Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104

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Critical Perspectives on Accounting

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cpa

Student imaginings, cognitive dissonance and critical thinking

Nihel Chabrak a,∗ , Russell Craig b
a
UAEU, Faculty of Business and Economics, Accounting Department, United Arab Emirates
b
College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, we urge accounting educators to encourage imaginings and critical thinking
Received 3 February 2010 in students. We reflect on the results of an assignment in which French accounting students
Received in revised form 2 July 2011 were encouraged to assess the collapse of Enron. The submitted assignments attest to the
Accepted 18 July 2011
originality and richness of non-conformist stories reported by some students. However,
Available online 4 December 2011
they also revealed strong instances of cognitive dissonance that we contend was fostered
by the contradictions some students detected between the rhetoric and the reality of cap-
Keywords: italism; and by the perpetuation of socially bereft capitalist values in accounting curricula.
Critical The assignment manifested student discontent with the current pervading economic sys-
Ethics tem and its moral and ethical precepts. We identify the ways by which students responded
Accounting education to their cognitive dissonance. We propose some pedagogic and curriculum initiatives to
Capitalism improve accounting education. These initiatives call for stronger efforts to connect account-
Cognitive dissonance ing topics with the social world in order to demystify the alleged naturalness of the capitalist
system; for students to be encouraged to imagine other cultures and discourses; and for
Mots clés :
students to challenge any prevailing ideology.
Critique
© 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Éthique
Enseignement de la comptabilité

Keywords:

Palabras clave:
Crítica
Ética
Educación contable

. . .education liberates when it challenges the dominant ideology, teaches critical literacy, and how to learn (Boyce, 1996,
p. 2).
If our students are to be nourished intellectually, they ought to be encouraged to critique underlying concepts and the social
and ideological forces responsible for fashioning any variety of accounting technique (Craig and Amernic, 2002, p. 153).
The university ought never to be too comfortable in and with society — and vice versa . . . there ought to be a degree of
friction deriving from the critical spirit that is central to academic intellect (Bender, 1997, p. 31).

∗ Corresponding author at: UAEU, Faculty of Business and Economics, Accounting Department, PO BOX 17555, UAE. Tel.: +97137133289.
E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Chabrak).

1045-2354/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2011.07.008
92 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104

1. Introduction

This paper builds on the call for accounting educators to pierce “the technical surface of accounting to expose its underlying
ideology . . .[and to] not operate as unquestioning cheerleaders of any imposed ideology — such as those based on the virtues
of market-based competition or of the supremacy of capital over labour” (Amernic and Craig, 2004, p. 368). We reflect on
responses to an assignment conducted in 2004 that required a class of undergraduate French accounting students to critically
assess the collapse of Enron in 2001, using whatever style or media they preferred. Many students responded by using similes
or imaginings as a means of escapism. They took advantage of the opportunity to think critically, express ideals, contest the
merits of pervading business school ideology (capitalism), and overcome some of the barriers to learning that are enshrined
in conventional accounting curricula and orthodox pedagogy.
Assignments of the type set are conducive to critical thinking because they can help overcome the separation of disciplines
that otherwise negates attempts to understand many aspects of life (including business life) more broadly. As well, such
assignments are beneficial in helping to redress the “poverty of discourse” (Chambers, 1999) in contemporary accounting
curricula. They are consistent with calls to introduce critical pedagogy by giving “primacy to students’ experience rather
than to up-front theory or moralizing” (Grey, 2002, p. 509) and to develop a new relationship between teacher, student and
society (Freire, 2006). Hence, in the assignment set, students were allowed to deviate without sanctions from linguistic and
pedagogic norms. Using a wide variety of symbolic means, they were encouraged to stand aloof from the established order
and to resist the conventionality and orthodoxy that many universities and schools want to fashion in order to maintain the
status quo.
Students used a rich variety of literature, literary tropes, artistic handiwork, images and historical context to criticize the
capitalist system and aspects of the collapse of Enron. Students drew upon their knowledge of literary classics and history
to think critically. This helped them communicate their sense of the world, and aided their learning. A similar outcome was
reported in the context of student use of television program formats for group assignment presentations: unorthodox or
novel modes of expression were found to be “beneficial in serving accounting students’ psychological and emotional needs . . .
[and in facilitating] . . . students’ critical and creative engagement with accounting” (Buckmaster and Craig, 2000, p. 371). The
variety of modes of expression, imagery and imaginings invoked by our students might surprise those who regard accounting
students, axiomatically, as literary wastelands and as diminished, ahistorical souls. Such regard is symptomatic of common
perceptions that accounting students are disconnected from reality; and that because accounting syllabi dwell predominantly
on technical matters then through debit and credit, accounting students are incapable of considering accounting’s broader
social role. According to Tinker (1985), “the systematic understatement of accounting’s significance is reflected in the images
of accountants in popular culture: as the technician, the innocuous bookkeeper, the “ink-stained wretch,” the recordkeeper
whose lack of creativity and imagination makes him trustworthy.” (p. xv)
Cognitive dissonance appeared to be experienced by many of the students who completed the assignment. We analyze
students’ reaction to their cognitive dissonance and contend that their frequent use of simile, imagery and other imaginings
were devices to resolve incongruities they harboured. Imaginings were (at least temporary) escape devices and ways for stu-
dents to distance themselves from the cloak of capitalism and the influence of its guiding precepts. However, such escapism
did not lead to a deep change in students’ attitudes. The habitus inculcated by the pervading pedagogic work continued
to shape students’ behaviour — they resigned themselves to the primacy of the dominant culture over their own culture.
Nonetheless, if the curriculum and dominant approaches to pedagogy are re-thought and reformed, the problem of cognitive
dissonance and the doxic submission of students to prevailing ideology can be resolved. Accordingly, we recommend that
accounting be taught in a way that encourages the development of a much-needed breed of emancipated critical accoun-
tants. For that purpose, students should appreciate the embeddedness of accounting in the social world and be aware of the
existence of alternative cultures and discourses.
We begin by explaining notions of cognitive dissonance and doxa before arguing that many students are educated in
a system that, subconsciously, puts them in conflict with their ideals and values. We focus on how students resolve this
dilemma by imagining that they are emancipated — even though, simultaneously, they are influenced by an education
system that continuously confronts their morals, ethics, and ideals. We contextualize the educational environment in which
the student assignment was set: that is, in the Financial Accounting Principles course at the Télécom Business School in Paris.
We analyze the range of literature, imagery and historical examples students used to complete the assignment. In doing so,
we highlight important issues for accounting educators, expose some contradictions of capitalism, highlight students’ doxic
submission to the capitalist system and the resulting cognitive dissonance they experienced, and argue for the adoption of
an emancipatory and transformative approach to accounting education (Dillard and Tinker, 1996; Kaidonis, 2004).

