Moral Economy, Performative Materialism, And Political Rhetorics Of Sustainability Accounting

ABSTRACT

Using the concepts of ‘moral economy’ and ‘performative materialism’ in a case study of a Sri Lankan bank that has received awards and commendations for its sustainability reports, this study explores and theorises moral contradictions of how sustainability is enacted in a corporate setting. Its specific empirical observation reveals how enacting sustainability involves four key elements: redefining corporate morality, mattering morality, objectifying morality through accountability, and valorising morality in a moral market. While attaching a new morality to corporate profits, these elements enable greenwashing to get institutionalised as a celebrated and rewarded business practice. This research contributes to critical accounting studies by empirically explaining how a new set of moral practices, objects, and markets are constructed in the name of sustainability reporting and by illustrating how the theoretical notions of moral economy and performative materialism can shed light on critiquing the ways sustainability reporting regimes are constructed

1. Introduction lt;/p>

Global sustainability discourses have penetrated Third World organisations, creating a dialogue between global and local, developed and underdeveloped, and economic and socio-environmental. Third World organisations now engage in eliciting the global sustainability agenda populated by UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and other global institutions such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – as manifested in increased sustainability reporting, where such organisations have made some exciting yet test-worthy declarations and promises regarding a sustainable future (Alawattage Fernando, 2017& Wickramasinghe et al., 2022). In response, researchers have made noteworthy attempts – especially in critical accounting – at exploring how Third World organisations do sustainability. Belal and his colleagues (Belal Roberts, 2010& Belal, 2001& Belal Cooper, 2011& Belal et al., 2015& Belal et al., 2010& Belal Owen, 2007), for example, studied how the Bangladesh third sector and corporates were responding to the global sustainability agenda, while Kamla (2007) drew on Edward Said’s orientalism to explore the postcolonial political dynamics associated with social accounting in the Arab Middle East. Extending this line of postcoloniality and drawing on Homi Bhabha, Alawattage and Fernando (2017) showed how corporate sustainability reporting (CSR) provides a textual space wherein local managers create a hybrid cultural identity through mimicking. In different ways, these studies exemplify cultural-political peculiarities anddiversities in the global sustainability agenda’s penetration of local settings. What they largely neglect, though, is how moral contradictions among sustainability, capitalistic profit motives, and cultural/religious underpinnings of moral economy1 are manifested in moral politics2 of ‘doing sustainability’. On the western front, some noteworthy accounting works have explored how organisations deal with moral contradictions emanating from managing and reporting sustainability, especially how “rhetorical claims to pragmatism and action” (Milne et al., 2009, 1211) have privileged a narrow primarily economic and instrumental approach to sustainability. For example, Milne and his colleagues’ works (Milne et al., 2006& Milne et al., 2009& Tregidga et al., 2014& Tregidga and Milne, 2022) explain how the subtle and powerful corporate rhetoric of ‘doing sustainability’ simultaneously appears as a serious engagement with sustainable development while, paradoxically, further reinforcing business-as-usual via “narrow, largely economic and instrumental approach to the natural environment” (Milne et al., 2009, 1211). These studies point to the necessity of revealing how greenwashing gets institutionalised as a celebrated and rewarded business practice and how new moralities are attached to corporate profits (see also, Himick Ruff, 2020& Milne, 1996& Milne Chan, 1999& Milne et al., 2006& Milne et al., 2009& Peda Vinnari, 2020). Without such revelations, even the wholehearted efforts of genuine managers who are pursuing sustainability get lost within a complex web of neoliberal market dynamics and rationalities that populate, popularise, and present greenwashing as sustainability. Thus, our aim here is to explore how this happens in a specific organisational setting. For this, empirically we draw on a case study of a Sri Lankan bank (HDFC) much lauded for its sustainability reports. Employing the notions of ‘moral economy’ and ‘performative materialism’, we theorise the new morality, practices, and accountabilities that the global sustainability agenda has enabled and enacted. In line with the theoretical propositions of moral economy (see 3.1) and performative materialism (see 3.2), the following two research questions frame our analysis: 1. How does sustainability appear as a moral economy, i.e., as a natural, cultural, and political order, or as a good life broadly understood to which the market economy needs to be subordinated? 2. How does accounting for sustainability constitute a process of ‘mattering’? We make a specific theoretically sensitive empirical observation that the global agenda of sustainability has created a new moral economy with a specific moral market of corporate reporting in which the value of sustainability reporting is valorised in symbolic forms. Accountability is central in ‘materialising’ this moral economy and market. Theoretically, we illustrate that morality (i.e., moral economy and moral markets), materiality, and accountability are the three interrelated pillars upon which sustainability is corporatised and marketised in a symbolic market created for the symbolic valorisation of sustainability as a reporting practice. Sustainability practices are driven by institutional apparatuses of this moral market, where greenwashing-like practices are celebrated and rewarded. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 clarifies how accounting literature has theorised the politics of sustainability accounting, while Section 3 discusses the key theoretical concepts herein employed. Next, Section 4 explains the methodology, then Section 5 presents the empirical analysis. Section 6 concludes the paper by summarising the work and discussing how our findings implicate relevant literature.