Critically Appreciating Social Accounting and Reporting in the Arab MiddleEast: A Postcolonial Perspective

Abstract

There has been no comprehensive or detailed study in respect of social accounting and reporting practices in the Arab countries of the Middle East. Indeed, very little is known about accounting practices and accounting regulations in the Arab Middle East (AME hereafter), with most studies available in the English-speaking world being concerned mainly with the larger and more economically significant countries of the AME, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by exploring and bringing insights into social accounting and reporting practices in a selection of AME countries, namely: SaudiArabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The concern of this study is to explore the actuality and potentiality of social accounting manifestations in the AME from a critical and postcolonial perspective. Pursuing a critical and postcolonial perspective that is sensitive to the context of the AME, it is concluded that social accounting manifestations in the AME are largely orientated towards ‘repressive/counter radical’ positions of accounting. The study, in addition, considers the potentiality of more radical positions of social accounting in the AME inspired by a critical approach and the particular history and culture of the AME.