Purpose This paper explores “developmental” corporate social responsibility (CSR) using the financial sector (FS) in Thailand between the 2000s and 2020s as a case study. By analysing how FS CSR initiatives corresponded with Thailand's National Economic and Social Development Plans (NESDPs), the paper examines the role that state-led frameworks play in shaping CSR practices. The paper investigates how the Thai FS worked with small/medium rural enterprises (SMEs) to mobilise the Buddhist Economics practice of “right livelihood” within a NESDP framework and operationalise a Thai Buddhist form of “developmental” CSR that promoted national strategies on rural poverty through local agency and practice. Design/methodology/approach Using MAXQDA software, the analysis provides a detailed qualitative analysis of annual and sustainability reports from listed financial sector companies from the 2000s to the 2020s in the context of Thailand's 1st-12th NESDPs (1961–2021) and the Thai sustainability discourse of Buddhist Economics. Findings This paper demonstrates that CSR in Thailand is shaped by local socio-cultural and political contexts, especially the Buddhist concept of “right livelihood” which translates socio-cultural values into CSR practice. It highlights a developmental form of CSR driven by national plans to reduce rural poverty through collaboration between government, corporations and SMEs. In doing so, the paper proposes “right livelihood” as a framework that goes beyond legitimacy and stakeholder theories in its holistic concept of both wealth and well-being. Research limitations/implications This study focuses on a specific but important industry in Thailand, namely the financial sector, and highlights the potential value of its developmental CSR in alignment with NESDPs. This research emphasises the role and benefits of state-led frameworks in shaping effective and contextually-relevant CSR practices. The study thereby seeks to provide a foundation for future research in other developing economies and emerging markets (DEEMs) to assess whether and how CSR activities might be similarly guided by and integrated with national development strategies. Practical implications This paper challenges international CSR standard setters to engage with such local CSR alternatives. It suggests that developmental CSR in DEEMs can be a composite strategy deployed by large companies, the state and SMEs to address issues of poverty and rural under-development. This paper also proposes the concept of “right livelihood” as a potential means of promoting not only wealth development but also the pursuit of more holistic well-being through CSR. Social implications This paper highlights collaborations between government, larger corporations and SMEs in Thailand as a form of “developmental” CSR which seeks through the Buddhist concept and practice of “right livelihood” to address poverty by promoting the complementary development of wealth and social well-being. Originality/value This paper emphasises that CSR practice is substantially determined by local social, cultural and political context rather than solely by western-defined CSR theorisations. Using the financial sector in Thailand as an example, the paper demonstrates how the Buddhist Economics practice of “right livelihood” has been mobilised through national development plans to address poverty in collaboration between government, corporations and SMEs. As a consequence of the holistic focus of “right livelihood” on both “wealth and well-being”, this paper proposes “right livelihood” as a translatable concept with which to address the limitations of legitimacy and stakeholder theory interpretations of CSR.

PurposeThis paper explores corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Thailand and analyses how CSR practice is informed by local values rather than merely driven by CSR practices designed in developed countries.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on a comparative series of interviews of Thai business leaders in 2009–10 and 2019–20 within the conceptual context of Thai CSR discourse/practice, especially Buddhist Economics.FindingsThis paper argues that CSR practice in Thailand is substantially informed by local socio-economic context, particularly Buddhist Economics, including the concepts of suffering (dukkha), the Eightfold Path of the Middle Way, and gifting and reciprocal exchange.Research limitations/implicationsLocal contexts are crucial not only for understanding local models of CSR but also for challenging what has been perceived as an imperialistic neo-liberal agenda in western-originating CSR.Practical implicationsThe wider practical implications of this paper are that, like Thailand, CSR practices in other developing economies and emerging markets (DEEMs) may also have their own distinctive ‘local’ origins, contexts and developments which need to be considered.Social implicationsThe social implications of this paper are that local context is determinant in the development of CSR practice, especially in DEEMs.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the CSR literature by highlighting the often-marginalised existence of local CSR context and practice in DEEMs and questions CSR based solely on western theorisations.

