IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijecac/v8y2017i1p61-66.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Politicisation of the professions

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Tinker
  • Aida Sy

Abstract

Accounting can never be 'neutral' or 'independent' vis-à-vis its relationship to major social conflicts and controversies. This is a major implication of the case studies. 'Neutrality' or 'independence' has a fairly precise meaning in this context and is not based on rather vague notions 'evenhandedness', 'refusing to take sides' or a 'policy of non-interference'. Policies of 'inaction', far from being 'neutral' or 'independent', are highly partisan if they involve 'standing-by' and allowing injustices to happen. Many policies of 'non-interference' are, in reality, conspiracies with the status-quo: rather than being neutral and independent, they represent neo-conservative political stances. Professional independence and neutrality is defined here in terms of the capacity to affect social outcomes (usually the distribution of income or wealth). Conceived in these terms, there are very few cases where accounting can be said to be 'neutral' or 'independent'. 'Inaction' or 'non-interference' would not be apolitical or neutral according to this definition if, by refusing to influence a situation; one allows a particular social result to prevail over others.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Tinker & Aida Sy, 2017. "Politicisation of the professions," International Journal of Economics and Accounting, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(1), pages 61-66.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijecac:v:8:y:2017:i:1:p:61-66
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=84866
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijecac:v:8:y:2017:i:1:p:61-66. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=357 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.