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Postcoloniality in corporate social and environmental accountability

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  • Alawattage, Chandana
  • Fernando, Susith

Abstract

Using a discourse analysis of interviews with corporate managers and their published corporate sustainability information, this paper argues that corporate social and environmental accountability (CSEA) in a postcolonial context (Sri Lanka) is a textual space wherein local managers create a hybrid cultural identity through mimicking. It examines how local managers embrace and appropriate global discourses to reimagine their local managerial circumstances. They deploy a set of textual strategies – imitation, redefinition, innovation, and codification – to translate CSEA into a hybrid ‘textual(real)ity’ (i.e., interspace and duality between accounting text - textuality - and material practices - reality) whereby the global context is textualized as local and the local is contextualised as global. Nationalism, cultural ethics, and poverty enter this textual(real)ity as discursive elements that reactivate locality. A cultural notion of philanthropic giving, dana, gives local cultural authenticity to this textual(real)ity while the national politico-economic identity of poverty textualizes CSEA as a national development strategy. The paper also critiques whether these postcolonial dynamics can promote agonistic accountabilities. It contributes to the accounting literature on postcolonialism, imperialism, and globalization discourses.

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  • Alawattage, Chandana & Fernando, Susith, 2017. "Postcoloniality in corporate social and environmental accountability," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-20.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:60:y:2017:i:c:p:1-20
    DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2017.07.002
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