This paper elaborates a Buddhist theory of practice which revises theoretical emphasis in the critical accounting literature on the dominance or hegemony of accounting ‘structures’, particularly structural interpretations of dominance and hegemony adapted from analytical frameworks in the works of Gramsci, Foucault, Bourdieu, Giddens and Latour. Using Buddhist theoretical concepts of ‘form’ (rūpa), ‘space’ and ‘emptiness’ (suññatā), and ‘stream’ (sota) of ‘re-becoming’ (punabbhava), this paper argues that perceived dominant or hegemonic ‘forms’ are inherently transient and ephemeral (anicca) because they are continually emptied of ‘self’ (anattā) by confluent ‘flows’ of practice which course in ‘spaces’ within, through and around these ‘forms’ and constantly dis-aggregate and re-aggregate them in variegated ways. The paper exemplifies this importance of ‘flows’ of practice in ‘empty spaces’ in terms of a case-study of transformation from Buddhist cosmologically-premised tax-accounts to commercialised tax-accounts based around Chinese trading practices in mid-19th century Siam/Thailand. The paper analyses the nature of this Siamese accounting transformation or stream of ‘re-becoming’ in terms of the confluent flow of different cosmological and commercial accounting practices, and argues in consequence for the impermanent and transient nature of dominant or hegemonic accounting structures and formations.

This paper analyses the inter-relationship of human agency and socio-economic structure in the determination of Thai accounting. It demonstrates that determination of accounting practice lies neither in the individual agency of human practice, nor in the forces of socio- economic structure per se, but rather in patterns of relational practice. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Mauss (1925) to analyse accounting practice as revealed in Thai company annual reports, this paper elaborates a Buddhist relational theory of accounting practice that focuses on the importance of patterns of practice generated by gifting, exchange and reciprocity. It studies the ways that accounting as evidenced in the relational practices of Thai annual reports creates patterns of corporate, societal and state identity in late 20th and early 21st-century Thailand. The article also relates this Thai Buddhist conceptualisation of practice to other theoretical approaches, particularly Foucault, Giddens and Latour, which accounting historians have adapted to express the interaction of human and structural agency in practice. In doing so, the paper seeks to highlight some of the limitations in such accounting theorisation and emphasise the importance of a focus on normative patterns of relational practice as an explanation of accounting formation.

This article analyses the social theology and practice of Scottish presbyterian missionaries towards hinduism in early twentieth-century western India. It reveals a radical contrast in Scottish missionary practice and outlook with the earlier activities of Alexander Duff (1806–78) in India from 1829 to 1864 as well as with contemporaneous discourse on non-christian religion and ethnicity which was prevalent at home in Scotland. The article argues that Scottish presbyterian missionaries selectively adapted and elaborated radical social theology from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Scotland to deal with the hindu socio-religious out-casting and economic exploitation that they experienced during their christian proselytisation in early twentieth-century western India. In particular, the article analyses the social theology of the United Free Church missionary Reverend Alexander Robertson, who lived and worked in western India from 1902 to 1937. Robertson sought to re-invent and apply radical Scottish social theology to the material development and religious conversion of Dalit or impoverished out-caste hindu populations in western India. The article also contrasts this Scottish missionary social theology and practice with the secular Edwardian Liberal ideas of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1871–1954), which Robertson's colleague and colonial administrator, Harold H. Mann (1872–1961) sought to implement towards Dalit people when he was Agricultural Chemist of Bombay Presidency after 1907 and Director of Agriculture for the Bombay Presidency in Pune from 1918 to 1927. In this context, the article argues more broadly that popular Orientalist discourse on non-christian religion and ethnicity at home in Scotland and perceptions of a subordinate Scottish relationship with the London metropole conceal the radical dimensions of Scottish identity within empire and the ways in which the interaction of radical practices between imperial peripheries like Scotland and India conditioned imperial development.

In recent years it has been increasingly recognised that accounting cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of the social and political contexts in which it operates. Religious values and ethical codes form important aspects of the social and political frameworks of most societies. Using the social theory of Marx, Weber, Foucault and Durkheim, accounting researchers have debated the ways and extent to which accounting has been influenced by religion. By analyzing the indigenous accounts of mid 19th-century Siam/Thailand, this article contributes to this debate by demonstrating how accounting was determined by the interaction of socio-religious, economic and political practice. Moreover, it also illustrates how in turn the construction of accounting was constitutive of the Siamese economy, social structure, political governance, and wider Buddhist cosmology. In doing so, this article elaborates an indigenous model of accounting as an alternative to definitions in Marxist, Weberian and other western analytical terms.

