Insolvency practice in the field of football

Description
This paper is concerned with UK insolvency practice. It considers how the field of insolvency
has developed since the passing of the Insolvency Act 1986 through a Bourdieusian
theoretical lens. The case of the administration of Gretna football club is presented as a
‘‘special case of what is possible’’ to enable one to consider ‘‘the deepest logic of the social
world’’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 4). Football is a field with its own complex insolvency rules
which are incommensurable with the Insolvency Act. The case therefore presents an
opportunity to reveal that whether insolvency laws are applied or not is determined by
a complex socio-political process

Insolvency practice in the ?eld of football
Christine Cooper
a,?
, Yvonne Joyce
b
a
University of Strathclyde, Department of Accounting and Finance, 100 Cathedral Street, Glasgow, G4 0LN, Scotland, United Kingdom
b
University of Glasgow, Department of Accounting and Finance, Main Building, G12 8QQ, Scotland, United Kingdom
a b s t r a c t
This paper is concerned with UK insolvency practice. It considers how the ?eld of insol-
vency has developed since the passing of the Insolvency Act 1986 through a Bourdieusian
theoretical lens. The case of the administration of Gretna football club is presented as a
‘‘special case of what is possible’’ to enable one to consider ‘‘the deepest logic of the social
world’’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 4). Football is a ?eld with its own complex insolvency rules
which are incommensurable with the Insolvency Act. The case therefore presents an
opportunity to reveal that whether insolvency laws are applied or not is determined by
a complex socio-political process. Through revealing the socio-political process the paper
problematises the notion that insolvency practice is neutral.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
When I began working as an ethnologist, I wanted to
react against what I called legalism, that is, against
the tendency among ethnologists to describe the social
world in the language of rules and to explain as if social
practices were explained merely by stating the explicit
rule in accordance with which they are allegedly pro-
duced. So I was very pleased one day to come across
a text by Weber which said, in effect: ‘‘Social agents
obey the rule when it is more in their interest to obey
it than to disobey it.’’ This good healthy materialist for-
mula is interesting because it reminds us that that the
rule is not immediately effective by itself and that it
obliges us to ask under what conditions a rule can oper-
ate. (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 76, emphasis added).
Introduction
When Margaret Thatcher’s government passed the
Insolvency Act 1986, it created a newly privatised profes-
sion of insolvency practitioners (IPs) who were granted
monopoly rights over formal insolvencies in Britain, there-
by contributing to the transfer of services from the public
to the private sector. Membership of the insolvency profes-
sion comprised a mixture of accountants, lawyers and a
government department. This was something which
accountants had been campaigning for over many years
and which expanded and legitimated their commercial
opportunities. While both accountants and lawyers are
authorized to take insolvency appointments, in practice of-
?ce holders are predominantly accountants, with lawyers
acting largely as advisers (Flood & Skordaki, 1995). Two
main accountancy bodies, ICAEW and ACCA together with
the Insolvency Practitioner Association (IPA) authorize 76%
of the IP market (Of?ce of Fair Trading, 2010).
There is an enduring historical connection between the
state, bankruptcy and accountants which has produced
peaks and troughs in the various types of accounting work
(Cooper & Robson, 2009; Suddaby, Cooper, & Greenwood,
2007).
1
Jones’ (1981) history of Ernst and Whinney analyses
the fee income for a series of predecessor ?rms from 1848,
showing that 93% of fee income in 1858 was derived from
bankruptcy work – ‘‘accountants did particularly well in
times of ?nancial disaster and depression . . . they were the
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2012.12.001
?
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Cooper).
1
Insolvency work was stimulated by the Bankruptcy Act, 1869 but
declined after the 1883 Act, and audit work increased after the Companies
Acts of 1862, 1879 (which required the audit of banks) and 1900 (requiring
audits of all companies).
Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
rich undertakers of the ?nancial world (Jones, 1981, p. 45, ci-
ted in Cooper & Robson, 2009, p. 284). In the 21st century,
2
insolvency has come to constitute an important and lucra-
tive activity of accountants
3
(Gillard, 2009). This paper is
concerned with how the new ?eld of insolvency has devel-
oped and operated since its inception. In particular it consid-
ers how insolvency rules rather than being clear and
immutable, in practice provide spaces for different interpre-
tations through complex sociopolitical processes.
