The use of Public Interest Arguments in the European Accounting Field

Regulatory mandates and responses to uncomfortable knowledge: The case of country-by-country reporting in the extractive sector

“…Debates about objectives of CbCR are related to but distinct from understandings about how CbCR relates to understandings of accounting's link to the public interest (Neu & Graham, 2005;DiFabio, 2020) or the construction of interests in accounting regulation (Robson, 1993). The responses of the regulatory bodies we study highlight CbCR as speaking to interests outside of the appropriate range of actors participating in and benefiting from accounting regulator's work and suggest that pressures to act on CbCR deriving from such interests are irrelevant.…”

“…For instance, the SEC discursively shifted the focus away from extractive firms, their social impacts, and wider conceptions of risk. This is despite accounting for extractive firms emphasizes the inseparability of politically and socially sensitive risks that investors now worry about in relation to the extractive sector (Healy & Serafeim, 2013, 2020, as well as in ESG and sustainability more generally.…”