The case for a political economy of accounting: a critique of the arguments

Woodward, D. and Woodward, T. (2000) The case for a political economy of accounting: a critique of the arguments. 23rd Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association, Munich, Germany. 28 - 30 Mar 2000.

Abstract

This paper is a report of an empirical study of the ethical investment criteria used by individuals when making investment decisions. The research instrument was a questionnaire developed from a grounded theory study of ethical unit trusts promotional material, non-participant observation of investment meetings of an ethical investment club and interviews with club members. The questionnaire was distributed to 388 known ethical investors (group 1), and 650 individuals who expressed an interest in investing ethically but of whom it was not known if they had actually invested using ethical criteria (group 2). When the results were collated usable responses were received from 561 individuals, 485 of who had invested using ethical criteria. A response rate of 67% from group one was achieved and 46% from group 2, an overall response rate of 54%.
The research suggests that ethical investors are concerned with the environment, with animals and with people and that these concerns are expressed in their use of investment criteria that encompass not only the products and services of organisations but also its processes and philosophy. There would appear to be greater unanimity of purpose with respect to the use of investment criteria concerning the processes and philosophy of organisations than with the products or services provided by organisations. The use of factor analysis identified eight factors that explain the constructs used by ethical investors.
It is suggested that the findings of this research support the contention of Kurtz (1997) that ‘It is the nature of SRI that it responds to the changing political and social landscape’ (p.44), in that many of the issues of concern to current ethical investors are different from the issues considered important in earlier studies. And further, that the levels of concern have also changed.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Download statistics