A contiguous ‘‘economic liberalisation’’ reform to the
Insolvency Act, the Broadcasting Act 1990, soon led to sig-
ni?cant economic effects in the ?eld of football
4
with the
liberalisation of the television market through the ending
of terrestrial television franchises in 1992. At the time of
these statutory changes, there was no strong connection be-
tween the two aside from the Thatcherite marketisation of
the UK. However, the large in?ux of television revenue into
the ?eld of football as a result of the Broadcasting Act, fol-
lowed by a legal ruling giving players more freedom to move
between clubs,
5
produced massive wage in?ation, and a
more oligopolistic structure, leaving many clubs ?nancially
stressed. This created potentially lucrative opportunities
for the newly privatised insolvency profession. IPs employed
in football administrations have to negotiate their way
through the logic of the ?eld of football which is at odds
with the Insolvency Act and conventional business practice.
This tension between the ?elds of insolvency and football
presents the opportunity to consider the positions and strat-
egies adopted by the key actors as well as the capitals they
use to maintain and enhance their positions in their respec-
tive ?elds and in relation to other ?elds. The paper’s motiva-
tion is to understand the deeper logic of insolvency practice
in the UK through this tension. The football administration
employed for this purpose is that of Gretna Football Club
(Gretna) which entered formal insolvency proceedings on
12th March, 2008.
The facts of the Gretna case are simple. Gretna was at
the centre of a football fairy tale which had a tragic ending.
It was a tiny club in a town on the Scottish border which
had a meteoric rise through the Scottish football leagues
due to its new millionaire owner’s (Brooks Mileson)
money. Mileson became very ill and died and Gretna went
into administration and subsequently liquidation. The
small town lost a club which was at the heart of the com-
munity, the staff lost their jobs and the 136 unsecured
creditors found that they would receive virtually nothing,
despite being owed £3.66 million.
6
Mileson was declared
Bankrupt a year after his death. He did not make any money
from his investment in Gretna.
The theoretical perspective used in the paper is drawn
fromthat of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu’s strongly anthropo-
logical background makes him a useful theorist for under-
standing the actions of millionaires who invest in the ?eld
of football as a cultural artefact rather than for direct eco-
nomic gain. Bourdieu takes on Durkheim’s (1982) insight
that societies would not survive if they were solely based
upon economic interests and directly addresses an eco-
nomic determinist version of Marxism which sees eco-
nomic capital as a (universal) ‘‘determination in the last
instance’’. The work of Bourdieu, especially his under-
standing of the relative nature of ?elds, further enables a
nuanced understanding of the ?eld of insolvency which
is strongly in?uenced by powerful secured creditors, in
the economic ?eld. While, in advanced capitalist societies,
it would be dif?cult to maintain that the economic ?eld
and economic capital do not exercise especially powerful
determinations (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 109), the
relations between ?elds are not such that economic capital
(power) will always dominate. The importance of the so-
cial, cultural and symbolic capital of insolvency practitio-
ners (and their ?rms) is a key element in understanding
the ?eld of insolvency. Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective
enables a subtle understanding of the power relations in
society and their reinforcement through social structures,
written rules and rituals, although ‘‘social agents obey
the rule when it is more in their interest to obey it than
to disobey it,’’ (as in the preface). In the case of Gretna,
as in many insolvency cases, there was a choice of which
rule to follow including the possibility of not following
the rules at all. This creates some interesting questions
concerning how the rules are set, how they are applied,
who can avoid them, and if there is a contest over which
rule to apply, which forms of capital (power) can be used
to win that battle.
The paper is structured as follows: ?rstly, we give a
brief explanation of the Bourdieusian theoretical concepts
which inform our understanding of the case. In this section
we set out a holistic exposition of these concepts which are
intimately related. The next section describes the litera-
ture’s application of Bourdieu’s work in so far as it relates
to battles for professional power by the accounting profes-
sion. This literature highlights the accounting profession’s
reliance on the state’s symbolic coercive functions. We
then turn to the Insolvency Act 1986, describing the ways
in which the Act served the interests of the state, through
its claims to be serving the public interest and in its project
of valorising the private over the state sector. Furthermore,
the Act served the interests of the accounting and legal
professions who have long been campaigning for state cre-
dentialisation of insolvency practitioners. The paper then
turns to the case study set within a contextualisation of
the ?eld of football. We then set out the written and
unwritten rules of the ?eld which are, on occasions, at odds
with the Insolvency Act. The case of Gretna’s administra-
tion is used as an illustration of the interaction of the ?elds
of football and insolvency to enable a better understanding
of power. Finally, the paper considers the application of the
Insolvency Act and the practice of IPs in the light of the
2
A 2010 survey of the top 60 UK accounting ?rms described insolvency
work as ‘‘the lifeblood of accountancy ?rms during a recession’’ (Fisher,
2010, p. 27).
