We Have Never Been Secular: Religious Identities, Duties, and Ethics in Audit Practice

Jeff Everett, Constance Friesen, Dean Neu, Abu Shiraz Rahaman

Journal of Business Ethics · 2018 · Volume 153 · Issue 4

Abstract

Appeals to ‘good character’ are also made, but these are largely limited to internal discourses (Neu et al.2003).Comte, Durkheim, Weber, and Marx each had their own version of this thesis (Beckford & Demerath, 2007).One such myth being that the ‘secular politics’ of modernity had its origin in the contractual settlement arising from the peace of Westphalia. On how this myth was dependent upon discursive notions (e.g., ‘the nation,’ ‘the people’) see Kratochwil (2013).An example of a celebrity with messianic qualities is musician Bob Marley, who rose meteorically from poor rural livery boy to global symbol of peace and unity.Consider that the 55-hectare Dubai Mall, the ‘world’s largest shopping center,’ now attracts roughly 30 times as many visitors as the Meccan Hajj (60 million vs. 2 million visitors per year, respectively).Indicative of this commercial strain of religiosity are books such as Sacred Economics (cf., Eisenstein2011), Sacred Commerce (cf., Englehart and Engelhart2008), and Sacred Business (Wright2014).Or to paraphrase Camus, if God is dead, his memory is still very much alive (in Cirillo2010, p. 233).Self-proclaimed because the faith that these individuals have in science remains a ‘faith in ultimate values.’Like many sociological commentators (O’Toole2003, p. 150), our understanding of religion draws on the work of Durkheim, Weber and, given his view that capitalism is a religion, Benjamin (Sørensen, 2012; Murtola2012).The suicide bomber being the quintessential example of one who sacrifices in the name of a transcendent.Through news reports, government reports, the business press, the strategic plans of universities, and more, the economy has come to preoccupy our attention. Yet, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what the economyis, and this is because it relates to a very wide set of cultural, technical, legal, political, geographic, and historic processes of production, distribution, trade and consumption. Indeed, these activities are so numerous, broad, and complex that one really has to have a lot of faith to believe someone who says the economy is ‘growing,’ ‘shrinking,’ ‘healthy,’ or ‘sick.’It was at this later date that a third set of auditors, Canada’s Office of the Auditor General, entered the picture (for a discussion, see Free and Radcliffe2009).We thank one of the paper’s reviewers for alerting us to this important watchdog role.The parallel that exists between the terms ‘god’ and ‘principal’ should be apparent, given the latter’s connotations of ‘chief,’ ‘head,’ ‘ruler,’ or ‘governor’.Given accounting’s historic legal foundation (Lee2013), this literature is relevant.Griffith (2005) conceptualizes the duty of good faith as a ‘thaumatrope,’ or rhetorical device that enables its users to alternate between arguments related to a contractual party’s duty of care and her or his duty of loyalty. It would be interesting to see if practicing auditors similarly view this duty in a thaumatropic manner.These include Britain and its ex-colonies (e.g., Australia, Canada, India, Hong Kong), the United States, and many other countries.Hood’s analysis was focused on public sector organizations, though we think private sector organizations would have a similar focus.Regarding the beneficence of lawmakers, the United States 2006 Military Commissions Act may do more to protect US government defendants from being prosecuted for war crimes than it does to uphold detainee rights (Dorf2007).Canada’s Supreme Court recently made ‘good faith’ a mandatory rather than discretionary principle of contract law, further underlining the importance of this notion (see Bhasinv.Hrynew, 2014 SCC 71, [2014] 3 S.C.R. 494).The notions ‘sacrifice’ and ‘the sacred’ are intimately related, the former being derived from the Latin termsacer,or ‘sacred,’ ‘holy,’ or ‘consecrated’ (cf., latin-dictionary.net2015).In contrast to empirical accounting research, truth remains a key concept in Christianity and many other faiths.This change of focus parallels the shift that occurred in the field of physics roughly 80 years earlier.This is an admittedly crude picture of what is a very diverse field. Nonetheless, there are some strong ‘family resemblances’ amongst the various approaches (cf., Chua1986; Jönsson and Macintosh1997).There seems to be strong implicit belief among academics that their research is useful and of interest to practitioners. That being said, we appreciate that some conduct research purely out of curiosity or simply because they must (on the motivations of accounting researchers, see Everett2007).Triadic structures in intellectual thought have acquired near-religious legitimacy, “as if the number of the Three were the remedy in the case of those who were in error as to the One” (Connolly2008, p. 126).Émile Durkheim, a preeminent theorist of the sacred, was, similarly, ‘a man of faith,’ being devoted to ‘de-particularized knowledge and truth’ (Bourdieu2014, p. 39).In the case of the environment, political struggle takes place over its imputed purpose (i.e., ‘economic resource,’ ‘spiritual amenity,’ ‘self-regulating, life-support system,’ etc.). On nature’s connection to the sacred, see Ferguson and Tamburello (2015).Regarding faith in the sacred and the sacrifices made on its behalf, Taussig’s (1999, p. 146) conceptualization of the act of sacrifice as the inverse of the act of sacrilege and desecration is particularly relevant.

Keywords

Sacred Identity, External Gatekeepers, Cowboy Capitalism, Willful Ignorance, Internal Gatekeepers

Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.