Accounting for Sustainability: Dr. Orthodoxia Kyriacou

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The speaker will be Dr Orthodoxia Kyriacou from Middlesex University London. The title of her talk is “Breaking the chains and framing the links: How Big 4 accounting firms normalize modern slavery”

Modern Slavery remains a major societal challenge. To tackle the challenge, the UK published the Modern Slavery Act in 2015. This Act requires large corporations to produce and publish annual modern slavery reports and to demonstrate which actions they take to identify and manage risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. Previous works on modern slavery suggest that accountability and transparency are critical to end modern slavery. Why then, despite the increasing accountability and transparency efforts, do modern slavery practices persist? To answer this question, we analysed the UK Big 4 accounting firm’s Modern Slavery Reports from 2016-2021 and conducted 10 interviews with those responsible compiling the reports. Our analysis reveals that Big 4 firms have aimed to continuously improved the quality of their reports. However, this improvement was largely superficial such that Big 4 firms only marginally changed their statements in the reports. In fact, most statements remained the same over multiple years. The improvement was signalled primarily through a clever use of the visual to project warmth and care. We show how the use of the visual enabled Big 4 firms not only to cover up a lacking effort to compile the reports, but also to render modern slavery a legitimate practice. We contribute to the modern slavery literature in accounting by highlighting how the introduction of care as an accounting object may help cover up persistent failures to address modern slavery in corporate supply chains. We also contribute to the accounting literature on visuals.

Orthodoxia Kyriacou is currently an Associate Professor in Transdisciplinary (DProf) Developments at Middlesex University, London. She has been an academic for over 25 years having previously spent 22 years teaching accounting. Her research interests are eclectic and she has published in the areas of accounting education, gender, ethnicity in accounting, UK accounting profession, oral history and experiences, media representations of accounting  and climate change and sustainability. Since joining the DProf (Transdisciplinary Practice) team at Middlesex University, her research interests focus on interconnecting sectors and disciplines to reimagine accounting and its multiple futures. While she is fascinated by the theory of accounting, her passion is in the threads that link financial accounting to social issues and to make those threads stronger in the eyes of the academy, the public and policy makers. She is now involved with creating stronger links between multi sector professionals and the academy.