3
Insolvency Practitioners earn in the region of £1bn per annum in fees
from corporate insolvency processes. IPs also participate in the £3bn
business restructuring market (Keynote ‘‘Market Report, 2009: Accoun-
tancy’’, p. 15). There were 1746 authorized IPs in the UK in 2010 although
only 1331 take formal appointments. This means that on average each IP
brings in £3m per year.
4
Soccer in the US.
5
This (Bosman) ruling will be discussed in greater detail later in the
paper.
6
Statement of Administrators’ Proposals (R2.25).
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 109
case as well as re?ecting upon some potential limitations
of Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective.
Bourdieu’s social cartography
This section brie?y maps out the contours of Bourdieu’s
intellectual landscape. Bourdieu’s theory is rich and uni?ed
and cannot be apprehended in ‘‘bits and pieces’’ (Bourdieu
& Wacquant, 1992, p. 4). Therefore, this section, while
setting out many of Bourdieu’s key terms, sets them in
relation to each other.
7
Habitus, indeterminacy and codi?cation
Bourdieu developed the notion of the habitus from his
‘‘desire to recall that beside the express, explicit norm, or
the rational calculation, there are other principles that gen-
erate practices. . . . to explain what people do, you have to
suppose that they obey a certain ‘feel for the game’’’ (Bour-
dieu, 1990b, p. 11). Our habitus has an in?nite capacity for
generating thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions
(Bourdieu, 1977, p. 72, 95) although these are limited by
the social conditions of their production since the habitus
is constructed upon the myriad of social categorizations
and structures (economic/gender/class/age/ethnicity) that
de?ne who we are, howwe think and how we act. The hab-
itus is constructed and reconstructed through our upbring-
ing, education and position in the ?elds which we inhabit
(Bourdieu, 1990b, pp. 11–12; Bourdieu & Wacquant,
1992, pp. 18–19, p. 126).
On ?elds, habitus is the incorporation of an actor’s posi-
tion on that ?eld as disposition. This means that a ?eld’s
hierarchical structures are embodied as habitus and conse-
quently are embodied as legitimate and so, in the main, go
unchallenged (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 81, 1990a, p. 146, 1998,
p. 47). Therefore, social structures are reproduced through
their internalisation, not primarily as normative values or
rules, but as a ‘feel for the game’, or an indeterminate logic
by which agents understand ‘what is to be done in a given
situation’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 57, 1998, p. 25; Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992, p. 18; Friedland, 2009, p. 889). Bourdieu’s
habitus presents an understanding of what people want,
what they realistically have a chance of getting and how
this can be achieved within their respective ?elds (Bour-
dieu, 1990a, pp. 54–57; Friedland, 2009, p. 914).
The Bourdieusian habitus sets out a position that actors
produce sensible and regular thoughts and practices with-
out any intention of behaving meaningfully and without
consciously obeying rules explicitly posed as such (Bour-
dieu, 1990b, p. 69). Bourdieu (1990b, p. 77, italics added)
argues that it is not possible to set out ‘‘the rules’’ of social
practice–
. . .. this tendency to act in a regular manner. . . is not
based on an explicit rule or law. This means that the
modes of behaviour created by the habitus do not have
the ?ne regularity of the modes of behaviour deduced
from a legislative principle: the habitus goes hand in
hand with vagueness and indeterminacy.
Social activity is overwhelmingly organized through
the undisputed, pre-re?exive, uncontested acceptance of
the daily lifeworld, which Bourdieu describes as doxa
(Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 68; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp.
73–74; Friedland, 2009, p. 889). Thus for Bourdieu, the major-
ity of social practice is unconscious. Self-aware representa-
tion accounts for only a small and variable fraction of
practice, and rules and explicit principles are only created
where dispositions fail to produce the practices required
by structure (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 50, 17–21, 33–38, 43–
52, 54; 1984, p. 480; Friedland, 2009, p. 889). Bourdieu
writes that indeterminacy cannot be relied upon in ‘‘criti-
cal, dangerous situations’’ (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 78). These
situations occur when there are signi?cant amounts of
capital(s) at stake. In these cases, ‘‘societies’’ tend to codify,
and the more ‘‘dangerous’’ the situation, the more it tends
to be codi?ed. One can see this with the increasing codi?-
cation of accounting and rule making during periods of
economic crisis. Codifying goes hand in glove with disci-
pline and the normalising of practices and is thus an oper-
ation of symbolic ordering which will be a site of intense
struggle (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 80). As we describe later, cod-
i?cation is most often the task of state bureaucracies which
set out formalised rules which necessarily include social
categorisations (for example, in the UK people are catego-
rised as married, single, divorced, in a civil partnership and
each social category is placed into a social hierarchy.)
