How hegemony works: the fate of a presidential initiative

Abstract

This study charts the course of an American Accounting Association initiative designed to overcome perceived stagnation in US accounting scholarship by removing impediments to innovation within the research infrastructure. It analyses events using Gramscian theory of hegemony, extended to embrace Raymond Williams’ development of the cultural dynamics of the phenomenon and concepts of disciplinary hegemony and micro-hegemony. It shows that the structurally complex disciplinary micro-hegemony of US accounting scholarship underwent challenge and some modification and recreation of its elements but was largely successful in defending its cultural ascendency and repressive capacity. Some tentative ideas about how paradigmatic domination might be overthrown are sketched out.