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

1. Introduction: A Destabilising Association of Words

Words matter. As elegantly argued by Chwastiak and Young (2003, 534), language and words allow us to interpret the world. They also point out that language is not a passive mirror of ‘reality’; it shapes our understanding of the world – quite often in subtle ways. It is through language and words that certain representations of ‘normality’ circulate in society and, in diverse circumstances, come to influence the mind (Hall 1997). This essay is devoted to an association of words that caught my eyes between the well-known organisation named American Accounting Association (AAA), a new conference being announced on the theme of ‘Accounting, Governance and Sustainability’, and the identity of one of the co-organisers of this conference which comprises the words ‘Petroleum and Minerals’. Instead of assuming that such an association of words is either trivial or an inescapable reflection of our contemporary regime of normality, I have decided to react against what I perceived as a fundamental abnormality through the development of an epistemological argument.

On August 17, 2023, I received an email from the American Accounting Association announcing the first Conference on Accounting, Governance and Sustainability. It caught my attention, perhaps because I am still reminiscent of the atmosphere of seriousness and collegiality surrounding my first participation, in St Andrews (Scotland), to the 2019 CSEAR (Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research) International Congress. Seriousness because I was then under the impression that many members in this research community were seeking to engage in ‘research that matters’ (Flyvbjerg 2001), as climate change and climate urgency were high on the conversation agenda. Collegiality because congress participants lived together for a few days, in a university residential hall that allowed them to feel disconnected from their everyday lives, as if they had been transported to a monastery from another era. Prior to receiving this email from the AAA, I was already aware that ‘mainstream’ accounting researchers, particularly in the USA, had recently become more interested in issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR) – to the point that today, some high-ranking journals in the United States receive a large and rapidly growing number of submissions in this area (Knechel 2023). However, mainstream accounting research in the CSR area has developed quite independently from the CSEAR community. As mentioned by Patten (2019) and Cho (2020), mainstream CSR research does not tend to recognise the scope and breadth of research carried out in the CSEAR community.

Interest in CSR and corporate sustainability is therefore relatively recent in mainstream circles.¹ Before that, the CSEAR community developed quite extensively (Cho 2020) but the emergence of a ‘new wave’ of mainstream researchers devoted to CSR and corporate sustainability allegedly developed in a parallel way (Roberts 2018) – as if incommensurable paradigmatic boundaries (Kuhn 1970) prevent the new current of mainstream research to take inspiration and enter into meaningful conversation with a significant body of CSEAR-type literature published, for many years, in journals such as Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ), Accounting Forum (AF), Social and Environmental Accountability Journal (SEAJ), and Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal (SAMPJ).²

Would the first Conference on Accounting, Governance and Sustainability continue to erect hermetic boundaries preventing the two aforementioned communities from engaging meaningfully with each other? Alternatively, could the Conference result in an opening of borders enabling members of both communities to engage in meaningful interaction with each other? Could it be that Kuhn’s (1970) thesis of incommensurability is exaggerated – as individual academics clearly have some leeway to undertake atypical research paths (Gendron, Paugam, and Stolowy 2023)?

Initially, I was hopeful that a certain level of inter-paradigmatic conversation would be achieved at this conference. One of the three keynote speakers, Scott Showalter, had been partner at KPMG before entering accounting academia; information on the Conference call for papers highlighted his current role as Senior Editor in Accounting Horizons. Arguably, Accounting Horizons’ current set of ‘editors’ sends an important signal (Endenich and Trapp 2018) regarding the intent of the journal in extending its scope beyond traditional positivist research, as two of its editors are recognised for their significant involvement in the interpretive and critical paradigms of accounting research (i.e. Alessandro Ghio and Bertrand Malsch).³ Importantly, another keynote speaker, Shahzad Uddin, is deeply associated with the Interdisciplinary Accounting Research community (Hoffmann and Brivot 2023; Roslender and Dillard 2003), as he published critical work in a variety of journals, including those in the CSEAR community area. I was encouraged by the signal the conference organisers were making through Shahzad Uddin’s key role. His presence gave me hope that Interdisciplinary Accounting Research papers submitted to the Conference would be evaluated in accordance with the community’s quality criteria (Gendron 2018) – not those commonly used in the mainstream community.⁴ Several authors from different communities have recently called for greater paradigmatic diversity not only in the mainstream accounting research area (Demski 2007) but also in the Interdisciplinary Accounting Research domain (Gendron and Rodrigue 2021), and this stance was apparently endorsed by the Conference organisers through the role of Shahzad Uddin.

Nevertheless, my positive reaction did not last long, as I was soon imbued with a feeling of uneasiness and incomprehension. The following information regarding the two organisations that support the Conference quickly dissipated my surge of initial enthusiasm.