Bourdieu stated that writing in formalised language is
an essential feature of codi?cation (Bourdieu, 1990b, p.
82). Formalisation is what enables you to go from logic
which is immersed in an individual case, to logic indepen-
dent of the individual case. Publication (especially in for-
malised language) is the act of of?cialisation par
excellence and serves as rati?cation: it transforms a prac-
tical pattern into a linguistic code of the juridical type.
8
While codi?cation represents an attempt to banish the
vagueness and indeterminacy of the logic of practice, Bour-
dieu does not believe that formal written laws produce uni-
formity, since even when things are ‘‘authenticated’’, they
are still subjected to dispute (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992,
pp. 80–84). Paradoxically, codi?cation and formalisation
present a space for getting round the rules of the game,
and are thus double games. This is the space for virtuosi –
excellent actors who with the right conditions have the
game ‘‘at their ?ngertips’’. Virtuosi are able to play the game
up to the limits, even to the point of transgression, while
managing to stay within the rules of the game (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992, p. 78). Indeed Bourdieu argues that if you
take logical control too far you see contradictions springing
up at every step (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 79).
In summary Bourdieu’s individuals operating through
their indeterminate and fuzzy logic both tend to see the
social world as natural and self-evident, and can instinc-
tively do what must be done. Explicit rules are developed
7
Malsch, Gendron, and Grazzini (2011) insist upon the importance of the
understanding of the relational aspects of Bourdieu’s work.
8
When the State names a profession by a written Act, it authenticates
and recognises that profession which means that it exists of?cially
(Ramirez, 2009).
110 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
when dispositions do not meet the requirements of the
structure or when situations arise in which the distribution
of capital becomes uncertain; a prime example being insol-
vency. When an insolvency practitioner arrives at a com-
pany it is uncertain how much capital there is to be
distributed and the best way to maximise the payout to
creditors. There are accordingly strict rules regarding the
priorities of administrators. However, there ‘‘is always
room for manoeuvre, for manipulation of meanings’’
(Friedland, 2009, p. 890) and so, as we describe in the case,
it is possible to manipulate the rules regarding creditor pri-
ority. When rules are written down, virtuosi will appear to
exploit the contradictions that will arise. In the next sec-
tion we will consider how agents endowed with their hab-
itus operate on ?elds in which the primary interest is the
accumulation of the requisite capitals and the maximisa-
tion of their returns. However, we enter ‘‘the game’’ on
any particular ?eld endowed, not only with our habitus,
but also with varying amounts of capitals.
Capitals, ?elds, and illusio
Several forms of capital (cultural, social, and economic)
dominate Bourdieu’s work
9
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p.
119). Each of these capitals becomes symbolic capital (vary-
ingly valued) when they are recognised through our catego-
ries of perception.
10
Bourdieu uses the analogy of playing
cards. He says that we have ‘‘trump cards, that is, master
cards whose force varies depending on the game: just as
the relative value of cards changes with each game, the hier-
archy of the different species of capital varies across differ-
ent ?elds. In other words, there are cards that are
ef?cacious in all ?elds but their relative value as trump cards
is determined by each ?eld and by the successive states of
the same ?eld’’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98). Bour-
dieu eventually used the terms power and capital inter-
changeably (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 97, 99). Actors
compete to establish monopoly over the species of capital
(forms of power) effective within the ?elds in which they
operate (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 17). No matter
how it appears, action is always interested (Bourdieu, 1977,
p. 65, 76; Friedland, 2009, p. 899). Bourdieu ‘‘wants to con-
vey the idea that people are motivated, driven by, torn from
a state of indifference and moved by the stimuli sent by cer-
tain ?elds and not others. For each ?eld ?lls the empty bottle
of interest with a different wine’’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant,
1992, p. 26). So for example, non academics might not
understand our passion for social theory, while some aca-
demics may not grasp the passions of participants in the
?eld of football. Bourdieu gives this example-
When you read, in Saint-Simon, about the quarrel of
hats (who should bow ?rst), if you were not born in
court society, if you do not possess the habitus of a
person of the court, if the structures of the game are
not also in your mind, the quarrel will seem futile and
ridiculous to you. If, on the other hand, your mind is
structured according to the structures of the world in
which you play, everything will seem obvious and the
question of knowing if the game is ‘‘worth the candle’’
will not even be asked. (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 77).
