Purpose The management of commercial and domestic waste is an environmental priority. In recent years, circular economy (CE) perspectives have emerged, underpinned by an expectation of monetising waste to incentivise the recovery and reuse of valuable materials. Accordingly, a role for accountants is anticipated to support effective waste and resource management strategies. Yet it remains unclear how the transition to a CE can be realised in practice, particularly for populations located outside of urban centres. This study examines the challenges of waste governance in remote Australia and the role of public sector accounting and accountability practices in the CE transition. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted the fieldwork for this study with a municipal council in Northern Australia to evaluate their waste management practices. The five sites - two landlocked communities, two islands and one coastal community - experience low population density, logistical challenges and financial constraints due to their remote location. The authors draw on Foucauldian concepts of power, governmentality and resistance to analyse the case and its implications for waste policy, accounting and accountability. Findings This study reveals that in remote regions, the lack of accounting technologies for waste measurement, reporting and costing severely limits accountability and progress toward CE goals. The findings challenge assumptions about the universal applicability of CE models and call for the development of accounting practices that are both contextually grounded and socially responsive. In doing so, the paper emphasises the need for new calculative tools and public accountability mechanisms that reflect the complex realities of waste governance beyond urban centres. Practical implications Effective waste management in remote contexts requires calculative infrastructure (weighbridges, systematic reporting) to enable governance. Management control systems are needed to make visible the full environmental and social costs currently externalised to remote communities. Focus should also shift from resource recovery to reducing waste creation through producer responsibility schemes that allocate costs to manufacturers and retailers. Originality/value This study examines CE implementation in remote Australia, a novel setting for CE research. The authors demonstrate how geographic isolation, limited infrastructure and absent markets expose CE as an "empty signifier" where material conditions resist policy translation. Examining waste governance through a municipal lens, they reveal how the absence of accounting technologies fundamentally limits governance and how informal accountability practices emerge where formal systems are inadequate.
Purpose-While prior research has focused on the outcomes of transnationalisation, how standard setters strategically design implementation processes through domestic standard-setting activities in the face of institutional constraints has received less attention. This study aims to investigate Japan's revenue recognition reform as a case of how global accounting standards are locally negotiated, adapted and institutionalised over time through interactions with national interests, traditions and regulatory politics. Design/methodology/approach-The authors conduct a qualitative document analysis of the Accounting Standards Board of Japan (ASBJ) records and 152 public comment letters, focusing on two core policy themes: acceptance of IFRS 15 requirements and inclusion of optional treatments to address domestic implementation issues. Stakeholder positions and rhetorical strategies are examined over time. Findings-The ASBJ strategically delayed its adoption timeline until the IASB/FASB project matured, allowing domestic discourse to develop in parallel. The prolonged process mitigated resistance, particularly among traditionalist preparers, and habituated them to conceptual changes. Furthermore, the ASBJ incorporated flexibility through optional treatments that reflected stakeholder concerns, despite adopting IFRS 15 almost verbatim. This layered approach was adopted to preserve elements of the prior system and facilitate smoother implementation. Originality/value-Empirically, this case offers a rich process-oriented account of how global standards are domesticated through local negotiations. Moreover, it makes a theoretical contribution to the extant literature on institutional change by way of providing a detailed case of gradual transformation through layering.
