Employee and social reporting as a war of position and the union learning representative initiative in the UK

Abstract

In the employee reporting and social and environmental accounting and reporting fields, disputes are commonplace between academics who advocate improvements to reporting as a means of making those who control capital more accountable within capitalism and Marxist writers who see such improvements as possible obstacles to a change to an alternative society. Gramsci's war of position concept, which allows the interpretation of progressive change as valuable per se and as having the potential to create the conditions for advancement to an alternative economy, is proposed as a means of resolving these differences. This argument is illustrated by reference to the UK's trade union learning representative initiative.