2. Analytical framework

2.1. Doxa, capitalism as a social order, and the role of schools and universities

Excesses of capitalist endeavour have been implicated in recurring episodes of unexpected corporate collapse, raising
many questions about ethicality in the business world. This has posed a vexing conundrum for many accounting students.
Should they forsake their personal values and ideals when studying business and accounting? Can ethics in real-life be about
honesty, respect and fairness anything less than 100% of the time? We highlight the behavior of accounting students who
 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104 93

are troubled by perceptions that they are expected to wholeheartedly and unequivocally embrace the capitalist system and
its quest for profits. In doing so, we reflect on how they resolve cognitive dissonance (a psychological state discussed in the
following sub-section); and how their resolving behavior mirrors a doxic submission to the capitalist system.
Greek philosophers regarded doxa as the opposite of knowledge (truth), and as encompassing the idea of error. For
Bourdieu (1977), doxa refers to something taken for granted. Doxa is the mechanism that produces the most committed
adherence to the established order by making its own arbitrariness seem natural. Doxa has endless capacity to set misrecog-
nized limits (what is commonly called a sense of reality), in the dialectic between objective chances and agents’ aspirations
(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977).
Doxa leads to the formation of habitus: that is, something that produces a commonsense and harmonized objective world
of consensus about the meanings and the desirable, unifying experiences within a group or class. These homogeneous and
hysteresis habitus engender the internalization by individuals of objective social structures through their mental schemes
and perceptions (their ethos). Individuals’ mental schemes and cognitive structures are variants of, and reproduce, the
group habitus. Thus, the world is rendered as comprising objective order and tradition; and as closed, natural, self-evident
and undisputed. What happens is that the world goes unquestioned; there is nothing to do except what is done; and what
is done is right — and what should be done. Bourdieu (1977, p. 164), calls this experience doxa “so as to distinguish it from
an orthodox or heterodox belief implying awareness and recognition of the possibility of different or antagonistic beliefs.”
Like other instruments of knowledge of the social world, schools and universities are powerful political instruments of
social conservation. They help reproduce the dominant system of which they are the product. Their importance stems from a
demand for the role they play in producing programmed social agents who are endowed with the same durable, transposable
habitus; and thus, with common schemes of thought, perception and action. Universities and schools maximize the social
value of the qualities and skills that the capitalist system produces, assesses and consecrates (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977).
Therefore, they reproduce social inequalities by disguising and legitimizing the arbitrary distribution of powers and by
exercising privileged exclusions and inclusions from the hierarchical structure of capitalism. University autonomy has a
concealed dependence on the structure of class relations. Universities operate as huge classificatory machines because of
the symbolic potency of their examinations and credentialism.
Academic consecration, credentialism and meritocracy are, in effect, modern forms of the nobility titles that existed in
feudal society. Although the historical context is different, credentials have the same social function in modern society, since
hereditary transmission of privileges no longer operates. Credentials ensure cultural capital is transmitted across generations
and stamp pre-existing differences in inherited cultural capital with a meritocratic seal. They transmute social hierarchies
into academic ones, which in turn, are convertible into social (and economic) advantages. Examinations allegedly ensure
formal equality for all due to identical tests. However, this apparent fairness is illusory. The “gifted” who are passed are
advantaged over those who are failed because class relations (and schools examinations) are structured in favour of those
who possess inherited dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p. 210).
Credentials also constrain any negotiation of doxa and any contesting of the established order (Bourdieu and Passeron,
1977). Such a view is held in McPhail et al. (2010) analysis of Bourdieu’s concepts in the field of business education in
Scottish schools. McPhail et al. (2010, p. 46) reported that “ideas and attitudes [were] ingrained and difficult to overturn.”
For Althusser (1970) as well, school is conceived as one of the apparatuses of State that ensures subjection to the ruling
ideology or the mastery of its “practice.” The idea of a culturally free pedagogic action, that is exempt from arbitrariness
in the content and manner of imposition, is a myth. Schools simultaneously select meanings and “choices”, impose that
culture as the legitimate culture, and test its inculcation by means of a socially approved system of sanctions and merits.
The arbitrary imposition of the culture is manifest through pedagogy. Thus, we should conceive schools and universities
as reproducing the corresponding habitus in order to make the world conform to the myth; and as acting to obliterate
the universe of possible cultures without explicitly forbidding them. Universities and schools exert a symbolic violence by
conferring a symbolic power to appear natural (and not arbitrary) on the chosen culture, by confounding attempts to effect
social change, and by concealing the objective truth of their action. Consequently, they produce ideological justification of
the order they reproduce through their functioning (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977).

2.2. Cognitive dissonance, doxa, and the contradictions of capitalism

Cognitive dissonance is a state of unpleasant interior tension due to the simultaneous presence of two cognitions that
are psychologically inconsistent and disscordant (Cossette, 1994; Fischer, 1996). A cognition is consonant (congruous) if it
involves or supports the other cognition. A cognition is dissonant (incongruous) if it involves or supports the opposite of the
other cognition. Dissonance leads a person to modify one of the two cognitions to restore consonance (Bonardi and Roussiau,
1999).
Individuals who experience cognitive dissonance (including many accounting students) can respond in several ways. They
can modify cognition to cope with new facts; integrate new facts to preserve an “own self” using an “avoiding process”; or
select appropriate information and change behavior by looking to new facts. The latter leads to a reorganization of values
and a new state of consonance. In general, individuals who experience dissonance try to change their personal attitudes to
restore coherence, especially when their public role or social engagement is contradictory. According to Fischer (1996), the
greater the external pressures, the less dissonance there is.
94 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104

