IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/crpeac/v61y2019icp22-37.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accounting and pseudo spirituality in Islamic financial institutions

Author

Listed:
  • Hidayah, Nunung Nurul
  • Lowe, Alan
  • Woods, Margaret

Abstract

The global financial crisis was followed by calls for a transformation of conventional finance, towards more ethico-aesthetic models. One avenue was to consider the alternative aesthetic of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs). IFIs offer profit-loss sharing (PLS) schemes as a distinctive spiritual alternative to conventional investment products. IFIs ontotheology clashes with the epistemology of modern banking and finance. The accounting for PLS creates tensions due to practical complexity that militates against implementation of the authentic Islamic financial contracts. This paper seeks to identify the role of accounting in IFIs’ practice of interpretation to resolve the struggles that have taken place around the implementation of PLS schemes as a means of spiritual based financial alternatives. We explore how IFIs use accounting in rendering notions of spiritual/prophetic values applicable to practice or how it colludes against their implementation. Our study adopts a qualitative research methodology, framed around 40 interviews and observations of PLS implementation in IFIs in five Muslim countries in Asia and the Middle East, and one in the United Kingdom. We combine the literature on accounting and religion with the ideas/concepts from the literature on religion in organizations, political economy and Islamic law/finance. These perspectives enable us to better reveal how accounting works to reinvent spirituality. In our context we show how accounting mediates the conflicting interests and intentions that arise within the epistemological clashes that happen as the scared/religious strives to take its place in the capitalistic context of the conventional finance industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Hidayah, Nunung Nurul & Lowe, Alan & Woods, Margaret, 2019. "Accounting and pseudo spirituality in Islamic financial institutions," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 22-37.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:61:y:2019:i:c:p:22-37
    DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2018.09.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104523541830279X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.cpa.2018.09.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michele Bigoni & Enrico Deidda Gagliardo & Warwick Funnell, 2013. "Rethinking the sacred and secular divide," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 26(4), pages 567-594, May.
    2. Avgerou, Chrisanthi & McGrath, Kathy, 2007. "Power, rationality, and the art of living through socio-technical change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2353, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Robbins, Geraldine & Lapsley, Irvine, 2015. "From secrecy to transparency: Accounting and the transition from religious charity to publicly-owned hospital," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 19-32.
    4. Paul S. Mills & John R. Presley, 1999. "Islamic Finance: Theory and Practice," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-28847-8.
    5. Ahmed, Habib & Chapra, Mohammad Umar, 2002. "Corporate Governance in Islamic Financial Institution (Occasional Paper)," Occasional Papers 93, The Islamic Research and Teaching Institute (IRTI).
    6. Randall Y. Odom & W. Randy Boxx, 1988. "Environment, planning processes, and organizational performance of churches," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 197-205, March.
    7. Qu, Sandy Q. & Cooper, David J., 2011. "The role of inscriptions in producing a balanced scorecard," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 344-362.
    8. Kamla, Rania, 2009. "Critical insights into contemporary Islamic accounting," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 20(8), pages 921-932.
    9. Lena Rethel, 2017. "The imaginary landscapes of Islamic finance and the global financial crisis," Chapters, in: Ron Martin & Jane Pollard (ed.), Handbook on the Geographies of Money and Finance, chapter 24, pages 562-579, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Quattrone, Paolo, 2004. "Accounting for God: accounting and accountability practices in the Society of Jesus (Italy, XVI-XVII centuries)," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 647-683, October.
    11. Hennie Van Greuning & Zamir Iqbal, 2008. "Risk Analysis for Islamic Banks," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6923, December.
    12. Eddy S. Fang, 2014. "Islamic finance in global markets: Materialism, ideas and the construction of financial knowledge," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(6), pages 1170-1202, December.
    13. Shapiro, Brian, 2009. "A comparative analysis of theological and critical perspectives on emancipatory praxis through accounting," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 20(8), pages 944-955.
    14. Cristiano Busco & Paolo Quattrone, 2015. "Exploring How the Balanced Scorecard Engages and Unfolds: Articulating the Visual Power of Accounting Inscriptions," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 1236-1262, September.
    15. Paul Andon & Jane Baxter & Wai Fong Chua, 2015. "Accounting for Stakeholders and Making Accounting Useful," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(7), pages 986-1002, November.
