Question

Hines suggests that … 'Conceptual frameworks provide social legitimacy to the accounting profession’ (Deegan, 2014, p 259)
Explain what Hines meant by this statement. Evaluate whether the development of the conceptual framework is a political action to ensure the survival of the accounting profession.

While accounting standard-setters have promoted the benefits of conceptual frameworks, some of which have been discussed above, a number of writers (including Hines and Solomons, as identified above) have suggested that conceptual frameworks are created primarily to provide benefits to the parties that actually develop or commission the frameworks. It has been argued that conceptual frameworks have been used as devices to help ensure the ongoing existence of the accounting profession by ‘boosting’ their public standing (Dopuch & Sunder, 1980, p. 17). As Hines (1989, p. 74) suggests:

One of the main obstacles against which accountants have continually had to struggle in the professionalism quest has been the threat of an apparent absence of a formal body of accounting knowledge, and that creating the perception of possessing such knowledge has been an important part of creating and reproducing their social identity as a profession … Viewing these attempts (at establishing conceptual frameworks) as claims to accounting knowledge, which are used as a political resource in reducing the threat of government intervention and competing with other groups, in order to maintain and increase professionalism and social mobility seems to explain these projects better than viewing them from a technical/functional perspective.

Answer 1

According to most authors, a body of (formal) knowledge is the crucial trait of professions. It is the presumed existence of this knowledge which legitimises claims to expertise, professional powers, autonomy and control over work. The body of knowledge around which the financial accounting professionalisation project has taken place is described and it is shown that professionalisation took place around a variety of personal qualities, such as honesty, independence and respectability – skills not specific to “accountants”, such as penmanship, arithmetic, work and knowledge, which at the time were contestable as being the domain of the legal profession. It is suggested that (not unlike other professions), the knowledge foundations of the accounting profession are problematic and so in order to reproduce and advance the accounting profession, members must counteract threats to its legitimacy stemming from its underlying knowledge foundations. It is also suggested that the frequently repeated search for a conceptual framework represents a means of counteracting this threat to the social legitimacy of the accounting profession, and that conceptual framework projects are used as a political resource in the profession‐alisation struggle during times of possible intervention by the state and at times of competition from other (including accounting) groups.