Purpose-This paper aims to understand how slack resources, i.e. extra or surplus resources beyond what an organization typically needs for its normal operations, are created in the ongoing dynamics between efficient resource use and wasteful resource use-dynamics shaped by accounting. The ambition is to re-energize a discussion about slack-especially in relation to resilience-within the accounting literature, while showing its relevance to debates also in the management literature. Design/methodology/approach-The study examines historically constructed boundaries between accounting, healthcare, and social care in Swedish elder care, and how these boundaries were challenged during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is based on interviews with 50 professionals across multiple occupational groups: managers, controllers, accountants, administrators, nurses, assistant nurses, and social workers in two municipalities. Findings-Slack is produced and made utilizable in the contested space between efficiency and waste: when organizational actors strive to extend the purposefulness of resources, making slack part of the "normal", casting it as resources that can contribute to organizational efficiency in everyday operations, accounting tends to work to delimit and eliminate slack resources, casting them as waste. It is within these dynamics that slack resources achieve their potential, become utilizable and multifunctional, and where a balance between resilience and wastefulness can be achieved. Originality/value-The paper contributes by offering a new perspective on the relationship between accounting, slack, efficiency and waste. To do so, the paper uses rich qualitative empirical material to engage in a discussion between notions of slack based in both the accounting and management literatures. Future studies could adopt such a broader view of slack to better understand the balance between slack as a potential and multifunctionality, and slack as waste.
Purpose This study proposes a methodology for exploring and conceptualizing epistemic methods of accounting through language games. Language games reveal varying levels of sophistication in practical reasoning and communicative interaction, shaping how accounting knowledge and practices unfold in local contexts. By examining the language games of skilled accountants in practice, the study aims to generate detailed knowledge that addresses real-world accounting problems. Design/methodology/approach Pragmatic constructivism serves as the paradigmatic foundation for developing the POLGA method (Pragmatic constructivist Operationalization of Language Games in Accounting). POLGA provides a framework for researchers to apply the concept of language games in accounting research to explore and conceptualize how actors design, implement and use accounting practices through epistemic methods. The method is illustrated through examples drawn from two research projects. Findings This study shows how researchers can use POLGA to identify and theorize epistemic methods of accounting while capturing the technical and social nuances embedded in the practical reasoning through which accounting phenomena are enacted. The empirical illustrations demonstrate POLGA's capacity to reveal multiple epistemic methods of accounting. Research limitations/implications POLGA offers a nuanced perspective on accounting by highlighting the central role of epistemic methods in effective practice. It provides a methodological reference for accounting researchers interested in going beneath the surface of observable practices to understand the forms of practical reasoning through which knowledge is produced, communicated, mobilized and translated into action. Its use requires access to rich empirical material and sensitivity to the situated nature of organizational practices. Developed in accounting, POLGA also suggests that its underlying approach can be extended beyond this field, opening the way to POLG(X) as a methodology for qualitative researchers studying how knowledge is produced and used across different fields of practice. Originality/value POLGA provides a comprehensive epistemological apparatus for exploring and conceptualizing accounting language games in the making, epistemic methods and their effects.
Purpose-This paper aims to provide a longitudinal examination of New Zealand (NZ) universities' use of annual reports, sustainability reports, strategy reports and vision statements to disclose information about vulnerable staff and students over the period 2017-2021. Design/methodology/approach-This study's sample included all NZ universities. A total of 62 reports/ statements covering the period 2017-2021 were content analysed to see how NZ universities disclose information on their vulnerable staff and students. Findings-This study's findings reveal that NZ universities are selective in their disclosures, choose to prioritise some groups over others and fail to provide clear KPIs, targets, goals and strategies for promoting vulnerable groups' participation, engagement and achievement. In addition to the general lack of disclosures on vulnerable groups by NZ universities, this study also observed a failure by NZ universities to increase their disclosures across time. Originality/value-To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to systematically investigate both historical reports such as annual and sustainability reports and forward-looking strategic disclosures published by NZ universities on vulnerable staff and students. These findings have implications for universities, university staff, university students, student unions, staff unions, government and policymakers for assessing the NZ university sector's accountability for and performance associated with reporting on vulnerable groups. Policymakers can use the present research to gauge the extent to which organisations are currently recognising their accountability towards individuals belonging to vulnerable groups, as embodied in the publicly available disclosures these organisations make. Such understanding will assist in the formulation of future policymaking, including the potential adoption of regulation. Finally, practitioners can use the present research to benchmark their own annual disclosure practices relating to vulnerable groups.