Knowing that the game is worth a candle is illusio. Bour-
dieu used the terms ‘‘illusio’’ and ‘‘interest’’ interchange-
ably. Akin to habitus, illusio must be understood in
relation to ?elds. The existence of a ?eld is ‘‘correlative
with the existence of speci?c stakes and interests: via the
inseparably economic and psychological investments that
they arouse in agents endowed with a certain habitus,
the ?eld and its stakes (themselves produced as such by
relations of power and struggle in order to transform the
power relations that are constitutive of the ?eld) produce
investments of time, money and work, etc.’’ (Bourdieu,
1990b, pp. 87–8). This means that interest is given by an
agent’s position in the distribution of economic, social
and cultural capitals effective in a particular ?eld and the
subject’s habitus which internalises the principles of rele-
vance and sense of the game given by that position (Fried-
land, 2009, p. 900).
Therefore, institutional ?elds are structures of posi-
tional power (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008), with their
own regulative principles and illusio. While ?elds are sites
of struggle, Bourdieu’s larger conception of society is as a
series of hierarchically positioned, semi-autonomous inter-
related ?elds with distinct structures (Buchanan, Davie,
Dezalay, & Trubek, 1994; Ramirez, 2001, p. 420; Emirbayer
& Johnson, 2008, p. 38) and there are battles too to main-
tain a ?eld’s hierarchical position vis-à-vis other ?elds.
Bourdieu describes these battles as taking place upon the
?eld of power.
The hierarchy of ?elds and the ?eld of power
The ?eld of power is a ‘‘?eld of struggles for power among
the holders of different forms of power.’’ (Bourdieu & Wac-
quant, 1992, p. 76, n 16). It is a ‘‘gaming space’’ (Friedland,
2009, p. 903) on which the social agents and institutions
which possess suf?cient quantities of the requisite capitals
(economic and cultural capital in particular), position
themselves in the dominant positions in their respective
?elds and confront one another in strategies aimed at
preserving or transforming this balance of forces.
The struggle in the ?eld of power is also sometimes over
the legitimate principle of legitimation and for the
legitimate mode of reproduction of the foundations of
domination. This can take the form of physical struggles
or symbolic confrontations (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992,
p. 76, n 16).
Friedland (2009) states that for Bourdieu, like Nietz-
sche, the locus of the most socially productive struggles
is not between the dominant class and the dominated
class. ‘‘Nietzsche understood value creation as a clash be-
tween rival wills to power between the dominants, not be-
tween them and ‘the herd’. Likewise for Bourdieu the
differences that make a difference are within the dominant
9
Cultural capital can exist in various forms for example, in the form of
cultural goods (for example in music, art and literature) or as cultural
competence becomes cultural capital. Social capital is concerned with our
social networks. Economic capital is ?nancial power. Bourdieu sometimes
refers to other capitals (academic, information, juridical, political, and so
on.)
10
This recognition is also a form of misrecognition.
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 111
class, over the relative ef?cacy of economic, educational,
cultural and social capitals’’ (Friedland, 2009, p. 891). Bour-
dieu’s studies on the historical genesis of the state saw its
constitution as a political victory of dominant groups
whose domination depended upon the construction of
the state and importantly, in the state’s role as a ‘‘reposi-
tory of common sense’’. (Bourdieu, 1990b, pp. 136–137,
1998, p. 58; Friedland, 2009, p. 903). Of particular interest
to participants in the ?eld of power is the State’s power to
construct and transfer symbolic capital. Bourdieu stated
that the construction of the modern State was coterminous
with the construction of a ?eld of power. In the next section
we consider the state especially with respect to its sym-
bolic powers.
The state
To Bourdieu, it is not possible to conceive of the state as
a well-de?ned, clearly bounded and unitary reality. It is, an
ensemble of administrative or bureaucratic ?elds (depart-
ments, bureaus, etc.) within which agents and categories
of agents, governmental and non-governmental, struggle
over the power to rule via legislation, regulations, adminis-
trative measures (subsidies, authorisations, restrictions,
etc.) (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 111). Nevertheless,
Bourdieu does use the generic term ‘‘state’’ when describ-
ing the activities of one or more of the state bureaucratic
?elds, a short-hand which we will follow, while recognis-
ing that different state ?elds will sometimes be in con?ict
with each other, and at other times form alliances.
