David J. Cooper is a Professor of Accounting at the University of Alberta,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. He is the co-founder, along with Anthony Tinker, of the academic journal

Critical Perspectives on Accounting ''Critical Perspectives on Accounting'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier. The aim of the journal is to study how accounting works within society and to promote forms of accounting that are in the public interest. It was est ...

and is also a long-time associate editor of

Accounting, Organizations and Society ''Accounting, Organizations and Society'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier. Its editors-in-chief are Marcia Annisette (Schulich School of Business), Martin Messner (University of Innsbruck), and Hun-Tong Tan (Nanyang Techn ...

. He is best known as a central figure and co-founder of the critical accounting and

public interest accounting Public interest accounting is a branch of academic accounting research that attempts to understand how accounting practices and the activities of the accounting profession impact the public interest. Public interest-focused accounting research she ...

movements: movements which emphasize the importance of not only studying the roles of accounting in organizations and society but also using this knowledge to intervene in the public sphere.

Life and career

Cooper was born in London, England. He completed his undergraduate studies at the London School of Economics in 1970 and his PhD at the University of Manchester in 1980. In the early 1990s, he moved from the United Kingdom to Canada, eventually accepting a research chair at the University of Alberta. He has continued to lecture widely and has held visiting positions at Oxford University, the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh.

Intellectual contributions

Cooper has pushed our understanding of three aspects of accounting practice. First, his research on the

political economy Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...

of accounting during the 1980s, helped to incite a vibrant research tradition on the role of accounting numbers in social struggle. Political economy of accounting approaches acknowledge that accounting numbers both selectively re-present social reality and act as a distributional mechanism for allocating societal resources. These insights have been taken up and used to study a variety of public interest accounting topics such as environmental reporting as well as class and gender-based aspects of financial reporting. Second, Cooper’s research on the accounting profession has illuminated the intersections among public accounting firm practices, the organization of the accounting profession, and the associated societal-level consequences. This stream of research draws upon the sociology of the professions literature, extending this literature to show how the accounting profession is similar yet different from other professions such as medicine and law. The research also traces how globalization has impacted on the organization and activities of public accounting. Third, Cooper has theorized and practiced the role of the specific, public intellectual. Building on the insights of

Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French historian of ideas and philosopher who was also an author, literary critic, political activist, and teacher. Foucault's theories primarily addressed the relationships be ...

and

Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influ ...

, Cooper showed the importance of using accounting expertise to intervene in the public sphere. The interventions included the United Kingdom Coal Board interventions in the 1980s as well as the debt/deficit interventions and privatization interventions in Canada in the 1990s. More recently, Cooper has served as a board member and resident accounting expert for the

Parkland Institute The Parkland Institute is an Alberta-wide, non-partisan research institute, situated within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. The Institute studies economic, social, cultural, and political issues using the intellectual approach of ...

, a Canadian-based public think-tank.

Intellectual lineage

Cooper has supervised and/or acted as mentor to a group of prominent accounting academics. These include Keith Robson (editor-in-chief of

), Vaughan Radcliffe (who has studied public secrets within governmental accounting), Dean Neu (another public interest accounting researcher), and Daniel Martinez (who studies NGO accountability).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, David Academic staff of the University of Alberta English expatriates in Canada Living people Alumni of the University of Manchester Accounting academics Year of birth missing (living people)