Consider cognitive dissonance in the context of an education system. Students are integrated into an education program
with beliefs and personal attitudes that have been acquired throughout life. Education is a belief-shaping institution that has
a tacit delegation to convey knowledge, skills and qualifications to students within a “social contract.” Students are “socially
engaged.” They recognize the legitimacy and the authority of pedagogic actions that condition their perception and mental
schemes. They transfer their respect (as disciples) to the education authority (as master) (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977).
What students learn might (or might not) accord with their personal values. They will experience consonance if, and only if,
new facts to which they are exposed exist concordantly with the ideas they have inherited throughout their life. Otherwise,
there will be tension leading to cognitive dissonance.
The grading system and the ethos of credentialism are likely to condition and exacerbate the intensity of the tension
experienced by students. Dissonance would be inversely proportional to the student’s grade: the better the grade, the
less important the dissonance. On the other hand, a free grading system would accentuate the dissonance. In both cases,
dissonance is resolved mostly by espousing generally allowable attitudes. Hence, the role of credentials (good grades, a
graduation diploma, vocational employment and remuneration) is to render students less conscious of how they internalize
objective structures. Students are unaware of the gap between what they think and what they are taught; and between their
personal values and the authority discourse expected of them — parroting ideologically sound responses when prompted
to do so.
In the assignment task we report here, the prospect of “dissonance masking” is lessened because grading was based
on criteria that did not require a specific discourse (orthodoxy) about an imposed understanding (symbolic culture) of
the Enron case. Students were not provided with any (overt) conditioning materials prior to completing the assignment.1
Since students could use whatever linguistic device they wanted to express their point of view, they could draw upon the
unthinkable to better articulate their symbolic culture.
Cognitive dissonance is particularly helpful in understanding the psychological forces when individuals feel confronted
by capitalism and the “spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999). How do students respond to a system they
consider rides roughshod over the working class, alienates workers, and renders them submissive and distant from the
authentic world (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999, pp. 677–78)? How do they cope with a system whose spirit concurrently
conjures a modern, democratic, pluralistic and progressive image of concern for human autonomy and creativity? The spirit
of capitalism is designed to accommodate social and political pressures, whilst maintaining ideological autonomy for the
system. We argue that doxa explains how the resolution of cognitive dissonance (involving internalization, at the micro
level, of objective structures of capitalism) is an implication of the contradictions of the system. Hence, doxa has removed
the division between the subjective and objective structures which many Marxists have failed to do. This is mainly because
their analysis focuses on economic factors and neglects the capacity of cultural and symbolic systems (operating at the micro
level) to reproduce social structures of domination.
When individuals absorb objective social structures into their cognition, thereby reflecting objective relations that exist
independently of them and their will, they unconsciously aspire only to what is made possible for them (Bourdieu, 1977).
Taking the spirit of capitalism as the essence of capitalism is their doxic submission, thereby reinforcing the prevailing state of
power relations. Consequently, individuals are alienated from their essence. At the micro level, individuals who are engaged
socially, and subject to social limits, unconsciously espouse (internalize) new facts and beliefs to re-establish consonance
if they experience cognitive dissonance. This resolution is an implication of their doxic submission to a system in which
contradictions remain veiled. Those who are dominated have no material or symbolic means to reject the arbitrary culture
imposed on them through logical structures that reproduce social structures. They re-establish consonance at the price of
their alienation.
Cognitive dissonance is powerful only when it is transformative. Thus, in a situation of extreme discomfort, it could
provoke a state of crisis — a necessary condition to having ideas contested and the field of doxa questioned explicitly.
However, cognitive dissonance may not allow the re-creation of the world since schools have established (in addition to doxa)
“the orthodoxy; a system of euphemisms, of acceptable ways of thinking and speaking. . . which rejects heretical remarks as
blasphemies” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 169). Schools and universities help unify language (Bourdieu, 1991) and legitimate modes
of expression and discourse about the world. “What goes without saying” because of misrecognition is reinforced by “what
cannot be said” such that “authorized discourse” dominates (Bourdieu, 1977). Only a critical discourse that awakens political
consciousness can overturn the institutionalized censorship implied by orthodoxy, so that the universe can be thought of as
things unstated and unnamed.
The role of educators is to prevent any ideology from becoming an unquestioned taken-for-granted truth. Educators
should encourage critical discourse to help students distance themselves from the arbitrariness of doxic knowledge and to
spurn their doxic submission to the social world. Educators should be encouraged to acknowledge “the hidden curriculum”
and the need for new (including dialogic) approaches to education (Thomson and Bebbington, 2004, p. 609). They should
encourage students to escape from the official discourse (orthodoxy) of ordained curricula and constraining models of
(alleged) educational virtue towards an “extraordinary discourse” for the praxis. This is what Bourdieu (1991) calls a “heretic
break” with the established order. The student escapism we report below is a departure from the existing language of order,

1
It is possible that the task set, and the identification of Enron as a subject for critical enquiry, has probably had a conditioning effect.
 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104 95

and from the arbitrary culture imposed by the curricula: it is an escape from the doxic state and the universe of orthodoxy to
the authentic world.
In subsequent sections, we address a variety of questions. How did students re-establish consonance? Did they change
their original ideas to conform to a generally accepted discourse of orthodoxy conveyed by the school? Did they internalize
the arbitrary culture imposed by the curricula? Did they have symbolic means and material to reject what is imposed by
the school? How should curricula be reformed to help students regain their symbolic capital so that they can question the
existing order? However, before proceeding we contextualize the assignment and explore its results.

3. Method

We report on an experience in setting a critical thinking assignment in 2004 at the Télécom Business School [TBS]. The
TBS is a state-funded business school in the French system of Grandes Écoles, offering a unique program of higher education
in management and information technology. TBS is affiliated with the Institut Télécom Group and is supervised by the
French Ministry of Industry. France has almost 300 Grandes Écoles [GE], many dating from Napoleonic times. (See statistics
provided by the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles [CGE] at http://www.cge.asso.fr/.) The GEs claim to have produced the elite
of the nation — high ranking civil servants, politicians, executives, scientists and philosophers. This helps to explain why
preparatory classes for the GEs (Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Ecoles [CPGE]) are called the “royal way.” The GEs are
renowned for their autonomy, pioneering pedagogical approaches, highly qualified professors, and international partners.
They are small compared to French universities, averaging 3000–4000 students per school. Admission criteria focus mainly
on performance in competitive entry exams usually undertaken after two (or sometimes three) years of CPGE study.
There were 184 students (84 female and 100 male), representing approximately 50 nationalities, in the class for which
the assignment was set. About 25% of the class held scholarships from Institut Télécom for social reasons (for example, local
students with separated parents). TBS is committed strongly to remediate social discrimination within the GE system and,
consequently, it attracts many excellent students from lower social classes. Approximately two thirds of students in the class
came from families where the head of the household was not from the socio-professional category of liberal professions,
entrepreneurs, executives in the public or private sector, engineers, scientists, or university teachers.2
The assignment was set in a 45-h Financial Accounting Principles course taken in the first year of the three-year manage-
ment studies curriculum. Most students undertake this course in their third year of post-secondary school education. The
assignment was compulsory and worth 25% of the final grade. The instructions given to students that explain what was
required in terms of content and form are provided in Appendix A. Students were encouraged to express their moral and
ethical view of the collapse of Enron and how accounting was implicated in that collapse. Our undeclared expectation was
that students would offer judgments about whether accounting was a neutral technique or a social and political instrument.
Students were encouraged to use whatever materials they thought suitable (press articles, Internet-sourced materials,
and/or research papers) and to make historical and inter-country comparisons if necessary. They were allowed to use any
expressive form they deemed suitable to communicate their point of view. Creativity was encouraged explicitly to promote
deviation from linguistic norms.
The medium of conventional essays used in schools endlessly reproduces a socially recognized “recherché”, “elevated”,
“distinguished” and “correct” language as a legitimate language. To maintain political domination, schools do not allow any
unsanctioned deviation (Bourdieu, 1991; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). The legitimate language helps its users to see and
to feel things in a way that shapes a common consciousness and maintains the established order (Bourdieu, 1991). To be
accepted in this order and to avoid the severity of sanctions the market inflicts on them, students (dominated speakers) should
make concessions. Thus, in their desperate striving for correctness conveyed by the legitimate language, they stigmatize
aspects of their own tongue. In the ensuing disarray, they are dispossessed of their language and are condemned to silence.
They become speechless and are forced to negate their social identity and class membership (Bourdieu, 1991).
To stand aloof from the “similarities” schools want to fashion, students from different classes should be allowed to use
their linguistic capital. Bourgeois language tends to be more abstract, formal, intellectual and euphemistic, whereas working-
class language is more expressive. It tends “to move from particular case to particular case, from illustration to parable, or
to shun the bombast of fine words and the turgidity of grand emotions, through banter, rudeness and ribaldry” (Bourdieu
and Passeron, 1977, p. 116). The assignment conducted rehabilitates the academic “market” value of each individual’s
linguistic capital. Discourses silenced by the “orthodoxy” for being common, ordinary, familiar, facile, popular, crude, trivial,
slang and vulgar, are valued. Results of the assignment show that besides conventional stylistic discourses, many students
spontaneously chose non-conventional media (such as tales, caricatures and comic figures) to convey their opinion.
Students’ assignments were analyzed in respect of their casuistic character, consistent with a hermeneutic phenomeno-
logical stance (Chabrak, 2005b). Our accounts of individual assignments,3 reported in the next section, express “extraordinary
stories and discourses” that deviate from the prevailing interpretation of the failure of Enron. They deserve our attention
because they are voices silenced by conventional discourses. They convey awareness by several students of the possibility

2
For more information on Socio-Professional Categories (CSP) in France, visit the website of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies,
http://www.insee.fr/en/default.asp.
3
We accept the criticism that, ideally, we should have taken our interpretations of student stories back to them for comment.
96 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104

of alternatives other than the arbitrary imposed culture. This response reflects a state of cognitive dissonance. Analyzing
how consonance was restored allows assessment of how far doxa has been negotiated. We do not report student answers
that highlight accounting devices Enron executives used to hide losses and debt exposures (e.g., Special Purpose Entities)
because such responses would merely reproduce what students are taught by institutions of capitalism. Those students are
not challenging their doxic submission. Their answers are not relevant in terms of the purpose of our study.

