The phrase, “the public interest,” has been used in the professional and academic
accounting literatures to motivate a wide range of papers and articles examining the
consequences of accounting practices for both the public and the private spheres.
Given the diversity of rhetoric in the accounting literature that purports to relate to the
public interest, it may be appropriate to ask: what is the meaning of the public interest?
There could be a number of answers to this question, and it is probable that the
answers would depend to a large extent on the ideological perspectives of the
respondents. For example, it might not be unreasonable to expect that those who adopt
a neo-liberal perspective would genuinely believe that the policies they advocate
would, if enacted, benefit the public interest. Likewise, persons who stand in opposition
to a neo-liberal ideology would also believe that their policies benefit the public
interest. Consequently, there is a dispersion of rhetoric surrounding the term “the
public interest.” The purpose of this paper is to examine the rhetorical claims of several
prominent organizations operating within the American public accounting profession
that claim to act in the public interest and to identify the ideological position or
positions underlying these claims. In the process we will examine the concept of
ideology and its application to accounting research[1]