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) and the American Accounting Association (AAA) invite you to participate in a first-of-its-kind collaborative conference on the theme of Accounting, Governance, and Sustainability hosted at KFUPM in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia under the patronage of the President H.E. Dr. Muhammad Al-Saggaf.⁵

Why is the AAA forming an alliance with a Saudi Arabian university whose very name makes explicit its commitment to the petroleum industry? As an Earth citizen, is there any reason to be concerned about this alliance between these two entities? What are the epistemological implications of this alliance? Is the alliance subject to the same kind of criticisms voiced in the CSEAR community against new wave CSR mainstream research? In this short essay, I aim to reflect on these questions.⁶ Formally speaking, I maintain that involving explicitly, in the frontstage, a university whose name carries the wording ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ constitutes an awkward signal, which is an especially startling occurrence given the strong influence of ‘signaling theory’ in the mainstream community.⁷

My stance on the appropriateness of this alliance between the AAA and the University of Petroleum and Minerals is, in a way, that of an outsider since I have not published many studies in the CSR and corporate sustainability area. I do not rely on my outsider status to claim objectivity or value neutrality, though. Accordingly, Oreskes (2019) stresses that we should be wary of strong value neutrality claims in the sciences, pointing to historical epistemological research indicating ‘that scientists have always had patrons with motivations of their own, and which only rarely involved the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake’ (151). Further, some recent epistemological developments advocate value-based forms of research – such as the phronetic approach promoted by Flyvbjerg (2001), according to whom (4), ‘Phronesis is most important because it is that activity by which instrumental rationality is balanced by value-rationality, and because such balancing is crucial to the sustained happiness of the citizens in any society’. Flyvbjerg adds that value-rationality approaches may be especially useful at clarifying key problems, risks and possibilities that confront humans and society.⁸ These clarifications may then be relied upon in undertaking social debate regarding where societies are going.

To clarify further my own stance on the matter discussed, I am increasingly concerned about climate change and climate urgency – to the point that colleagues and I published a discourse analysis study which is critical of the position adopted by the Big Four firms regarding climate change (Rodrigue, Diouf, and Gendron 2023). Also, in Gendron and Martel (2021), we reflect on how academia could try to reinvent itself, in a post-Covid era, with conference practices that are more respectful of the environment.

2. Key Argument

My reflective journey starts with the climate change thesis. Does it make sense to assume that climate change is a significant problem for humanity, whose consequences will inevitably escalate in the following decades? This assumption is a key aspect of my argument, which I flesh out by relying on Naomi Oreskes’ (2019) recent epistemological developments as a logical base to sustain my stance. Oreskes’ argument is of particular interest to the present essay in terms of her vision of the key role played by the vetting of claims and consensus building as a sound basis for conferring trust in science. She explicitly applies her argument to the context of the science of climate change, highlighting the strong consensual view on the matter:

On most of the scientific issues that are highly contested in American culture – evolution, vaccine safety, climate change – there is a scientific consensus. What is lacking is cultural acceptance by parties who have found a way to challenge the science. (Oreskes 2019, 129)

Importantly, the way the Accounting, Governance and Sustainability Conference is co-organized arguably constitutes a significant clash with today’s large scientific consensus on the matter of climate change. As my brief essay will seek to demonstrate, Oreskes’ thesis conceivably provides a sound epistemological basis for reflecting on the trajectories of knowledge production and dissemination in the CSR and corporate sustainability domain.

2.1. Presenting Oreskes’ Theoretical Ideas

Oreskes (2019) addresses the problem of trust in science through the following question (55), ‘If our scientific theories are fallible and subject to change, then what is the basis for trust in science?’ She maintains the most compelling reasons we can trust science are the following: ‘the social character of science and the role it plays in vetting claims’ (57). According to her,

Much of what we identify as “science” are social practices and procedures of adjudication designed to ensure – or at least to attempt to increase the odds – that the process of review and correction are sufficiently robust as to lead to empirically reliable results. (57)

Oreskes (2019) maintains that this web of practices and procedures surrounding academic research comprises several pillars of control, one of them being peer review, wherein knowledge claims are subjected to critical interrogation. From her perspective, peer review is not confined to formal reviews taking place in the context of journal submissions – but it includes as well other settings where research is evaluated, not least when readers encounter published knowledge claims. Oreskes also points out that in principle, the endorsement of critical interrogation throughout an academic community favours diversity, in that less dominant views still have a chance to be heard in scientific arenas. Further, she maintains that critical interrogation is likely to be strengthened in situations where no conflict of interest surrounds the producers of research. Importantly, Oreskes’ argument is a probabilistic one; she recognises that the processes surrounding the vetting of claims do not guarantee the appropriateness of the researcher’s findings. However, these processes arguably provide conditions of possibility that constitute a sound basis to develop knowledge claims and evaluate them.