4. Results

In this section, we focus on student assignments that disclosed stories and discourses of the collapse of Enron other
than the official interpretation reproduced by institutions of capitalism since in 2001.4 New insights were enabled by the
assignment because students were allowed to use their choice of linguistic device and historic and international comparisons
to better articulate their symbolic culture.

4.1. Literary and artistic devices

Students made frequent use of a wide range of literary and artistic devices (including irony, parody, caricature and
photography). Several likened the events of the Enron collapse to fables written by the famous 17th century French poet and
fabulist, Jean de la Fontaine (1621–1695). Marie1 and Fatima Zahra cited the third fable in de la Fontaine’s Fables Choises,
published in 1668, The Frog who wished to be as big as the Ox. This fable is about envy, conceit and delusions of grandeur.
Frog (Enron), envious of Ox’s size (the financial and market strength of Enron’s competitors), “huffs and puffs herself up to
match Ox’s measurements, and halfway there, explodes” (Du Plessix Gray, 1995).
Corentin drew on de la Fontaine’s fable of greed, The Hen with the Golden Egg. This tells of a very mean man who owned a
hen that layed one golden egg per day. The man, not satisfied, killed the hen to get all the eggs inside it. However, he found
nothing, and the hen could lay no more eggs. Corentin likens this fable to Enron’s managers who were never satisfied with
what they had. By engaging in insider trading and other nefarious immoral activities, they “killed” their company.
To express her skepticism for the ineffectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 [SOX], Fatima-Zahra cited de la Fontaine’s
fable about a pregnant mountain in labor (The Mountain in Labour). In the mind of Fatima-Zahra, the mountain is the US
Senate and Congress. The impending birth is an imagining of the US legislature’s response to Enron, WorldCom and other
financial scandals. The mountain bellows loud and long, raising expectations that she will bear a city bigger than Paris
(Shapiro, 2007). However, what she bears is a great disappointment — a mouse (which is likened to SOX). Fatima-Zahra uses
this fable to express her extreme disappointment with the inadequate response of the US legislature to major problems in
the US regulatory system.
Marie1 used irony to narrate a story of leaders (“kings”), managers (“dukes”) and employees (“peasants”) who
lived in a universe where the most powerful person was [then US President] G.W. Bush. She recounts the well-
publicised story of Janice Farmer, a retired Enron employee who lost more than $700,000 of her 401K Retirement
Savings Plan. Marie1 cites Farmer’s testimony to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary on June 19, 2002
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=280&wit id=648, accessed December 16, 2009). She wrote that
Farmer now “lives in the dark at night, to save electricity.” For Marie1 this is doubly ironic: first, because Janice had worked
for one of the biggest electric companies in the US; and second, because the Enron executives responsible for her current
plight “go scot-free and are living their normal lives of luxury, in no way negatively affected by their illegal actions” (Farmer
testimony, http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=280&wit id=648).
Mehdi parodied Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, a classic Chinese book of military strategy, first published in the 6th century.
Mehdi adopts the perspective of an Enron manager to write a handbook on how to swindle, titled The Art of Swindling. This
resonates with Dorothée’s use of culinary imagery to explain how to cook a delicacy. In her Recipe for a Successful Failure,
Dorothée uses perceptive flair to urge us to “put a dose of dishonesty in a bowl, add the zest of complicity, incorporate a
pinch of dysfunction, and season delicately with manipulation and corruption.” She concludes, ironically, by reminding us
to “not forget to add some sugar to avoid the bitter taste!”
On the cover page of her assignment, Wafae drew a caricature titled Corporate Terrorism, depicting Enron Chairman,
Kenneth Lay, as Osama bin Laden. In similar vein, Raphael likened the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US to the
Enron scandal. He juxtaposed photos of the lavish Enron headquarters in Houston with those of the World Trade Centre
under attack. He commented that the only difference between the two photos was that, in the case of Enron, the terrorists
were not in planes but in the plushest offices of the company. Thus, the dominant metaphor in Raphael’s mind seemed to
be that Enron executives are (economic) terrorists.
Julien1 wrote a script for a western movie that was a parody of the 1966 film, starring Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly. However, Julien1 had a much larger cast of lead characters: “the conjurer (Kenneth Lay, president of Enron), the
brute (Jeffrey Skilling, CEO of Enron), the brain (Andrew Fastow), the conniver (Joseph Berardino), the denouncer (Sherron
Watkins), the suicider (Cliff Baxter), and the victims (800,000 investors and 20,000 employees).” At the end of his movie,
Julien1 addresses a letter to the US president. This is reminiscent of Emile Zola’s famous j’accuse (“I accuse”) letter published

4
The use of students’ first names has been approved by TBS.
 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104 97

on January 13, 1898 in L’Aurore, in which Zola accused the French government of anti-Semitism and of falsely imprisoning
a French Army officer, Alfred Dreyfus. Julien1s j’accuse reads:
Mr. President G.W. Bush, I accuse the directors of Enron, auditors, financial analysts, rating agents, bankers, business lawyers,
journalists. . . you and your administration!