Bourdieu has described the modern state as the organ-
isational expression of the concentration of symbolic
power, or as a trove of material and symbolic resources
which guarantee private appropriations (Bourdieu & Wac-
quant, 1992, p. 111, fn 64). ‘‘Private’’ agents and organisa-
tions, which are themselves in competition with one
another, work to orient ‘‘state’’ policy in each of their do-
mains of economic or cultural activity and they form coali-
tions and ties with other bureaucratic agents whose
preference for a given type of measure they share (Bour-
dieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 112–113). Bourdieu’s French
heritage may have enabled him to see clearly how this oc-
curred with the states’ constitution of professions in
France. Abbott (1988, p. 161), sets out an explanation of
how the ‘‘French state not only organises professions and
structures their jurisdictions, it also displays an endless
ability to create professional work. While other govern-
ments share this ability, France surpasses them in attach-
ing certi?ed programs directly to particular functions.’’
The semiological tradition of Bourdieu’s work enabled
himto understandthat one of the modernState’s mainfunc-
tions is to bring about a theoretical uni?cation through its
power to classify and distinguish (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 45).
11
The state’s codifying functionmay have beenclearer for Bour-
dieu since he initially was concerned with the French state
which has a strong tradition of classifying and coding (as in
the Le Plan Comptable). The State contributes to cultural fu-
sion by unifying all linguistic and juridical codes; through
classi?cation systems inscribed in law; through bureaucratic
procedures; and through educational structures and social
rituals. In part, the State’s power derives from its ability to
shape cognitive structures while at the same time imposing
common principles of vision and division (for example, le-
gal/illegal; solvent/insolvent; adult/child and so on) (Bour-
dieu, 1990b, p. 137). The State, which possesses the means
of imposition and inculcation of the durable principles of vi-
sion and division that conformto its own structure, is the site
par excellence of the concentration and exercise of symbolic
power (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 45–7).
Overall, the State operates a properly symbolic force
which allows force (symbolic and physical) to be fully exer-
cised while disguising its true nature through portraying it-
self as endowed with the intuitionof, and a will to, universal
interest and a rational instrument in realising the general
interest (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 38). Thus an important compo-
nent of state doxa is that it acts universally in the public
interest on the grounds of reason and/or morality. In a later
section, we consider the stances and strategies of Margaret
Thatcher’s Conservative cabinet in the UK, and the distribu-
tive possibilities offeredby granting symbolic (professional)
status and neo-juridical powers to insolvency practitioners
throughthe passingof the InsolvencyAct, 1986. Before turn-
ing to this, we reviewhowBourdieusiantheory is usedto in-
formthe accountingliterature payingparticular attentionto
the state’s conferment of ‘‘legitimate’’ power to the increas-
ingly commercialised accounting profession.
Bourdieusian insights in accounting
The theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu has been less
used in the accounting literature than other prominent so-
cial theorists (Malsch et al., 2011). Although accounting re-
search draws upon different aspects of Bourdieu’s
perspective (Malsch et al., 2011), the majority of papers
whichaddress the accounting profession’s struggles involve
an understanding of the importance of the state’s symbolic
and coercive functions.
12
Edwards and Walker (2010) note
that while the accumulation of cultural and social capital is
of particular signi?cance in the professionalisation project
of accountants, these alonemaynot guarantee vocational suc-
cess (see also Cooper & Robson, 2009). State sanctioned cre-
dentials generate symbolic capital on formal consecration
by the state (Bourdieu, 1989). Writing in the French context,
Ramirez (2001) saw the state as a central actor in gate-keep-
ing ‘‘professional closure’’ for the French accounting profes-
sion. To him, the accounting profession could not achieve
closure before World War II because of the state but instead
achieved it after the war also because of the (shifting) state.
11
Bourdieu (1988, p 778),’’Paired oppositions construct social reality. . ..
They de?ne the visible and the invisible, the thinkable and the unthinkable;
and like all social categories, they hide as much as they reveal and can
reveal only by hiding.’’ Bourdieu’s ‘‘binary’’ classi?cation/differentiation
schemes which privilege one term over another are akin to those outlined
by Derrida and Cixous (Arrington & Francis, 1989; Cixous & Clement, 1986;
Cooper, 1992; Derrida, 1978).
12
This is consistent with the majority of work which charts the
importance of the state in the development of accounting (Chua & Poullaos,
1993, 1998; de Beelde, 2002; Hao, 1999; Macdonald, 1995; Uche, 2002;
Walker, 1995; Willmott, 1986; Xu & Xu, 2003; Jayasinghe & Wickramasin-
ghe, 2011),
112 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
State symbolic functions were recognised too by Power’s
(1997) work on the struggle by accountants to establish a
monopoly position on the environmental auditing ?eld.