Oreskes (2019) maintains that consensual views in science, when they exist, can be especially powerful at providing a sense of trustworthiness, given the very difficulties involved in generating scientific consensus when a diversity of voices are mobilised in vetting claims.

Many scholars in the history and philosophy of science and science studies have […] recently converged on a new view that does hold up to scrutiny: of scientific knowledge as fundamentally consensual. (19)

We saw that historians, philosophers, and sociologists have come to focus on scientific consensus because there is no independent measure of what scientific knowledge is. We cannot identify science by any unique method. We can only identify claims as being scientific based on their provenance, that is to say, based on the way they were established and by whom. Scientific facts are claims about which scientists have come to agreement. (127)

Regarding what may become the most crucial problem that humanity will have to address in the twenty-first century, Oreskes argues that climate change is one such area which today is characterised with a strong consensual view – in contrast to the counterargument held by the petroleum industry. She highlights that what undermines severely the counter claims made by the industry is the aura of conflict of interest surrounding the industry’s knowledge development and validation processes.

Why should the conclusions of climate scientists about climate change be viewed ex ante as more authoritative than those originating from the petroleum industry? […] The answer is simple: conflict of interest. […] Recent scientific findings about the reality and severity of anthropogenic climate change – and the role of greenhouse gases derived from fossil fuel combustion in driving it – threaten not only the industry’s profitability, but even its existence. The fossil fuel industry is fighting for its survival. […] Exxon Mobil may be a reliable source of information on oil and gas extraction, but it is unlikely to be a reliable source of information on climate change, because the former is its business and the latter threatens it. (65)

In sum, Oreskes’ (2019) epistemological ideas sensitise us to the chief role played by the vetting of claims and the construction of community consensus, as sound foundations to develop trust in science. Her book points to climate change as a contemporary area characterised with a strong consensual view. The climate change thesis is sustained through a variety of sources, one of the main influential ones being the series of collective reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

2.2. Applying Oreskes’ Ideas to the Present Case

Drawing on Oreskes’s ideas, it is hard to believe that researchers who are part of the mainstream branch of the AAA, as social scientists, were not cognizant of the widely held consensus, within the scientific community at large, regarding climate change. It is also difficult to believe that the AAA authorities were not aware that questions would be raised regarding the obvious conflict of interest that characterises the role of the University of Petroleum and Minerals as co-organizer of an accounting conference on the theme of sustainability. As maintained by Oreskes (2019), if we agree that the lack of conflict of interest constitutes a key ingredient for trust in science, then events permeated with obvious conflicts of interest undermine the claims made by the knowledge producers (i.e. the presenters) involved in such events. In my mind, this concern has repercussions on the legitimacy and trustworthiness of the whole Conference on Accounting, Governance and Sustainability. Despite the potential quality of the different papers presented at the Conference, a number of stakeholders will inevitably view them with suspicion, as Petroleum and Minerals’ interests may have played a significant role in selecting submissions.

It is all the more surprising to see the words ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ so closely associated with an academic conference on sustainability, given that one of the most cherished theories in mainstream economic accounting research is signalling theory. Watts and Zimmerman (1986, 165–166) describe the theory as follows,

Corporate managers have more information about the value of the corporation than do outside investors. Those firms whose share prices are undervalued have an incentive to expend additional resources on financial information to signal that fact. […] We use the term signaling hypothesis to refer to the proposition that signaling motivates corporate disclosure.

My point is that awareness of, and especially adherence to, signalling theory imply a recognition that signals do matter. We may provisionally conclude, at this stage, that the AAA establishment (which comprises a majority of mainstream members) could not consider the words ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ to be insignificant and to have no impact on how stakeholders would perceive the Conference. This raises an enigmatic question. Since it is highly unlikely that the AAA was unaware that co-organizing a conference on sustainability with the University of Petroleum and Minerals would send out an awkward signal in terms of sustainability and climate change, then why are we now faced with such an alliance presiding over the destiny of the Conference?

