An Awkward Signal: The ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ Imprint on the First Conference on Accounting, Governance and Sustainability

ABSTRACT

This essay was prompted by an ‘atypical’ announcement, regarding an Accounting, Governance and Sustainability Conference co-organized by the American Accounting Association (AAA) and the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. I mobilise an epistemological base, drawing on Naomi Oreskes’ recent work, to question the logic and the appropriateness of associating Petroleum and Minerals’ interests with an academic conference on the topic of sustainability. My point is that significant epistemological consequences ensue when a ‘mere’ association of words arouses skepticism regarding the extent of conflict of interest surrounding an event being aimed at fostering knowledge production and dissemination processes on the theme of sustainability. One feature of my argument is that involving explicitly as co-organizer, in the frontstage, a university whose name carries the wording ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ constitutes an awkward signal, which is a disconcerting occurrence given the strong influence of ‘signaling theory’ in the eyes of many AAA members, who adhere to mainstream economic-based accounting research.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• conflict of interest
• epistemological consensus
• oil and gas industry
• research on sustainability
• signaling theory

Acknowledgements

This essay follows a brief email exchange between Editor Michelle Rodrigue and I, where we both questioned the role of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals as a key supportive organisation of the First Conference on Accounting, Governance and Sustainability – in the few hours after we received the call for papers. Feeling that I was significantly concerned at the matter, Michelle made me aware that SEAJ publishes short essays on polemical issues. This sparked my interest. I thank SEAJ for being open to an essay from an unusual author. I also acknowledge the helpful comments provided by Joane Martel and the Editors Oana Apostol, Colin Dey, and Ian Thomson.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Again, words matter. How we name fields of inquiry should not be taken lightly. The notion of CSR emphasises the social; environmental concerns from this perspective are therefore subjugated to the social. The notion of corporate sustainability arguably better reflects the view that social, environmental, ethical, and other kinds of significant concerns all matter when thinking of the future of the organisation and that of our world. This is why, in the current paragraph, I do not restrain my remarks to the CSR domain, but I also refer to the corporate sustainability domain (e.g., see Kudłak and Low 2015).

2 Kuhn’s (1970) classic book on scientific revolutions played a key role in popularising the notion of paradigmatic incommensurability (Canning, Gendron, and O’Dwyer 2018). Incommensurability fundamentally relates to inconsistencies between different paradigms. These inconsistencies are ontological and epistemological; they relate to differences in basic assumptions regarding what the world is and how we should seek to develop knowledge about it. Kuhn (1970, 148) maintains these inconsistencies translate into significant difficulties in communicating meaningfully across paradigms; he even refers to a ‘dialogue of the deaf’.

3 Information found on https://aaahq.org/Accounting-Horizons – as of February 7, 2024.

4 A meaningful characterisation of fundamental differences between the evaluation criteria of positivist and interpretive qualitative research is developed in Malsch and Salterio (2016).

5 Email received on September 7, 2023, from the American Accounting Association. On November 7, 2023, I received another email from the AAA that specified that because of a travel advisory warning issued by the US government in the context of the armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, the joint Conference on Accounting, Governance and Sustainability was rescheduled to December 10–12, 2024. The conference was still planned to take place at KFUPM in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The postponement of the conference does not invalidate my argument, which is centred on the intention (as formalised in the public sphere) to hold this joint conference and the feeling of uneasiness I had with the initial announcement.

6 In developing this reflexive piece, I am happy to contribute, in a tangible way, to the production of academic essays which, for too long, have been relatively marginalised in academia (Delbridge, Suddaby, and Harley 2016; Gabriel 2016). Hopefully, the current essay will not be regarded as one of the many trivial endeavours that arguably often characterise the development of contemporary research in the broader field of management studies (Haley 2023).

7 Instead of focusing on the climate change problem, I could have written an essay on how the alliance between the AAA and the University of Petroleum and Minerals sends an awkward signal in terms of gendering. The marginalised socio-economic situation of women in Saudi Arabia is well documented, including in accounting firms (Agrizzi, Soobaroyen, and Alsalloom 2021). My focus on climate change ensues from my emotional and instinctive reaction to the association of words that caught my eyes when I saw sustainability and petroleum being mobilised simultaneously in the context of an academic conference.

8 This strong anthropocentric position can be meaningfully relaxed by including problems, risks and possibilities that confront as well non-humans, not least animals, plants, and Planet Earth (Sobkowiak, Senn, and Vollmer 2023; Vinnari, Chua, and Baxter 2022; Vinnari and Vinnari 2022).

9 One of the Editors who commented on this essay suggested an interesting scenario, which I view as a ‘variation’ of the faith hypothesis. Her comment is as follows:

When reading this, I immediately started to draw a parallel to NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and wondered if the change in many NGOs’ strategy (from adversarial to collaborators of businesses) is similar to what we now witness with this example. In a way, like with the NGOs, one can also think that the intention beyond the collaboration may be to positively signal that the academia is working on solving problems by collaborating closely with problematic institutions. That is, with a view to develop solutions to reduce impacts on climate.

In the last decades, a number of NGOs indeed have sought to present themselves as collaborators with the industry (Laasonen, Fougère, and Kourula 2012), possibly in the hope of developing more impactful outcomes and securing their sources of funding through the demonstration of established partnerships with the private sector – which is likely to be favourably viewed by donors from neoliberal governments (Duval, Gendron, and Roux-Dufort 2015). Such ‘collaborations’, however, may blur in the longer run NGOs’ commitment to the ideals of solidarity and helpfulness (Chowdhury 2017).