The state can also bring about changes to accounting
practice. Ezzamel, Zezhong Xiao, and Pan (2007) empha-
sises the discursive characteristics of the changes in
accounting regulation brought about by changes in Chi-
nese state political ideology. Political discourses under
Mao and Deng provided the conditions of possibility for
certain accounting conceptions to operate as discourses
of authority armed with political and state power. This pa-
per stresses the importance of the state and discursive
(symbolic) changes. Xu and Xu (2008) analyse an initiative
by the Shanghai Bankers Association to standardise Chi-
nese bank accounting classi?cation and terminology in
1920. A decisive step in this initiative was made with the
intervention of the state, which contributed to legitimate
the capital certain actors possessed. Suddaby et al. (2007)
emphasise the importance of the nation state in an increas-
ingly globalised world by examining the role of large
accounting ?rms in the emergence of a transnational regu-
latory ?eld in professional services. They found that trans-
national governance structures do not threaten the
existence of either nation states or professional associa-
tions; rather they are reliant on the coercive authority of
the state.
A number of accounting research papers have deployed
Bourdieu’s approach to organisational ?elds (e.g., Archel,
Husillos, & Spence, 2011; Kurunmaki, 1999; Neu, Ocampo
Gomez, Graham, & Heincke, 2006; Ramirez, 2001; Suddaby
et al., 2007). Bourdieu’s theory of ?elds which rests neither
on the rationality of individuals nor structuralist logic
‘‘saves us from the theoretical vacuum of positivist empir-
icismand fromthe empirical void of theoreticist discourse’’
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 110) and is thus a promis-
ing theoretical tool for accounting researchers. Ramirez
(2001) makes the important point that the construction
(and the maintenance of ?elds) is also the result of ‘‘the
relations’’ between a ?eld and other ?elds. Accountants’
failure to institutionalise the accounting profession in
France before the Second World War was in part due to
their inability to solidify hierarchies internal to the profes-
sional ?eld and also because of the unfavourable insertion
of this ?eld in the overall hierarchy of social ?elds in rela-
tion to the state. French accountants lacked the network of
connections with the State and with the academic ?eld
which legitimated French professional power.
Overall, the Bourdieusian insights into the struggles of
the accounting profession involve an understanding of
the importance of the state’s symbolic and coercive func-
tions alongside the importance of the relative positioning
of ?elds. The academic accounting literature while broad
in its application of Bourdieu’s theories has, aside from
Oakes, Townley, and Cooper (1998) tended to neglect
two elements of Bourdieu’s oeuvre – the ?eld of power
and the importance of written rules and the spaces which
they provide for virtuosi.
13
In the following section and the
case study we draw upon the holistic work of Bourdieu
which incorporates these two neglected aspects while also
leaning upon Bourdieu’s later work which in effect saw a
fundamental ?ssure in the political ?eld under neoliberal-
ism. Bourdieu stated that the neoliberal political ?eld looks
after its own interests rather than those of the people it
claimed to represent (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 55ff). In this later
work Bourdieu was concerned that neoliberalism had be-
come doxic; the necessity for ‘‘economic liberalisation’’
was established as an absolute fact across the entire social
space from the practices and perceptions of individuals to
the practices and perceptions of the state and social groups.
It was within this doxic regime that the Insolvency Act 1986
came into being.
The Insolvency Act, 1986
Contests in the ?eld of power for state sanctioned sym-
bolic capital (legitimation of insolvency practitioners) have
a long history going at least as far back as the Bankruptcy
Act 1883. The government in passing the 1883 Act left the
position of the of?cial receiver open for debate (Walker,
2004). As Walker (2004, p. 258) documents, accountants
had to compete not only with solicitors but also with
chemists, drapers, town clerks, bank managers, law union
clerks and surveyors of taxes. Thus the ?eld of insolvency
has had a long history in terms of battles and occasionally
collaboration between accountants and lawyers over juris-
dictional boundaries (Abbott, 1988; Armstrong, 1987;
Walker, 2004) and to enhance the prospects of Scottish
professional accountants (Bryer, 1993; Walker, 1995).
However, until the Insolvency Act 1986, most insolvency
powers lay with the state through the Of?cial Receivers
and the Insolvency Service, which were housed in the
Department for Trade and Industry (DTI)
14
(Cousins, Mitch-
ell, Sikka, Cooper, & Arnold, 2000). The Insolvency Act effec-
tively created a private monopoly of insolvency
practitioners, who, as we will see, had signi?cant juridical
powers. In practical terms, the privatisation of insolvency
work may be viewed as part of a process in which political
action was increasingly slipping into the control of privi-
leged actors with a shift towards the promotion of the self
as an economic agent (Stein, 2008).