4.2. Historical incidents

Some students assessed the collapse of Enron through comparisons with historical incidents. Elodie likened the
collapse of Enron to the Maxwell scandal in the UK. Robert Maxwell, Chair of the Mirror Group of companies in Lon-
don, drowned in mysterious circumstances in 1991. In 1992, investigators discovered that Maxwell had been corruptly
diverting hundreds of millions of pounds from pension funds and other sources to keep the Mirror Group solvent
(http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0771967.html, accessed December 17, 2009). Elodie, who assumed the role of a TV
journalist, imagined herself as leading a panel discussion on different aspects of the Enron collapse. Her panel comprised
five experts: Monsieur Politis (politics), Monsieur Bourse (financial markets), Monsieur Bilan (accounting), Monsieur Yuman
(human relations), and Monsieur Pensée (philosophy). The disciplinary breadth of the panel reflected the importance Elodie
placed on ensuring a socially encompassing discussion.
When Monsieur Yuman likened the collapse of Enron to the Maxwell scandal, Elodie editorialized: “With the complicity
of his bankers and auditors, Robert Maxwell thought that he was able to save his failing company by plundering the pension
funds of his workers, estimated at more than D 750 million.” Then, Monsieur Pensée muses that business creates new areas
of impenetrability, and that transparency and ethics are elsewhere, beyond the marketplace. Elodie drew on the Maxwell
scandal to conclude that what was “extraordinary” in the collapse of Enron was that nothing was “extraordinary.”
Roseline and Gilles saw some parallels with the Panama Canal crisis of the 1880s, in which Ferdinand de Lesseps
(1805–1894) attempted to construct a lock-free canal across the Panamanian isthmus but failed because of an inhospitable
climate and insufficient capital. There were claims of bribery involving French politicians and journalists, and financial cor-
ruption. The outcome was bankruptcy, then liquidation of the construction company, and financial ruin of mainly French
investors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand de Lesseps, accessed December 17, 2009). Gilles argued that whereas de
Lesseps engaged in a tangible and worthwhile project, Enron thrived on abstract and intangible derivative financial instru-
ments and speculated to make rapid profits. For him, the financially ruined French investors at least had the consolation of
seeing a useful project completed. In contrast, Enron investors had nothing other than the bitter memory of being diddled
by speculators.
Emilie compared Enron with the Erika scandal. In 1999, the 37,000 tons “bargain basement charter” oil tanker
Erika, broke up in a heavy storm in the Bay of Biscay, spilling a cargo of heavy fuel oil and causing “one
of Europe’s worst environmental disasters . . . [and revealing]. . . a murky world where profit rules over safety”
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/programmes/correspondent/883110.stm, accessed December 16, 2009). Emilie raised serious
concerns about management’s sham practice of [so-called] adherence to an ethical charter, while simultaneously knowing
that their actions were likely to have harmful consequences. She wondered whether the oil traders who entrusted their
cargo to an aging, suspect tanker with design faults (yet conforming to certification specifications) had behaved ethically.
She argued that compliance with ethical rules would not lead axiomatically to good and proper outcomes. Elodie summa-
rized her stance on ethics, responsibility and accountability very simply: the use of ethical charts and deontological codes
reduces responsibility and accountability to mere compliance with rules, without considering justice and morality.

4.3. Lobbying and conspiracy

Several students alluded to Enron’s lobbying of politicians. Julien2 cited Michael Moore’s 2002 film Bowling for Columbine
to support a claim that Enron’s powerful influence stemmed from its political lobbying. Frédéric recalled the pressure exerted
by US diplomats and US senators on John Kachamila (natural resources minister of Mozambique) to sign a contract with
Enron “that was not good for Mozambique” (http://www.mapcruzin.com/news/bush121501b.htm). Adrien cited the case
of Frank Wisner, ex-ambassador of the USA in India, and an ex-member of the Enron board of directors. In the early 1990s,
Wisner was alleged to have used his influence with the Indian government to help Enron win a $3 billion contract to build
a power plant in India, despite the controversial nature of the project. Mathieu pointed out the close relations between the
White House and Enron executives. Frédéric and Adrien captured the mood of many students by accusing business of flirting
with politics to produce a hegemony detrimental to the public interest and the welfare of the poor in developing countries.
In similar vein, Hervé and Florence argued that in the last eight years of its operation, Enron engaged more than 20 CIA
agents to train Enron employees in intelligence and security matters. Hervé added that Enron used the Echelon spy satellite
to intercept e-mail, fax and telephone conversations, and put pressure on foreign governments. According to Hervé, such
activities helped Enron to conclude contracts worth several billions of dollars.
Hervé, Aurélien, Aude and other students seemed fascinated by the coroner’s enquiry into the alleged suicide of Cliff Baxter
in January 2002. Before his death, Baxter, a former Enron executive, had agreed to testify against other Enron executives. For
98 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104

Hervé this scandal was like a remake of a drama television series such as Dallas, and even better than the best “Sulitzer”5
ever written. Aurélien was astonished by the investigation into Baxter’s death, particularly because the judge did not request
an autopsy on the body of Baxter. Aude highlighted accusations against the coroner, Joye Carter, of altering evidence and
corrupt practice. Aude noted that Carter declared Baxter’s death a suicide after only 24 h. Yet, in another case, she took more
than 23 days to determine that several children had died by drowning. Aude noted that Carter gave her verdict before asking
for toxicology tests. For Guillaume, the accusations against Baxter and the other executives were simply acts of scapegoating
in the clamour for revenge by victims of the Enron collapse.

4.4. Religious discourse

Many students were surprised by the religious and patriotic discourse of Enron executives. The laic tradition in
French society seems to explain, in part, such reaction. For Stephen, American people had long believed the reverent
preaching of success by Enron executives. Stephen and Julien2 quoted the declaration “I believe in God and I believe in
free markets” by Kenneth Lay (to the San Diego Union-Tribune in February 2001); and the declaration “We are on the
side of the angels, in every business we’ve been in, we’re the good guys” by Jeffrey Skilling (to BusinessWeek in 2001:
http://www.businessweek.com/2001/01 07/b3719001.htm). The reaction of French students to these two declarations
seems consistent with the secular tradition in France of combat républicain, and the history of the French revolution, which
was also a revolt against the Church. In contrast, Americans are more sensitive to religious issues. The Monica Lewinsky scan-
dal in the US (1995–97), for example, would not have had the same impact in French society. François Mitterand, President
of France from 1981 to 1995 was castigated for hiding his cancer — not for lying about his illegitimate daughter (Chabrak
and Daidj, 2007).

4.5. Regulatory institutions

Students queried the role and effectiveness of regulatory bodies in the US. Given the level of expertise of such
regulatory bodies, they found it curious that these bodies did not respond more vigorously to the deceit of Enron exe-
cutives. Corentin quoted Paul Krugman (Professor of Economics at Princeton University and winner of the 2008 Nobel
Prize in Economics) who said, “The collapse has brought to light things that we should have known but didn’t want
to see.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/29/opinion/29KRUG.html?scp=2&sq=29%20january%202002&st=cse, accessed
December 28, 2009). Several students’ were concerned about the complicit behavior between regulators and the
regulated. Marie focused on the case of John Olson, who was dismissed from Merrill Lynch for refusing to
recommend Enron shares to customers. She noted that Olson called those who dismissed him as “sharks, capa-
ble of killing their mothers for the sake of business.” Other students cited journalistic rhetoric, such as in The
Economist, where Enron was described as an “evangelical cult” and its executives as “Messiahs” of the new econ-
omy (http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story id=E1 PPQRST). Pierre, in wondering how people
could profit from an unjustified gambling-type euphoria, noted “when the boomerang returns, the surprise is painful.”

4.6. Were Enron executives just good business school students?

Stéphane recalled the comments of Aktouf (2002), director of the HEC Montréal, comparing the post-Enron decisions
of regulators to the “policy of an ostrich.” Stéphane argued that education programs caused the problems of modern cap-
italism and that schools, especially business schools, encouraged managers to maximize shareholder value. Nicolas noted
that universities who educate managers are dependent on funds from the business world, and thereby, are compromised
ethically. Rather than denounce Enron executives for swindling the public, he claimed it would be more judicious to identify
institutional factors at the root of the problems. Several students thought that Enron executives acted in exactly the way they
had been taught to act in their university studies. For Maxence and Clotilde, placing all the responsibility on the shoulders of
Enron executives was “an immense hypocrisy.” They contended that Anglo-Saxon culture glorifies people who have a spirit
of adventure and entrepreneurship, who like taking risks, and who are ambitious and greedy. Maxence alleged Kenneth Lay
did only what his education (including a PhD in economics at the University of Houston) had taught him to do: make more
money. Thus, his actions were a manifestation of a culture and an ideology conveyed (in part at least) by education.

