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Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article argues that universities currently privilege an instrumental "ethos of measurement" in the management of academic work. Such an ethos has deleterious consequences, both for knowledge production and knowledge transfer to students. Specifically, evidence points towards the production of increasingly well-crafted and ever more numerous research outputs that are useful in permitting universities to posture as world class institutions but that ultimately are of questionable social value. Additionally, the ever more granular management of teaching and pedagogy in universities is implicated in the sacrifice of broad and deep intellectual enquiry in favour of ostensibly more economically relevant skills that prepare graduates for the travails of the labour market. In both cases, metric fetishization serves to undermine nobler, socially minded visions of what a university should be. For such visions to flourish, it is imperative that universities take steps that explicitly privilege a collegial "ethos of judgement" over a managerialist ethos of measurement.

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01570.x Byline: Crawford Spence ([dagger]), Ian Thomson (*) Abstract: This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52 companies, namely metaphor and synecdoche. The results reveal a number of complex and contradictory things. Primarily, the master metaphor of 'altruism' projected by the corporate disclosures is ideologically at odds with the more business case-oriented discourse that shapes the disclosures. This contradiction is put into starker contrast by the existence of a root metaphor, whereby the recipients of corporate philanthropy are presented as the 'deserving poor'. Synecdochal devices are present within the corporate disclosures, whereby employee initiatives that are independent of corporate strategies are used to confer attributes onto the disclosures that bolster the master metaphor of 'altruism'. As such, corporate philanthropy is presented by the paper as a structurally incoherent discourse and yet one that has implications for both extracting greater value from various societal groups and in defining, on behalf of civil society, what is a worthy cause. Author Affiliation: ([dagger])Department of Accountancy, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (*)Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Strathclyde, Scotland, UK

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Extant literature on professional services firms in general, and on the Big 4 accounting firms in particular, consistently shows that these firms are in a state of institutional flux. In turn, it has been argued that new types of professionals are emerging within this context. Adopting a sociological perspective inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this article unravels the meaning of success within the Big 4 via an exploration of who makes partner. Specifically, the paper reports upon a qualitative study undertaken with partners and other senior accountants in three Big 4 firms between December 2010 and September 2012. The findings of the study are four-fold: firstly, it is shown that, although Big 4 partners might be thought of as belonging to the upper echelons of society, making partner is open to individuals from modest family backgrounds; secondly, partners draw sharp distinctions between themselves and those just below partner level in terms of what each is capable of, implying that different types of professional exist at different levels within the Big 4; thirdly, partners embody entrepreneurialism and a concern for revenue generation more than they embody technical expertise; and, fourthly, the requirements for making partner today are different from the criteria that previous generations of partners were subject to. Finally, a key insight of this paper is that the central distinguishing features of successful professionals in the Big 4 are tied to commercialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]