This article examines the Scottish missionary contribution to a Scottish sense of empire in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initially, the article reviews general historiographical interpretations which have in recent years been developed to explain the Scottish relationship with British imperial development in India. Subsequently the article analyses in detail the religious contributions of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church Missions to a Scottish sense of empire with a focus on their interaction with Hindu socio-religious thought in nineteenth-century western India. Previous missionary historiography has tended to focus substantially on the emergence of Scottish evangelical missionary activity in India in the early nineteenth century and most notably on Alexander Duff (1806-78). Relatively little has been written on Scottish Presbyterian missions in India in the later nineteenth century, and even less on the significance of their missionary thought to a Scottish sense of Indian empire. Through an analysis of Scottish Presbyterian missionary critiques in both vernacular Marathi and English, this article outlines the orientalist engagement of Scottish Presbyterian missionary thought with late nineteenth-century popular Hinduism. In conclusion this article demonstrates how this intellectual engagement contributed to and helped define a Scottish missionary sense of empire in India.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between accounting and the early roots of the nation‐state in mid nineteenth‐century Siam/Thailand.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the paper examines the theoretical inter‐relationship between accounting and nationalism. Second, it relates this theoretical understanding to a study of the changing concepts, methods and structures of indigenous Siamese accounting at a time of transition when foreign mercantile influence was beginning to have an impact on the mid nineteenth‐century Siamese economy. Third, the paper analyses how these accounting structures and practices came to constitute a socio‐political instrument, which contributed to the administrative development of a Siamese dynastic state by the mid nineteenth‐century. Finally, the paper studies the ways in which this dynastic state began to promote national characteristics through the use of its accounts to create a sense of Siamese cultural identity.FindingsThe findings emphasise the important role of accounting in the construction of political and national identity.Originality/valueThis inter‐disciplinary paper highlights a general neglect in the accounting literature of the instrumental role of accounting in nation‐state formation as well as offering a re‐interpretation of Thai historiography from an accounting viewpoint. Moreover as an example of alternative accounting practice, this paper provides an analysis of indigenous accounting methods and structures in mid nineteenth‐century Siam/Thailand at the point when they were becoming increasingly influenced by foreign mercantilism.

Repeatedly in indian recruitment handbooks and army histories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, self-sufficiency, physical and moral resilience, orderliness and hard work, fighting tenacity, and above all, a sense of courage and loyalty were the characteristics attributed to the Indian martial races. Thus Major-General George MacMunn wrote of the Sikhs:As a fighting man his slow wit and dogged courage give him many of the characteristics of the British soldier at his best.

The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the flourishing of Dalit literature in the 1970s saw the advent of a new connotation for the Marathi word ‘Dalit’. Chosen by the Mahar community leaders themselves, the title ‘Dalit’ was used by them to replace the titles of untouchable, Backward or Depressed Classes and Harijans, which had been coined by those outside the Dalit communities to describe the Mahar and Chambhar jatis. ‘Dalit’ identified those whose culture had been deliberately ‘broken’, ‘crushed to pieces’ or ‘ground down’ by the varna Hindu culture above them. As such, it contained an explicit repudiation of all the Hindu cultural norms of untouchability, varna structure and karma doctrine which varna Hindu society had imposed. The adoption of this new title was an affirmation of the Dalit community's struggle for cultural independence and separate identity. Yet this struggle for an independent cultural identity was not merely a cultural struggle of the 1970s, but one which stretched back almost a century to what, retrospectively, must be seen as the inception of Dalit literature and culture in the activities of the Anarya Dosh Pariharak Mandal and the first Dalit writings of Gopal Baba Valangkar in 1888. This article aims to recover this much-neglected early history of the Dalit communities of western India at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, it examines how these early Dalit communities came to articulate an emergent Dalit cultural identity through the construction of a syncretic form of bhakti Hindu culture.