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

Neu, D., & Saxton, G. D. (Forthcoming). "Twitter-Based Social Accountability Callouts", Journal of Business Ethics.

Open Access Download

Abstract The ICIJ’s release of the Panama Papers in 2016 opened up a wealth of previously private financial information on the tax avoidance, tax evasion, and wealth concealment activities of politicians, government officials, and their allies. Drawing upon prior accountability and ethics focused research, we utilize a dataset of almost 28 M tweets sent between 2016 and early 2020 to consider the microdetails and overall trajectory of this particular social accountability conversation. The study shows how the publication of previously private financial information triggered a Twitter-based social accountability conversation. It also illustrates how social accountability utterances are intra-textually constructed by the inclusion of social characters, the personal pronoun ‘we,’ and the use of deontic responsibility verbs. Finally, the study highlights how the tweets from this group of participants changed over the longer-term but continued to focus on social accountability topics. The provided analysis contributes to our understanding of social accountability, including how the release of previously private accounting-based financial information can trigger a grassroots social accountability conversation.

Dean Neu, Gregory Saxton and Abu S. Rahaman (2021). "Social Accountability, Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests", Journal of Business Ethics.

Open Access Download

Abstract This study examines the 3.5 m+ English-language original tweets that occurred during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests. Starting from previous research, we analyze how character terms such as “the banker,” “politician,” “the teaparty,” “GOP,” and “the corporation,” as well as concept terms such as “ethics,” “fairness,” “morals,” “justice,” and “democracy” were used by individual participants to respond to the Occupy Wall Street events. These character and concept terms not only allowed individuals to take an ethical stance but also accumulated into a citizen’s narrative about social accountability. The analysis illustrates how the centrality of the different concepts and characters in the conversation changed over time as well as how the concepts ethics, morals, fairness, justice, and democracy participated within the conversation, helping to amplify the ethical attributes of different characters. These findings contribute to our understanding of how demands for social accountability are articulated and change over time.

Saxton, G. D. and Neu, D. (2021). "Twitter-Based Social Accountability Processes: The Roles for Financial Inscriptions-Based and Values-Based Messaging", Journal of Business Ethics.

View Paper

Abstract Social media is changing social accountability practices. The release of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) unleashed a tsunami of over 5 million tweets decrying corrupt politicians and tax-avoiding business elites, calling for policy change from governments, and demanding accountability from corporate and private tax avoiders. The current study uses 297,000+ original English-language geo-codable tweets with the hashtags #PanamaGate, #PanamaPapers, or #PanamaLeaks to examine the trajectory of Twitter-based social accountability conversations and the potential for the emergence of a longer-term social accountability user network. We propose that it is the combination of financial inscriptions and evaluative ethical utterances that incite and sustain social accountability conversations and social accountability networks. Financial inscriptions simultaneously remind audiences of both the information event that fomented the initial public reaction and the monetary magnitude of the event. Value-based ethical messaging, in turn, enunciates an ethical stance that simultaneously evaluates existing practices and emphasizes the need for accountability. It is the combining of these two types of messaging that helps to construct and sustain a normative narrative about social accountability. The results illustrate how the repetition and re-working of these two forms of messaging facilitated the construction of a normative narrative that coalesced into a social accountability network which persisted beyond the initial Panama Paper information event and which was re-activated in 2017 when the ICIJ published the Paradise Papers.

Everett, J., Neu, D., Rahaman, A.A. and Saxton, G. (2020). "Speaking Truth to Power: Twitter Reactions to the Panama Papers", Journal of Business Ethics, 162(2), 473-485.

Open Access Download

Abstract The current study examines the micro-linguistic details of Twitter responses to the whistleblower-initiated publication of the Panama Papers. The leaked documents contained the micro-details of tax avoidance, tax evasion, and wealth accumulation schemes used by business elites, politicians, and government bureaucrats. The public release of the documents on April 4, 2016 resulted in a groundswell of Twitter and other social media activity throughout the world, including 161,036 Spanish- language tweets in the subsequent 5-month period. The findings illustrate that the responses were polyvocal, consisting a collection of overlapping speech genres with varied thematic topics and linguistic styles, as well as differing degrees of calls for action and varying amounts of illocutionary force. The analysis also illustrates that, while the illocutionary force of tweets is somewhat associated with the adoption of a prosaic and vernacular ethical stance as well as with demands for action, these types of voicing behaviors were not present in the majority of the tweets. These results suggest that, while social media platforms are a popular site for collective forms of voicing activities, it is less certain that these collective stakeholder voices necessarily result in forceful accountability demands that spill out of the communication medium and thus serve as an impulse for positive social change.

Everett, J., Neu, D., Rahaman, A.A. and Saxton, G. (2019). "Twitter and Social Accountability: Reactions to the Panama Papers", Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 61, 38-53.

Open Access Download

Abstract The potential of social media to disseminate, aggregate, channel and democratize social accountability processes has encouraged a variety of organizations to actively promote and champion such initiatives. These initiatives typically envision a three step social accountability process where, for example, the publication of previously-private financial information about the inappropriate wealth accumulation activities of politicians and their business allies (step #1), combined with social media dissemination and discussion of these activities (step #2), can result in an accountability conversation that spills out of the medium and that sometimes results in positive social change (step #3). The current study examines Twitter reactions to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist’s (ICIJ) publication of the Panama Papers. The analysis illustrates that there was a Twitter reaction: furthermore, that there were different styles of response and that certain styles were more likely to elicit an audience reaction, especially if the tweeter was a journalist or organization. While the provided analysis focuses on step #2 within the social accountability process, the results imply that publicly-interested accounting academics qua activists can facilitate social accountability by helping to make previously-private financial information public and by cultivating sympathetic individuals within the traditional media as well as within organizations that are active on social media.

Cooper, D.J., Ezzamel, M. and Qu, S. (2005). "Popularizing a Management Accounting Idea: The Case of the Balanced Scorecard", Contemporary Accounting Research, 34(2), 991-1025.

Open Access Download

Abstract We explore how the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), as a management accounting technique, was developed and marketed as a general management practice. Drawing on actor network theory (ANT), we analyse interviews with key actors associated with the BSC, insights gained from attending BSC training workshops, and other documentary evidence to construct a history of the BSC. Our historical analysis offers theoretical tools to understand how the various features of the accounting technique were translated and transformed, that is shaped and solidified. This translation entailed processes of modification, labelling, framing, and specification of abstract categories and cause-effect relations. We also examine the networks and associations that both shape the form of the BSC and mobilize the interests of various constituencies around it to produce what can be regarded as a global management technology. Finally, we highlight the strategies and actions used to maintain control of this technique through its continuous reinvention, and, by doing so, we emphasize the idea of strategic agency.