Abstract
With the goal of understanding how the image of accountants is portrayed by the media, we analyzed elements of legitimacy proposed by Suchman (1995) and stereotypes linked to the image of the accountant found in the movie “The Accountant” (2016). The research is documentary, descriptive and qualitative. To analyze and interpret data, we used the Categorical Content Analysis proposed by Bardin (2010), and the categories were determined beforehand. It was found that the elements of legitimacy were present regarding pragmatic legitimacy in the way the accountant dresses, his involvement in criminal activities, the demonstrating of his technical capacity. Regarding moral legitimacy, there are conflicting ethical dilemmas in the actions of the accountant, a specialist in dirty money. Regarding cognitive legitimacy, he is seen as someone who pleases his clients and does not always choose the profession by affinity. Regarding stereotypes, there was a discrepancy between genders, relationship difficulty, lack of sense of humor and that the accounting professional presents accurate logical and mathematical reasoning and competence in their functions. As research contributions, therefore, we can highlight the elucidation of distortions found involving the image of accountants in empirical studies, in relation to what is portrayed by the media, by the movie under analysis, seeking to combat negative images of the profession by identifying how they arise. The accounting field benefits from this with a possible shift in the popular perception of the importance of accountants for companies, by understanding that the criminal professional, exposed in the current media, are different from the professional required by the job market.
Highlights
The desirable, adequate, or appropriate actions of an entity, built within a system of socially constructed norms, values, beliefs, and definitions are the elements that form the generalized view of Legitimacy Theory (Suchman, 1995)
With the goal of understanding how the image of accountants is portrayed by the media, we analyzed elements of legitimacy proposed by Suchman (1995) and stereotypes linked to the image of the accountant found in the movie “The Accountant” (2016)
These elements of legitimacy are important for stereotype analysis because they deal with how society perceives accountants, how the individual acts, and what is accepted in the context (Suchman, 1995)
Summary
The desirable, adequate, or appropriate actions of an entity, built within a system of socially constructed norms, values, beliefs, and definitions are the elements that form the generalized view of Legitimacy Theory (Suchman, 1995). On this aspect, Tonin et al (2020) conducted a study applying a questionnaire for students and accounting professionals who watched the movie "The Accountant" and could see that this audience associated positive aspects of accountants in relation to intelligence, proactivity, and ethical behavior, while only anxiety was found to be common in the view of both groups regarding negative characteristics They used the same movie as a research object, the authors analyzed the students' and accountants' view of the competencies and stereotypes of the profession, and not the analysis of the movie itself, from the standpoint of a theory. As a theoretical contribution of this study, we add the advance in the observation of the elements of legitimacy (pragmatic, moral and cognitive) and stereotypes about accountants present in a cinematographic work, since, analyzing the elements of legitimacy is important to understand how accounting professionals are inserted in society, because as Priebe, Manoel and Strassburg (2018) state, to gain the respect of society, the professional needs to respect what society expects from him
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