4.7. Curriculum boundaries and moral crises

Educators should be alert to students’ perceptions of curricula and how they can be discerned through assignments. In
our case, the assignments revealed strong traces of a discourse of revolt. In many assignments, an “absent” that is always
“present” is observable. These were basic curriculum precepts that have negative connotations (such as “market, capitalism,
efficiency, and corporate governance”) but which were synonyms (for “fortune, money, profit, greed”), devoid of ethical or

5
Paul Loup Karl Sulitzer is a French financier and author. He wrote “The Green King” (Le Roi Vert), which was made into a comic series.
 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104 99

moral substance. There was a considerable distance between students’ perceptions of the business world, and the portrait
conveyed by the curriculum.
The Enron case confirmed for Julien1 that individuals are ready to earn money by whatever means possible; and that
considering money to be sacred is a characteristic of modern day society. According to Julie, when winning in marketplace
competition is a dominant mentality, people think only in instrumentalist terms (usually money), and the means of being
perceived as winning does not matter. Caroline argued that regulators are ineffective because they cannot resolve the basic
problem that corruption has its roots in capitalism; that Enron executives did not establish a criminal and corrupt firm;
but that Enron was a product of the ambient economic environment. Stephen contended that SOX would be ineffective and
merely offer a semblance of protection from the deficiencies of the business world. His assessment was that the dispensing
of justice by SOX would mask real problems in society. According to Clothilde, regulatory reform that implicated managers
and incriminated auditors was easier and simpler than acknowledging that a world economic recession was an odious
manifestation of capitalism.
Several students commented on the declaration by [then] US Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill that: “firms come and
go. This reflects capitalism’s genius; people act and have to pay for the consequences of their right or wrong decisions. This
is how the system works” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1759033.stm). Thomas thought that O’Neill’s declaration
would be praiseworthy if it was fair, but it was not. He argued that people who make decisions and who benefit from
generous profits are not those who suffer the consequences when decisions go wrong. Alexandra was concerned by O’Neill’s
declaration that the USA had become like a big Casino, with swindlers and victims, cheats and profiteers, and where investors
are the principal exposers of thieving executives, managers and politicians.
Caroline was offended by the arguments of ultraconservatives that employee retirement funds should not have “put all
their eggs in one basket.” She noted that employees were not financial specialists and were not necessarily aware of the
risks. For her, Enron’s collapse consecrated the cliché about capitalism — “the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.”
Amani queried whether economic progress had become synonymous with the death of respect for basic humanitar-
ian principles. Julie queried whether ethical values existed in the business world. Further, in paraphrasing Joseph Stiglitz’s
comment (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/dec/20/highereducation.uk1, accessed December 28, 2009), she con-
tended that if Adam Smith’s famous “hand” was “invisible”, it was so purely and simply because it did not exist.
The above examples from submitted assignments show how students escaped the boundaries of curriculum to criticize the
prevailing economic system. However, the students were oriented unconsciously by that system, capitalism. To illustrate this,
in the next section, we identify four different ways by which the cognitive dissonance, revealed in students’ assignments, was
resolved. We appeal for curriculum reform to emancipate education from its instrumental role in supporting the authority
of the capitalist system. A benefit of curriculum reform would be to promote a breed of critical accountants to challenge,
instead of perpetuate, the dominant order.

5. Discussion

The student assignments reveal how consonance was re-established from a state of cognitive dissonance. Only the first
group of assignments discussed below urges reform of the curriculum and the system. Students resolved their dissonance
by rejecting the dominant culture that is inculcated by the pedagogic work to which they were exposed. The three other
assignment groups reflect resignation and adherence to the arbitrary culture and its hierarchies and classifications. Disso-
nance is resolved by recognizing that the dominant culture conveyed by the curriculum is the legitimate culture. This is
done by explicitly valuing the dominant culture, or unconsciously recognizing the worthiness of their culture, or simply
misrecognizing the possibility of other cultures.

5.1. Students who resolve cognitive dissonance by adopting a positive posture and urging reform

Some students with a positive disposition did not adjust their attitude but asked for reform of the system and the
curriculum. They showed it is possible to change education programs to accord with their aspirations. Emilie, for example,
advocated a new conception of the company — as a community of interests and not just “an object” belonging to shareholders.
Slim contended that reforms should promote authentic democracy and equity between employees and shareholders within
firms. Pierre considered Enron and similar subsequent scandals were obstacles to a better world. He argued that if we
continue to travel along the same ideological road, we are doomed to failure because success is ephemeral, illusory and
driven by egocentricity.

5.2. Students who resolve cognitive dissonance by adjusting their beliefs to those of the system

Students in this group worried about their future careers. They responded by conforming to the economic system and its
values. Anaïs confessed in a personal diary that she would find it difficult to be a manager. She stated her motive for studying
was to secure a stable job in a big company. Nevertheless, she was disillusioned increasingly about the poor security of work
in big corporations, and was uncomfortable about the prospect of working with individuals who behaved in the same way
as Enron executives. Her diary recorded that she decided to go to bed hoping that she would not have nightmares. After
100 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104

revealing her criticisms of the system for generating agents like Enron executives, Anaïs blithely consigned her worries to
her diary, as if tomorrow would be just another day for her.

5.3. Students who resolve cognitive dissonance by falsely thinking they are emancipated

Some students, indoctrinated by the pervading economic system, did not realize they were in cognitive dissonance. They
falsely thought they were emancipated. Unaware, these students wrote incongruous ideas. Mathieu criticized statements by
US regulatory officials that he alleged glorified “the market.” The theme of those statements was that because the collapse of
Enron did not disturb the market’s functioning, the market must therefore be efficient. Mathieu continued by arguing that in
the market, inefficient firms disappear and are replaced by efficient ones, through an automatic process of adjustment. The
creative destruction principle of Schumpeter was alleged to be at work, beneficially. Thus, whilst Mathieu seemed to view
the invisible hand of the market favourably as a mechanism for sweeping away cheating firms, nevertheless, he seemed to
deplore the idea of “economic cleansing” involved.
After his graduation, Alexandre hoped to establish his own firm. He claimed to be conscious that he should maximize
profits; and that, to do so, he would have to manage at the boundaries of legality. Nevertheless, he condemned Jeffrey Skilling’s
responses to questions about whether Enron would continue selling products found to be noxious. Skilling answered that
it was his job, as a businessperson, to make more profits and to maximize shareholders’ earnings. Thus, Alexandre was
imbued with, and had accepted, values of which he was critical. Simultaneously, Alexandre expressed awareness that the
market will favor only the dominant culture. Even if the student did not recognize explicitly the dominant culture as the
legitimate culture, then at least the pedagogic work produced in him an awareness of the insidious cultural unworthiness
and valuelessness of his own convictions to obtain a legitimate competence (symbolic capital) that could be converted
to economic capital in the labour market. Thus, Alexandre resigned himself to a cultural arbitrariness and an internalized
habitus that was capable of patterning him and his career-related decisions (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). To be recognized
as a cultivated and accomplished graduate well-endowed to the market, the student’s attitude may not seem surprising
since ultimately “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”
(Sinclair, 1994, p. 109).

