrelated consumer socialization strategies (envisioning, exemplifying, equipping, and embodying) through which institutional actors across different fields (politics, market research, retail, and consumption) shape an ethnic consumer subject. We conclude with a critical discussion of extant scholarship on consumer acculturation as being complicit in sustaining entrenched colonialist biases.

Annisette, M. and Prasad, A. (2017). "Critical Accounting Research in Hyper-Racial Times", Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 43, 5-19.

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Abstract The paper expresses deep concern for the paucity of critical accounting scholarship in the contemporary period that can only be deemed hyper-racial (Alim and Reyes, 2011). By reflecting on how the concept of race has been mobilized in the critical accounting literature, we identify the contours of extant accounting research on race and we discuss the pitfalls and the challenges of pursuing scholarship in this area. In addition, we develop a framework for future research on race and accounting aimed at rendering our efforts more impactful and more subversive in challenging contemporary systems and practices of inequality based on race.

Cooper, C., Graham, C. and Himich, D. (2016). "Social Impact Bonds: The Securitization of the Homeless", Accounting, Organizations and Society, 55, 63–82.

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Abstract This paper examines the recent phenomenon of social impact bonds (SIBs). Social impact bonds are an attempt to marketize/financialize certain contemporary, intractable “social problems”, such as homelessness and criminal recidivism. SIBs rely on a vast array of accounting technologies including budgets, future cash flows, discounting, performance measurement and auditing. As such, they represent a potentially powerful and problematic use of accounting to enact government policy. This paper contains a case study of the most recent in a series of SIBs, the London Homelessness SIB, focusing on St Mungo’s, a London-based charitable foundation that was one of two service providers (charities) funded by the SIB. The case study is intended to enable a critical reflection on the rationalities that underpin the SIB. For this purpose, the paper draws upon Michel Foucault’s work on biopolitics and neoliberalism. The SIB is thoroughly neoliberal in that it is constructed upon an assumption that there is no such thing as a social problem, only individuals who fail. The SIB transforms all participants in the bond, except perhaps the homeless themselves, into entrepreneurs. The homeless are instead “failed entrepreneurs” who become securitised into the potential future cash flows of investors.

Ageymang, G., Annisette, M. and Lehman (2016). "Immigration and Neoliberalism: Three Cases and Counter Accounts", Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 29(1), 43-79.

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Abstract Purpose – This paper advocates for critical accounting’s contribution to immigration deliberations as part of its agenda for advancing social justice. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate accounting as implicated in immigration policies of three advanced economies. Design/methodology/approach – The authors suggest that neoliberal immigration policies are operationalized through the responsibilization of individuals, corporations and universities. By examining three immigration policies from the USA, Canada and the UK, the paper clarifies how accounting technologies facilitate responsibilization techniques, making immigration governable. Additionally, by employing immigrant narratives as counter accounts, the impacts of immigrant lived experiences can be witnessed. Findings – Accounting upholds neoliberal principles of life by expanding market mentalities and governance, through technologies of measurement, reports, audits and surveillance. A neoliberal strategy of responsibilization contributes to divesting authority for immigration policy in an attempt to erase the social and moral agency of immigrants, with accounting integral to this process. However the social cannot be eradicated as the work illustrates in the narratives and counter accounts that immigrants create. Research limitations/implications – The work reveals the illusion of accounting as neutral. As no single story captures the nuances and complexities of immigration practices, further exploration is encouraged. Originality/value – The work is a unique contribution to the underdeveloped study of immigration in critical accounting. By unmasking accounting’s role and revealing techniques underpinning immigration discourses, enhanced ways of researching immigration are possible.

Carrington, M., Neville, B. and Zwick, D. (2015). "The Ideology of the Ethical Consumption Gap", Marketing Theory, 16(1), 21-28.

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Abstract The growth of contemporary capitalism is producing a broad sweep of environmental and social ills, such as environmental degradation, exploitative labor conditions, social and economic inequity, and mental and physical illness. A growing awareness of these significant consequences by an “ethical” consumer segment has catalyzed a field of research dedicated to investigating ethical consumerism. Of particular academic and practitioner focus is the general failure of this ethical consumer segment to “walk their talk”—the ethical consumption attitude–behavior ‘gap’. In this article, we draw on Althusser and Žižek to critically analyze the ideological functioning of the ethical consumption gap. We argue that this focus inadvertently promotes erroneous notions of consumer sovereignty and responsibilization. We conclude with a call to reimagine the gap as a construct that paradoxically preserves—rather than undermines—dominant and destructive consumerist capitalism. We redirect research toward the underlying capitalist structures that predicate and benefit from the gap.