A discussion of the ideologies of privileging business on social and environmental accounting

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to discuss the ideologies of privileging business at the centre of social and environmental accounting debates.
Design/methodology/approach: The research design gathers the methodology of Logics of Critical Explanation, the rhetorical redescription discourse analysis and a company’s reports to understand, critique and explain the ideologies of the Brazil’s state-owned company Petrobras by the lenses of a post-structural perspective.
Findings: This paper examined three principal ideologies of Petrobras that sustain the symbolic apparatus of shareholders wealth maximisation that links to the literature in consulting firms. The second ideology provided a sophisticated language for powerful ambition of domination. The third ideology captured the traditional concept of business regarding exploitation and expropriation. In comparison, the literature of privileging business has similar ideologies and does not change of practice of business. It only incorporated technical nomenclature to produce illusions of new modes rhetorically constructed and ideologically maintained. The scholars placing business at the centre of decision have an analogous support that seems to restrain reality.
Originality/value: We seek to change little practices. As post-structuralists, we acknowledge meanings are powerful. They might lead to misrecognition of certain practices. This paper provides a discussion of the role of the business practice that might transform academics to consultants and shift societal values for few elitist groups. We challenge academics, students and citizens for movements beyond the hegemonic practices of business as the principal player that most reinforce subordination and expropriation.