5.4. Students who are aware of the need for reform but see no place for it and who resolve dissonance by adopting values of
the system

Some students, aware of their cognitive dissonance, were more fatalistic. They concluded they could no longer reform
the situation. Aurélie explained that deregulation had made it difficult for the government to apply solutions. The power
given to the market could not be re-claimed and the government had no legitimate right to intervene. Aurélie thought it
was very probable that the Enron bankruptcy would not be the last one; and that society should be protected by palliatives.
Aurélie’s reaction shows naturalization at work. The natural system is inevitable because it is taken for granted. To keep
order, naturalization excludes reform from debate and provokes the status quo (Cooper, 1980; Tinker, 1988). Aurélie and
other students misrecognized other possibilities because of the censorship and exclusion decisions of the school that better
inculcated the dominant culture. As a result, they take the dominant ideology of the legitimate culture (that is, the “arbitrary
culture” “arbitrarily imposed” by the school) as the only authentic and universal culture. Enimie’s comments express this
fatalism well: “we should probably run more slowly!” This reflects her doxic submission to the world. Therefore, to reduce
dissonance, students of this group changed attitude to agree with the generally admitted behavior, in accord with Festinger’s
theory (Fischer, 1996) and the theory of reproduction of power relations in education (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977).
The assignments showed that students generally perceived business as lacking concern for ethical and social justice
considerations. These were priority areas for many students. The assignments pointed to an urgent need for reform of
accounting curricula to resolve the cognitive dissonance observed, but without submitting students to a doxic relationship
with the system. The assignment afforded students the opportunity to escape from dominating education and economic
systems. However, the students remained dominated subconsciously by the constraints of a doxic relationship to capitalism.
Most students appeared to resign themselves to accepting the values of capitalism, even if this meant compromising their
ideals and values. On this point, it is worth observing that, during his doctoral thesis defence in 1980 at the Sorbonne
University, Derrida argued that classical norms imposed by schools prevent the development of critical thinking:
. . .it was already clear to me that the general turn that my research was taking could no longer conform to the classical
norms of the thesis. This research called not only for a different mode of writing but also for a work of transformation applied
to the rhetoric, the staging and the particular discursive procedures, which historically . . .dominate university discourse. . .;
and we know how all these scholarly and university models likewise provide the laws regulating so many prestigious
discourses. . .outside the university (Derrida, 1993; p. 42).
We are members of modern universities — powerful political instruments. As such, we accept that universities can
be conceived as operating for the social conservation of capitalism. Even if we found space for students to question (or
subvert) such a social conservation mission of the university, only reform can allow true departure from that cage. Only few
assignments were considered for the purpose of the paper. Most of assignments conformed to technical and conventional
arguments regarding the Enron failure. Some students deviated from that explanation and, by doing so, experienced
 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104 101

cognitive dissonance. To restore consonance, most of these “few” finally resigned themselves to the system. Fewer of them
challenged the orthodox catechism of the business school. These findings highlight the need to be mindful that, if curriculum,
pedagogic approaches and norms are not reformed or challenged, universities will continue to remain bastions of social con-
servation. The university education in accounting should contribute to breeding “emancipating critical accountants” instead
of perpetuating a doxic relationship to the dominant system. How we can achieve such reform is a task to which we now turn.

5.5. How could we improve accounting education?

We endorse the call to not simply “teach technical menus of subject fare that have been identified, captured, and inter-
preted according to the demands posed by vogue conceptions of capitalism”; and to not simply “be content . . . in acquiescing
to the (allegedly) ‘natural’ metaphors of ‘rational choice’, ‘competitive markets’, ‘the accounting entity’, ‘economic man’. . .”
(Craig and Amernic, 2002, p. 146).
The accounting academy, especially in the US, is alleged to have been colonized by positive economic science and
indoctrinated by neo-classical economics and “scientificity” (Tinker, 1980; Williams, 2004, 2009). These basic conditions
have created a new political geometry for capitalism (Williams, 2004, 2009). Many accounting academics seem to accept
this, unquestioningly, as a natural and self-evident ideology. An immediate consequence of the affiliation of the account-
ing academy to positive economics has been to transform university teaching of accounting, leading it to morph from a
discipline impregnated with legal and moral considerations to one that is purely technical and accords priority to binary,
utility-driven calculations in resolving problems (Williams, 2002, 2004). The metaphor of accounting as a system provid-
ing information useful in decision making by shareholders and managers has reduced the concept of accountability to a
principal–agent relationship. This has deprived accounting of its ethical substance, despite most accounting problems being
essentially moral (Williams, 2002).
To regard accounting as a technology and, at the same time, an ethical discipline that makes people accountable would
be irrelevant and incoherent. A person failing to fulfill a technical accounting rule or standard can be accused of being
imprudent, carefree, even stupid, but not unethical. Indeed, not to comply with a rule or an instruction that would lead to a
better revealing of economic reality does not represent a flouting of moral considerations. By expunging a moral vocabulary
from the language of accounting, the Enron collapse can be conceived as a matter of a “few rotten apples in an otherwise
healthy whole” (as did American president, G.W. Bush, and the AAA president, Joel Demski) (Williams, 2004). Accounting
should reconquer its ethical substance and re-engage with a moral order. It is insufficient merely to introduce courses on
ethics to education programs. To restore the ethical status and fabric of accounting (that is, a symbolic culture) we need
to contest the dominant culture of markets and address the limitations this dominant culture implies for our pedagogy.
Universities and schools impose the content and language to reproduce the social order. Two actions, discussed below,
should be undertaken.
First, the social role of accounting should be revealed. Instead of its allegedly accidental and natural appearance, it should
be conceived as demystifying the preordained nature of the imposed arbitrary culture (accounting neutrality and technicism)
and as contributing to maintain a restricted understanding of accountability (one that privileges only the interests of capital).
Second, we should remove the arbitrary imposition of that culture by rehabilitating the universe of alternative cultures.
Awareness of the relative nature of accounting concepts should be promoted. Moreoever, all linguistic means (and not just
the legitimate language imposed by pedagogic authorities) should be encouraged and valued.