2.3. Exploring the Conundrum

One potential scenario (which I call the ‘faith hypothesis’) behind the alliance between the AAA and the University of Petroleum and Minerals might be the belief that humans will be inventive enough, in the long run, to stabilise carbon emission through technological innovation, such as carbon capture and storage. Much of the sustainability discourse promoted by the Big Four accounting firms, at least until the end of the 2010s, was indeed tainted by a sense of unbridled optimism (Rodrigue, Diouf, and Gendron 2023), in that everything will be back to normal, in the long run, if governments refrain from constraining the great inventive capacities of the private sector in reining in climate change. Yet there is room for skepticism regarding the winds of infinite technological progress. As maintained by Feyerabend (1978), the belief that human beings are inventive and have accomplished huge steps in terms of technological and knowledge progresses, in a variety of areas, is sustained through a vast web of apparently persuasive means – yet when we look beneath the surface, we realise that the foundations of claims to progress are often very fragile. Accordingly, as mentioned in Riopel (2023), uncertainty characterises the future ability of carbon capture and storage technology to reduce the proportion of carbon in the atmosphere at a reasonable cost. We may therefore be dubious of the extent to which we can have confidence in the ability of private sector interests to find a serious solution to climate change – whereas they have contributed significantly to the problem. In this respect, is this not disconcerting to think that the oil industry sent over 600 lobbyists to the COP27 (Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt), in 2022 (Shields 2023)?⁹

Another scenario is that the AAA went through a cost-analysis regarding its alliance with the University of Petroleum and Minerals, concluding that the benefits of the association outweigh the negative signalling consequences. In a way, this conclusion may seem unlikely given the significant tendency for organisations to want to control their reputational risk (Power 2004). However, backstage negotiations between the AAA and the University of Petroleum and Minerals may have involved certain tangible benefits – of which I am unaware of at the time of writing.

An additional script (which I call the ‘fate hypothesis’) might be that the AAA establishment may be subservient to the views of the oil and gas industry and considers the alliance with the University of Petroleum and Minerals as a non-issue. That is, the AAA establishment’s normality boundaries relate to a world that consumes a significant amount of oil and gas; this is an inalterable fact and even though stakeholders and activists are concerned about climate change, there is nothing we can do to address the problem. Therefore, if the opportunity arises, then why not co-organizing a conference with the University of Petroleum and Minerals? This kind of fatalistic carelessness may have prevented the AAA establishment from being concerned about the range of reactions that the ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ signal would generate.

The faith and the fate hypotheses arguably constitute forms of subservience, which brings us to the role of subtle power (Lukes 2005), where the mind is influenced by a variety of persuasion mechanisms (Chomsky 1989). Academics are not immune from the (more or less subtle) influence of private interests (Said 1994; Sikka, Willmott, and Puxty 1995). For instance, when I was a faculty member at the University of Alberta, my next-door neighbour held a position closely associated with the oil and gas industry, as indicated through his formal designation, ‘H&R Drilling Professor of Regulatory Economics’. In his research, my former neighbour was far from carrying out studies informed by a critical scholarship agenda (Gephart 2004).

While I cannot be conclusive on the reasons that led the AAA to form a partnership with the University of Petroleum and Minerals, my point is that the alliance constitutes an awkward signal at a time where climate urgency is more and more in the mind of citizens. Are the governance processes within the AAA in need of a serious shakeup?

3. Conclusion

What is the ‘value’ of having taken time to write the current essay in order to question the association between the AAA and the University of Petroleum and Minerals, which jointly oversee the development of the first Accounting, Governance, and Sustainability Conference to take place in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia? At the very least, my essay signals a significant motivation, on my part, in ‘taking the pen’ to criticise an awkward association, which puzzled me as climate urgency is a more and more consensual idea in academic and non-academic circles. As recognised by signalling theory, signals do matter, especially as an increasing number of citizens, including researchers, are worried at the role of carbon emissions in jeopardising the future of our societies.

On a deeper level, my essay brings to the fore the relevance of epistemological thinking, specifically in orienting the researcher’s gaze on the conditions under which knowledge is produced, evaluated, and disseminated. Drawing on Oreskes’ (2019) epistemological treatise helped me to articulate a critical argument from the feeling of uneasiness that came over me when I initially read information regarding the Accounting, Governance, and Sustainability Conference. While there should always be room for dissent in academia, knowledge-based institutions such as academic associations should be cautious when configuring events (such as conferences) – in order to prevent the audiences from developing a feeling of epistemological uneasiness. Could it be that the AAA purposefully ignored the relatively strong consensus, in science, on climate change? Oreskes (2019) shows persuasively how academic reputations may be tarnished durably when consensus is overlooked and mistrust of conflicts of interest sets in.

As mentioned earlier, Oreskes (2019) points to the lack of cultural acceptance, in our collectivities, regarding the extent of scientific consensus on the existential problem of climate change. Giola (2024) refers to the notion of ‘collective stupidity’ when reflecting on the level of collective inaction in seeking to address the problem. This leads me to conclude that why many humans and their communities and institutions do not take the perils of climate change more seriously, constitutes one of the most pressing questions to investigate and debate in the CSR and corporate sustainability area – and beyond. Will this question be seriously debated during the Accounting, Governance and Sustainability Conference?

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).