This paper addresses the discursive struggle surrounding the privatization of Canadian National Railway (CN). It analyses aspects of the way in which accounting language, concepts and information were deployed by Paul Tellier, CEO of CN in the two and a half years prior to the formal...

Purpose – The paper sets out to examine the use of accounting as part of the privatization process of a national railway in Canada. The argument is that proponents of the privatization used accounting strategically to justify and sustain the privatization. Major societal events, such as the...

Purpose – This paper is the third in a trilogy of papers to explore the use of accounting as a fundamental element in senior management's narrative regarding the privatization of a major transportation enterprise, Canadian National Railway (CN). The paper aims to examine how two accounting...

Analyses the role of accounting data in collective bargaining in ot‐for‐profit organizations in four Canadian cases. Develops a model upon the constructs of “employer equivocality” and “union heterogeneity” to provide useful insights. Where employer equivocality is low and union...

Purpose: This paper explores the benefits and pitfalls of a CEO’s personal messaging on Twitter. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on recent professional and scholarly literature that has explored Twitter use by executives. For empirical support, some personal tweets of Uber’s...

Purpose: This paper explores the rhetorical and strategic nature of the language political and business leaders used during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic – or what we refer to as their pandemic-speak. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws opportunistically on examples of...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine autobiographical vignettes that are embedded in the annual report letters to shareholders of chief executive officers (CEOs). The aim is to reveal the capacity of this narrative to self-construct leader identity, show how they can help CEOs...

This paper conducts a wide-ranging and critical interpretative review of the accountability of university accounting educators. The 'idea' of the university is reviewed briefly. Particular attention is given to analysing the implication of accounting and auditing in the ravaging of universities;...

We explore the language of leadership of global media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 2010, the year before the phone-hacking scandal in the UK came to public attention. Subsequent public enquiries in the UK exposed unethical conduct by staff of News Corporation, a global corporation whose Chairman and...