5.6. Show the social role of accounting

The connection between economic and social endeavour should be restored, with the content of accounting courses
re-connected to the real world. Initially, we should proceed by understanding that the realistic philosophy of economic pos-
itivism is based on the idea that the economy is an autonomous sphere in which positive laws are acted upon independently
of any ideology and moral guidance (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999, p. 48). We should understand that positivists ignore
the embeddedness of social aspects with economic aspects; and that accounting and economics are influenced by social
conditions that shape social relations (Tinker, 1991). Because positive economics separates economic aspects from social
fabric, it denies social consequences for accounting issues (Chabrak, 2005a).
To appreciate the ethical status of accounting practices, students should envisage how accountants shape social reality;
and how accounting rules and conventions have a partisan role in influencing wealth distribution (Tinker, 1985). There
needs to be strong recognition that accounting is not an impartial measurement technique, but that it has an ideological role
to promote a particular order and to defend the interests of its advocators (Amernic and Craig, 2004; Craig and Amernic,
2004). According to Gramsci’s philosophy of the practical reflexivity of negation of the negation, the praxis is possible only
after accountants realize that they contribute to the contradictions of the system (Tinker, 1991, 2001). We need to intro-
duce real cases that capture the complexity of accounting phenomena and raise the sensitivity of students to concepts that
are otherwise abstract for them. It is appropriate to enrich textbooks with materials on financial failures and scandals to
develop student awareness of the socio-historical context of accounting. Instead of being accountable to markets, accoun-
tants should encourage accountability to the public. Hence, we should strive to undo a masculine accountability mentality
that is “obsessed with symbolic logic, rationality, order quantification and ‘win at all costs’ imperatives. . .[and]. . . to supple-
ment brute financial accountability . . .[by]. . . encompassing compassion, multiplicity, social welfare, social responsibility,
102 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104

equity and environmental issues. We should be accountable to the public, not to ‘markets”’ (Craig and Amernic, 2002, p.
131). By assessing and undoing current privileging of the interests of capital over those of other stakeholders, educators
could transform accounting teaching and curriculum and rediscover dimensions of accountability that might otherwise be
consigned to oblivion.

5.7. Developing students’ critical thinking and “extraordinary” discourses

In a New York Times article, Wallace (2010) drew attention to a “tectonic shift for business school leaders” — their
recognition of the need to develop students’ critical and creative thinking, and to develop “holistic thinkers” “free of bias or
predisposition”, who can “bring a principled set of scales” and “multidisciplinary approaches” to problems and “important
moral decisions.” However, nowhere in this new (metaphoric) geological landscape of business school curricula is there any
explicit advocacy of the need to critique entrenched principles of the capitalist economic system.
How can we develop critical attitudes in students? A stimulating environment that encourages this type of attitude
is necessary (Amernic and Craig, 2004). To be critical, a student must be able to evaluate and imagine alternative situa-
tions to those conventionally presented (Cooper and Sherer, 1984). According to Cooper (1980), accounting educators seem
resigned to the current socio-economic institutional structure. They appear to be ignorant of the doxic relationship described
by Bourdieu (1977) — one that draws up borders to mystify the existing order. This ignorance is exacerbated by the contempt
of accountants and many accounting educators for accounting history — they act as if the current socio-economic institu-
tional structure has always existed and would continue indefinitely (Cooper, 1980). There is diminished capacity within
the curriculum to imagine that alternative accounting models (other than current economic and institutional arrangements
and dominant theories) could exist and have many merits. As explained by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), “what you don’t
know, you can’t learn because you don’t know what you need to learn” (p. 23). For this purpose, it is essential to widen the
vision of students (and their teachers) by enriching the conceptual language of accounting and by understanding the origin
of concepts and their contestable character. Kelly (2003) (in a point expanded on by Ravenscroft in an address in 2003; see
Amernic and Craig, 2004, p. 352, fn 14) suggested that we consider “an alternative world without . . . ‘class privileging’ —
one where employees and stockholders change places: where labour rights are primary and explicit, and where employees
are spoken of as THE corporation, make up boards of directors, nominate new members on such boards and have a fiduciary
responsibility to maximize.”
Accounting should not be taught merely to develop technical skills acontextually. Students should be nourished intellec-
tually (Chambers, 1999) and encouraged to deviate from any dominating system (such as capitalism, socialism, liberalism,
communism or any other ideology). One way of assisting to do this would be to teach accounting history as a moment in the
progress of our civilization. It is important to know history because familiarity with the past will aid understanding of the
present and speculation about the future. Nonetheless, few courses are devoted to history, or to contextual, and conceptual
aspects of accounting (Amernic and Craig, 2004; Stolowy, 2005). Development of such courses should be a priority if students
are to appreciate how accounting models express the human experience (Colasse, 2004). Students should understand that
accounting and its concepts are relative and not absolute truths, or natural laws. Relativism is important too in enacting
students’ critical attitude. Students should be encouraged to appreciate the contestable character of concepts, to think of
alternatives and other possibilities, and to consider ethical values as they do so.
In sum, we recommend that accounting educators make strong efforts to re-establish a connection between accounting
topics and the social world; to make a concerted effort to develop curricula beyond mere technical menus; and to move
beyond the hegemonic arbitrary culture conveyed by current pedagogic work by enhancing the study of history. Students
should engage in critique and think that alternatives are thinkable and possible. Moreover, they need to better articulate their
cultural capital if they wish to challenge the arbitrary culture imposed on them by the instruments of dominant ideologies.
To exist, ideas and opinions should be expressed (and hence authorized by the orthodoxy) or judged competent by the
pedagogic authority (Bourdieu, 2010). Hence, the part played by words, acts of naming and classification in the construction
and reproduction of social reality, is critical. To perpetuate the existing order, schools and universities disseminate habitus and
raise dissimulated boundaries. However, linguistic rules, “correctness” and “distinction” form social limits and structural
censorships to silence dissident voices. Schools and universities are mandated by the dominant group to support their
ideology and to punish those dominated in the field. The language they promote as legitimate is the accumulated symbolic
capital of the dominant group (Bourdieu, 1991). “Accounting academics no longer can see evil or hear evil because they have
no capacity to speak of evil” (Williams, 2004, p. 1000). We need to reform curricula to bring about a change in the discourse
so that the unsaid could be said. We need to re-think attitudes to the primacy of paradigmatic forms of discourse that are
the “sacred” neutral manuscripts cherished by schools and universities. We need to foster the use of “profane” linguistic
means, imaginings and literary devices. Furthermore, we need to value students’ linguistic symbolic capital, whatever their
ideological predispositions. We should encourage an “extraordinary” discourse, the liberation of students from their doxic
submission, and the emergence of social change.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Ashley Burrowes, Barbara Eide, Mary Kaidonis and several anonymous reviewers for their very ben-
eficial comments on an earlier version of this paper. We particularly wish to thank Keith Hoskin, discussant of this paper
 N. Chabrak, R. Craig / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 91–104 103

at the Sixth Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting Conference, University of Sydney, July, 2010, for his many
facilitative comments and observations.

Appendix A.

Enron case.
Grade: 25% of the final grade.
Instructions: The assignment aims to elicit your personal understanding of Enron. Based on a review of materials published
on this case, on your values, your experience, your expectations, your education and your ethics, you are required to state
your opinion of the Enron bankruptcy. What was the role of accounting? How was that role implemented? Do you think
that accounting helped to hide management manipulations or rather; do you think it contributed to highlight management
failure? Can you compare Enron with other cases in the world or through history?
Format: If written, the document should not exceed ten pages. Otherwise, you can use any form you think suitable
to illustrate your comments (narrative, photos, pictures, etc.). Innovative and original submissions are recommended
strongly.

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Nihel Chabrak is Associate Professor of Accounting, UAEU, FBE, Accounting Department, United Arab Emirates. Her research focuses on critical
accounting theories, corporate governance and shareholder value, international accounting standards, deconstruction, phenomenology, and real-life
experience applied to research in accounting.

Russell Craig is Professor of Accounting, College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. His research focuses
on the rhetorical discourse of CEOs, international financial reporting, business history, and contemporary management education.