Field work in potential gas fields, middle ground or war zone: enhancing accountability by shining a light on difference

Abstract

PurposeAs a key element of corporate accountability, social and environmental accounting (SEA) has failed to yield significant results in terms of firms embracing goals other than financial profitability. Influenced by the work of critical accountants on dialogic accounting, the study rejects binary frameworks and aims to contribute to an essential element of SEA, stakeholder engagement.Design/methodology/approachBusiness concerned with unconventional gas (UCG) extraction was chosen from numerous vehicles suited to examining multiple views on contested issues. The research explores perspectives expressed by community, while also including perspectives of one gas firm. Research is viewed through the lens of critical futures theory and methodology causal layered analysis (CLA) in the analysis of the interviews at the case study site in Australia. In addition, to broaden the understanding of “accountability”, participants captured their own views through images that they interpreted in the interviews. This methodology is known as photovoice.FindingsFindings suggest that CLA enables access to multiple, complex and nuanced perspectives and various ways of knowing, some of which are less conscious.Research limitations/implicationsAccessing multiple perspectives, including marginalized voices, gives rise to the potential to then collaboratively develop a more inclusive set of solutions to critically examine, and the CLA methodology appears to provide a fuller story, address “blindness” and enable a clearer “seeing”. This suggests access to new understandings. These two potentials should be further explored through follow up research.Practical implicationsThis practice-based methodology involving civil society could provide SEA accounting practitioners with a greater range of possibilities; they would therefore benefit from incorporating “CLA thinking” as a basis in developing a pluralist, democratic and transformative approach to stakeholder engagement.Social implicationsThe study is an initial contribution in an ambitious task of democratizing accounting and accountability.Originality/valueThe study addresses a gap in accounting and accountability research by applying a critical futures theory and a practice-based method.