Readdressing accountability for occupational health and safety in a pandemic era

PurposeIn the Covid-19 pandemic era, corporate responsibility and accountability for maintaining employee health and safety, particularly from this pernicious virus, have become a matter of major social and economic importance. From an accountability through action perspective, this study aims to set out to evaluate the potential occupational health and safety accountability consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based upon purposive sampling of several sets of publicly available data including published research literature addressing corporate social responsibility and accountability, and the literature more specifically addressing occupational health and safety (OHS) and its reporting. Also included are recent Web-based reports and articles concerning Covid-19-related OHS government and industry sponsored guidelines for employers and their workplaces across the UK and Australia.FindingsThe findings of this research highlight that firstly, the extant literature on OHS has been predominantly functionalist in its approach and that accountability through action provides an opportunity to make employers more visibly accountable for their response to Covid-19. Secondly, the paper highlights that despite recent progress on OHS issues significant concerns remained in the pre-Covid-19 era and that emerging regulations and legal obligations on employees have the potential to make OHS issues a prominent part of corporate social responsibility research.Originality/valueDisease and mental health statistics reveal the potential significance of their expansion in the Covid-19 environment, and regulatory and legal liability concerns emerge as potential drivers of renewed corporate as well as researcher attention to OHS issues. Implications for the emergence of a broader range of accountability forms and visibilities are also canvassed.

The commercialized Australian public university: An accountingized transition

This paper explores the impact of neoliberalism on Australia's public higher education system. It examines flaws in the university system revealed by the COVID‐19 pandemic and identifies how the conditions created by neoliberal policies have limited universities' capacity to respond to a crisis. The paper reviews the previous literature on universities, neoliberalism policies, and new public management practices. It uses data from the literature, newspapers, and contemporary documents to shape an overview of the Australian public sector university system up to 2021 and its transformation by stealth. The impact of this transformation has been a heavy reliance on international onshore student fees to fund operations, infrastructure, and research activities. COVID‐19‐related public health measures have caused a significant downturn in the number of international students studying in Australia, in turn, creating a financial crisis that has seen many tens of thousands of university staff losing their jobs and courses being cut. The transformation has also seen accountingization of both individual academic and university performance to become the norm. The quantified performance metrics associated with accountingization have become universities' new language, and their goal displaced ends. Revenue generation and expenditure has been privileged over making a contribution to the nation and society. We call for a radical rethinking of the public sector university mission for the ultimate benefit of the Australian community.

The COVID-19 office in transition: cost, efficiency and the social responsibility business case

PurposeThis study aims to critically evaluate the COVID-19 and future post-COVID-19 impacts on office design, location and functioning with respect to government and community occupational health and safety expectations. It aims to assess how office efficiency and cost control agendas intersect with corporate social accountability.Design/methodology/approachTheoretically informed by governmentality and social accountability through action, it thematically examines research literature and Web-based professional and business reports. It undertakes a timely analysis of historical office trends and emerging practice discourse during the COVID-19 global pandemic's early phase.FindingsCOVID-19 has induced a transition to teleworking, impending office design and configuration reversals and office working protocol re-engineering. Management strategies reflect prioritisation choices between occupational health and safety versus financial returns. Beyond formal accountability reports, office management strategy and rationales will become physically observable and accountable to office staff and other parties.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research must determine the balance of office change strategies employed and their evident focus on occupational health and safety or cost control and financial returns. Further investigation can reveal the relationship between formal reporting and observed activities.Practical implicationsOrganisations face strategic decisions concerning both their balancing of employee and public health and safety against capital expenditure and operation cost commitments to COVID-19 transmission prevention. They also face strategic accountability decisions as to the visibility and correspondence between their observable actions and their formal social responsibility reporting.Social implicationsOrganisations have continued scientific management office cost reduction strategies under the guise of innovative office designs. This historic trend will be tested by a pandemic, which calls for control of its spread, including radical changes to the office at potentially significant cost.Originality/valueThis paper presents one of few office studies in the accounting research literature, recognising it as central to contemporary organisational functioning and revealing the office cost control tradition as a challenge for employee and community health and safety.