    16. Chenhall, Robert H. & Hall, Matthew & Smith, David, 2013. "Performance measurement, modes of evaluation and the development of compromising accounts," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51294, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Paul S. Mills & John R. Presley, 1999. "The Prohibition of Interest in Western Literature," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Islamic Finance: Theory and Practice, chapter 8, pages 101-113, Palgrave Macmillan.
    18. Meyer, John W., 1986. "Social environments and organizational accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 11(4-5), pages 345-356, July.
    19. Chong, Beng Soon & Liu, Ming-Hua, 2009. "Islamic banking: Interest-free or interest-based?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 125-144, January.
    20. Chua, Wai Fong, 1995. "Experts, networks and inscriptions in the fabrication of accounting images: A story of the representation of three public hospitals," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(2-3), pages 111-145.
    21. Robson, Keith, 1992. "Accounting numbers as "inscription": Action at a distance and the development of accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 17(7), pages 685-708, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alamad, Samir & Hidayah, Nunung Nurul & Lowe, Alan, 2021. "A shared boundary object: Financial innovation and engineering in Islamic financial institutions," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    2. Riaz, Umair & Burton, Bruce & Fearfull, Anne, 2023. "Emotional propensities and the contemporary Islamic banking industry," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martinez, Daniel E. & Cooper, David J., 2019. "Assembling performance measurement through engagement," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. Mehrpouya, Afshin & Samiolo, Rita, 2016. "Performance measurement in global governance: Ranking and the politics of variability," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 12-31.
    3. Baxter, Jane & Carlsson-Wall, Martin & Chua, Wai Fong & Kraus, Kalle, 2019. "Accounting and passionate interests: The case of a Swedish football club," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 21-40.
    4. Riaz, Umair & Burton, Bruce & Fearfull, Anne, 2023. "Emotional propensities and the contemporary Islamic banking industry," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    5. Ronzani, Matteo & Gatzweiler, Marian Konstantin, 2022. "The lure of the visual: Multimodality, simplification, and performance measurement visualizations in a megaproject," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    6. Lambert Jerman & Pierre Labardin, 2016. "Du pouvoir visuel des nombres comptables: les apports de la phénoménologie d'Husserl," Post-Print hal-01902585, HAL.
    7. Power, Michael, 2015. "How accounting begins: Object formation and the accretion of infrastructure," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 43-55.
    8. Vijaya Murthy & Jim Rooney, 2018. "The Role of Management Accounting in Ancient India: Evidence from the Arthasastra," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(2), pages 323-341, October.
    9. Bay, Charlotta, 2018. "Makeover accounting: Investigating the meaning-making practices of financial accounts," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 44-54.
    10. Pollock, Neil & D’Adderio, Luciana, 2012. "Give me a two-by-two matrix and I will create the market: Rankings, graphic visualisations and sociomateriality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 565-586.
    11. Crvelin, David & Becker, Albrecht, 2020. "‘The spirits that we summoned’: A study on how the ‘governed’ make accounting their own in the context of market-making programs in Nepal," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    12. Laura Girella, 2013. "Regulating through the "Logic of Appropriateness" and the "Rhetoric of the Expert": The Role of Consultants in the Case of Intangibles Reporting in Germany," FINANCIAL REPORTING, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2013(3-4), pages 75-109.
    13. van Erp, Wil & Roozen, Frans & Vosselman, Ed, 2019. "The performativity of a management accounting and control system: Exploring the dynamic relational consequences of a design," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(4).
    14. Palermo, Tommaso & Power, Michael & Ashby, Simon, 2022. "How accounting ends: self-undermining repetition in accounting lifecycles," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115278, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Paul Andon & Jane Baxter & Wai Fong Chua, 2015. "Accounting for Stakeholders and Making Accounting Useful," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(7), pages 986-1002, November.
    16. Vollmer, Hendrik, 2007. "How to do more with numbers: Elementary stakes, framing, keying, and the three-dimensional character of numerical signs," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 577-600, August.
    17. Robson, Keith & Ezzamel, Mahmoud, 2023. "The cultural fields of accounting practices: Institutionalization and accounting changes beyond the organization," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    18. Alamad, Samir & Hidayah, Nunung Nurul & Lowe, Alan, 2021. "A shared boundary object: Financial innovation and engineering in Islamic financial institutions," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    19. Roberts, John, 2018. "Managing only with transparency: The strategic functions of ignorance," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 53-60.
    20. Rajat Deb, 2019. "Accounting Theory Coherence Revisited," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 44(1), pages 36-57, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:61:y:2019:i:c:p:22-37. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/critical-perspectives-on-accounting/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.