Collaboration: Intellectual Cohabitation Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t

1. Collaboration:Intellectual Cohabitation Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t Jesse Dillard Portland State University

2. Why ? • To share ideas and experiences • Leading to the possibility of understanding the world differently • By understanding the world differently, we can choose to live our lives differently, to do business differently, to practice accounting differently • As a result, we can have an enlightening, enabling, and transforming effect on our world

3. What Is Ours To Do? • The professional part of our world comprises the study and practice of business, in its broadest sense • Therefore the possibility exists for changing the understanding and practice of business and accounting • The challenge, and that of any society, is to act, based on a value set that increases the societal welfare rather than the interests of only a subset thereof

4. Why Business/Accounting? • This is where we happen to be involved at this point in our lives • Conscious decision • Accidents of history • Parental pressure • Last resort in providing life’s necessities • Psychological pathologies • ?????

5. What is the function of the economic institutions (business) in society?

6. Acting in the Public InterestinProviding Goods and Services to the Members of Society

7. Purpose of Economic Organizations • Central role in facilitating the long-term viability of a democratically governed society • grounded in • justice • equality • trust • supported by a sustainable economic system.

8. Sustainable Economic Systems

9. Organizational Management’s Responsibility While all members of society have a moral responsibility to act in the public interest, organizational management is specifically granted fiduciary responsibility over society’s economic resources (natural resources, financial assets, human assets, and technology). 

10. Management’s Character In order to fulfill its charge as a trustee of society’s economic resources, organizational management must maintain high standards of integrity, responsibility, and accountability.

11. Information/Accounting Professionals’ Responsibility • Assist management in carrying out their fiduciary responsibilities. • By assuring the efficacy and integrity of the related information and administrative systems and those who design, implement, and utilize them. • Nested accountability

12. An Ethic of Accountability

13. Academic Accounting • Develop and disseminate expert knowledge and professional responsibilities to current and future professionals • Facilitate and engage in an ongoing conversation among stakeholders regarding public interest responsibilities associated with the ethic of accountability • Act as conscience and critic of the profession, organizational management, and society

14. An agenda for the Academy • Scholarly investigation • Practices and technique • Educational innovation • Context, complexity, and critique • Community interaction • Responsive and responsible social action

15. My Journey • Micro to macro – the problem keeps getting more and more complex • Social psychology to information systems to linguistics to sociology to philosophy • Methodologies follow theory and questions • Just more interesting • Make over ~ 7 ( + 2 years) • Various courses, conferences, seminars, and smart peopl over the years

16. Disciplines • Management • Computer science • Information systems • Pubic administration • Strategy • Sociology • Economics • Supply Chain Management

17. Why consider interdisciplinary studies? • Interesting questions/issues • Disciplines too narrow to adequately address the question of interest in a complex world • Personal growth and development • Increases the changes of funding • Just more challenging and interesting

18. Must Be Recognized and Supported • Time • Facilitating mechanisms • Funds • Space • Staff support • Data • Technology • Etc.

19. Positive Considerations • Learning new ideas • Intellectually stimulating • Get to know interesting people • Broaden fields that tend toward a narrowing of perspective • Resilience in diveristy • New opportunities • Personal growth

20. Challenges • Vocabulary – language games – coming to a common understanding of ideas, theory, concepts, models, methodologies, etc. • “customary norms” • Time consuming • Finding acceptable joint and separate work space • Writing for the appropriate journal set • Institution’s reputational hierarchy • Perceived intellectual content of the business disciplines • Getting to know difficult and uninteresting people • If they leave, you have little leverage

21. Publication Outlets • What journals? • Authors’ discipline • Another discipline • Interdisciplinary • Quality • Books, anthologies, monographs • Reputational hierarchies • Institutional requirements and expectations

22. Activities • Read their literature • Attend their classes • Participate in their seminars • Go to their conferences • Try and get them to talk to you • Appear brighter than their perception of business school faculty • Invite them to present at our seminars • Propose joint research proposals

23. Traditional source disciplines • Economics • Finance • Legal • History • Sociology/anthropology • Psychology • Statistics • Public administration • Philosophy • History

24. Financial Managerial AIS Auditing Tax Gov’t/NFP International Social & environmental History Critical Analytical Archival Behavioral Case study Accounting Subdisciplines

25. Social Sustainability • New title for an old song • Improving the human condition • Business/Accounting is a significant part • Recognize the interconnectedness of the Web of Life • Grasping the complexity requires many perspectives • Intended and unintended consequences

27. Economic results are seen as 1. What is the most sustainable alternative? 2. How do we accomplish it in the most economical way? 1. What is the most economically viable alternative? 2. How do we accomplish it in the most sustainable way? Means (Provide resources for social objective(s) End (Maximize economic/ shareholder value) Concerned with achieving social objective and sustaining operations through marketing a/the related product/service (improve skill levels of disadvantages-vocational training, producing food to feed the hungry, natural beef) Social business enterprise Concerned with achieving social objective and sustaining operations through marketing a product/service for consumption (clean water – Belu, Ethos, Ben & Jerry’s franchise) Explicitly concerned with responding to market demands providing a marketable product/service for consumption (autos, petroleum, candy, coffee, furniture, commodity beef)FP Sustainable product/ service/ process Unsustainable product/ service/ process Sustainable product/ service/ process Unsustainable product/ service/ process Sustainable product/ service/ process Unsustainable product/ service/ process

28. My Legitimating Grounds • Accountability is the linchpin of any legitimate and just economic system • Accounting resides at the critical interface between those who control the economic assets (organizational management) and the society that they are to benefit • An ethic of accountability provides a contextual framework wherein we carryout our responsibilities as conscience and critic of society and its institutions • Social sustainability is a key component in implementing an ethic of accountability

29. Concluding Thoughts • Why are we here? • What is ours to do? • How can we best pursue our task?

30. Self respect/self worth Attraction Common interest Compatibility Communication Compromise Empathy Respect Contributions Accountability Closure Collaboration is Relationships

31. PASSION