Accounting Forum

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/racc20

Accounting in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: a

forum for academic research

Leonardo Rinaldi, Charles H. Cho, Sumit K. Lodhia, Giovanna Michelon &

Carol A. Tilt

To cite this article: Leonardo Rinaldi, Charles H. Cho, Sumit K. Lodhia, Giovanna Michelon &
Carol A. Tilt (2020) Accounting in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: a forum for academic research,
Accounting Forum, 44:3, 180-183, DOI: 10.1080/01559982.2020.1778873

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01559982.2020.1778873

Published online: 25 Jun 2020.

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ACCOUNTING FORUM
2020, VOL. 44, NO. 3, 180–183
https://doi.org/10.1080/01559982.2020.1778873

EDITORIAL

Accounting in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: a forum for

academic research

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted (at the time of writing) in almost 8 million confirmed
cases and about 450,000 deaths globally (World Health Organization, 2020). It has also pro-
duced concerns about future social-economic crises and recession. As the SARS-CoV-2 coro-
navirus continues to spread around the world, a growing number of accounting and
accountability scholars have taken on the challenge and issued calls for research included in
expedited special issues or academic conferences (Grossi, Ho, & Joyce, 2020; Leoni et al.,
2020; The Accountability Institute, 2020; University of São Paulo, 2020).1
Accounting Forum aims to promote a thorough understanding of every aspect of the pan-
demic, including the economic, social, environmental, ethical and governance impacts. We
believe the pandemic effects on modern society will be deep and permanent, and thus we
call for in-depth, reflexive interdisciplinary contributions in all areas of accounting, business,
finance and related subjects that address the responses to the COVID-19 crisis with a global
perspective. We encourage scholars to contribute to this Forum for the intellectual exchange
of academic research on the COVID19 global pandemic impact at individual, organisational or
institutional levels.
With an open call for papers, Accounting Forum aims to provide an opportunity to advance
the investigation of the impacts of COVID-19. On this occasion, we are very pleased to
announce that Leonardo Rinaldi (Royal Holloway University of London) will act as ad-hoc
co-Editor for submissions related to this open call for research. We welcome submissions
from a wide range of theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches. Without being
prescriptive, we propose below some research themes to encourage our collective reflection
on the impacts of the coronavirus crisis.

Practices of account-giving
The COVID-19 crisis has increased the complexity surrounding organisations’ accountability
and governance. The wicked nature of the problems faced by society during the outbreak, their
changing nature and their temporality have generated an increasing demand for more material
(or even new) practices of account-giving to reflect the unprecedented magnitude of the out-
comes. While accounting and accountability research has developed and become more soph-
isticated, the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic provides both a challenge and need
for research in this area to become more impactful. Among the several sites for theoretical and
empirical innovation, we envisage the introduction of new conceptual frameworks for analysis,
new sites for empirical work, and the development of new tools in this area of practice. Among
others, we welcome submissions studying the changing nature of (and account for) risk, ana-
lysing the micro-foundations of accountability, and investigating how challenges posed by the
COVID-19 crisis affect styles of accountability.

1
There have been such calls in other disciplines as well (e.g. Goldsmith & Lee, 2020; World Development, 2020).
© 2020 University of South Australia
 ACCOUNTING FORUM 181

Modern piracy
The outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic has generated a sudden, simultaneous and global
demand for a range of critical medical supplies (i.e. ventilators, tests, reagents, PPE and vac-
cines). In attempting to get ahead of the rush, organisations and governments in some
countries have carried out diversions that have been regarded as acts of “modern piracy”.
These acts have significant humanitarian and equity implications that range from preventing
healthcare workers from receiving protective equipment to forms of retaliation from other
countries. While piracy is not just a characteristic of history, but exists in various forms in con-
temporary organisational practice, little attention has been paid to the phenomenon of modern
piracy in the accounting literature. How can modern piracy be theorised? How is accounting
implicated in conflict resolution? How do organisations deal with the concept of scarcity and
rivalry in non-financial capitals? These are some of the questions future research could inves-
tigate and assess.

Production of (in)visibilities
The threat of the COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges to global society and
the political administration and government of collective life (World Health Organization,
2020). One of the more significant problems can be regarded as the “navigation of the
unseen”. As viruses are invisible to the naked eye, one way to manage the risks related to
the disease is by rendering “visible” the various manifestations of the responses to the
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Accounting scholars have long been involved in investigating the
role of accounting in the production of visibilities and their implication in the government
of collective life. However, little is known about how calculative technologies are used to
describe, classify and give visibility and measurability to the dynamics of the pandemic for
the construction of discourses of health. Avenues of research may include, but are not
limited to infrastructures of visibility, relationships between visibility and management or
control, implications of accounting in shaping the (in)visibility of the COVID-19 pandemic,
accounting and the governance of risks.

Health racism
The COVID-19 crisis seems to have disproportionately affected different communities and
populations throughout the world due to disparities in socioeconomic status. There is increas-
ing evidence that the number of COVID-19 cases among Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities
(BAME) is significantly higher, whereas the outcomes for these patients had been poorer.
There is also increasing evidence that more people are dying in care homes. However, little
is known about the role of accounting in the relationships between community demographics
and its vulnerability to health issues. Therefore, we call for in-depth interdisciplinary contri-
butions to explore how accounting is implicated in preventing (or facilitating) injustice and
inequality in health that occurs in practice and policy within a racialised context.

Isolated spaces
Several million people around the world were, are and (almost certainly) will be required to
follow more or less strict forms of quarantine and to practice social distancing. Academic
research has provided valuable insights on the issues of space, place and identity. However,
182 L. RINALDI ET AL.

little is known about how accounting is implicated in the ordering and structuring of isolated
spaces. Many accounting challenges and opportunities exist now and in the near future for
accounting researchers and practitioners to contribute towards an increased understanding
of the social transformation that emerged after the violent and sudden closure (or limitation)
of space. Potential research questions in this theme may focus on the dialectics of connectivity
and dysconnectivity, the future of work organisation, the impact of the pandemic on account-
ing education and the reverberation for the accounting profession.

Reorganisation of life
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected our everyday life. The impacts of the pan-
demic are extensive and have far-reaching consequences for people, businesses, and govern-
ments around the world. However, little is known about how accounting is implicated at
different levels in the reorganisation of life. The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a wide array
of responses at individual, organisational and institutional levels (Bapuji et al., 2020). Under-
standing how these responses occurred has the potential to inform public policies and organ-
isational strategies for future reactions to challenging societal problems. We welcome research
in this theme to consider accounting and management practices in the context of emergency,
issues related to supply chain accounting and management, the investigation of organisational
responses (revising, repurposing and reinventing, e.g. Bapuji et al., 2020) and the problemati-
zation of regenerative accounting.
We welcome your submissions on these or any other related themes at any time via: www.
tandfonline.com/racc.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

References
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 ACCOUNTING FORUM 183

Leonardo Rinaldi
School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, UK
Leonardo Rinaldi Leonardo.Rinaldi@rhul.ac.uk http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9252-9638

Charles H. Cho
Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1890-2662

Sumit K. Lodhia
UniSA Business School, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4459-2621

Giovanna Michelon
Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0107-9809

Carol A. Tilt
UniSA Business School, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0341-2436