Bourdieu wrote that state bureaucracies and their rep-
resentatives are great producers of social problems and
that it is in the realm of symbolic production that the grip
of the state is felt most powerfully (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 38).
During the Thatcher Administration, the ‘‘social problems’’
concerning insolvency surrounded the problems created
by ‘phoenix’ companies to consumers and the lack of a
‘‘business friendly rescue culture’’ (Halliday & Carruthers,
1996). A ‘phoenix’ company is a new company which is
typically formed after a debt ridden company is wound
up (eliminating its liabilities). The new (phoenix) company
looks almost identical to the old company, carries on with
similar trading activities, and quite often has the same
staff. In the early 1980s, in part due to the preponderance
of phoenix companies, the ?eld of insolvency was
13
Hamilton and Ó hÓgartaigh (2009, p. 914) also consider that it ‘‘is in
reaction to the non-routine and the non-rule that Bourdieu’s social agents
?nd their virtuosic tendencies.’’
14
Now the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 113
portrayed in the popular media as being particularly
‘‘dirty’’. For the British public, popular consumer pro-
grammes of the day, like ‘‘That’s Life
15
’’, frequently high-
lighted the problems with rogue plumbers, builders and so
on (Aris, 1986; Halliday & Carruthers, 1996), who damaged
peoples’ properties and avoided any legal redress by closing
one company only for an equally disreputable phoenix com-
pany to rise from the ashes of the closed company. This
‘‘unacceptable’’ face of capitalism would serve to hamper
the Conservatives’ project of valorising the market over the
State, not least in its strategy, robustly supported by the eco-
nomic ?eld, of transferring public services into the economic
?eld. The transfer required a ‘‘binary-categorisation’’ change
in the UK. Halliday and Carruthers (1996) note that in order
to categorise the private sector as being more ef?cient, and
to distinguish state activities as being more prone to failure
than market ones, (Crouch, 2004; Gamble, 1988; Heelas &
Morris, 1992), economies should be emancipated from state
regulation and the state should be withdrawn from provid-
ing many services (Gamble, 1994; Joseph, 1976). The State
had to begin by (appearing to at least) ‘‘clean-up’’ the more
‘‘dirty’’ aspects of the market.
The economic ?eld was still suffering from the shock of
the OPEC doubling of the price of oil between 1978 and
1980, and the number of bankruptcies had doubled since
the Thatcher government had come to power in 1979
(Dean, 1984). The economic ?eld was consequently
demanding a more business friendly rescue culture in the
UK. From a Bourdieusian perspective, codi?cation through
legislation was a doxic response during times of economic
crisis in which the dispositions of those state actors dealing
with insolvency failed to meet the needs of the economic
structure and where signi?cant amounts of capital were
at stake.
The ‘‘social problem’’ of insolvency was used by the
Thatcher Administration in its moral battle over ideas
about the market. The left argued that the State was mor-
ally superior to the market since the private sector had a
‘‘dirty’’ pro?t motive. The Government had to overturn this
categorisation and the previous Labour Administration’s
Cork Committee (1982)
16
on insolvency law and practice
contained some recommendations which would be useful
in this respect (Cork & Barty-King, 1988). The Cork Report
pursued the idea that insolvency laws were the means by
which the demands of commercial morality can be met
(para 235) and set out plans to expose and sanction reckless
and criminal directors. In the Cork Report, director behav-
iour was categorised according to ‘‘moral’’ criteria partly
through the concept of wrongful trading. Cork also developed
the concept of director disquali?cation. This was oriented to-
wards the ‘‘worst’’ moral categories of reckless, incompetent
and fraudulent directors. The Cork Report, albeit with some
signi?cant changes, was adopted as a blueprint for the
Insolvency Bill enabling the government to formally redraw
the perimeters of market morality, and to classify behaviour
internal to the market in terms of a set of oppositions –
pro?ciency/incompetence, risk-taking/recklessness, pro-
bity/dishonesty – each of which warranted appropriately
tailored regulatory mechanisms (Halliday & Carruthers,
1996). The consequent Act served two moral symbolic func-
tions. It reinforced the statist claim of acting in the public
interest and it enabled the state to reclassify the private sec-
tor as ‘‘clean and ef?cient’’.
The juridical powers handed to IPs by the Act were sig-
ni?cant. They decide whether a business will be rescued or
broken up and its assets sold piecemeal, whether jobs will
be lost or saved (Flood, Abbey, Skordaki, & Aber, 1995;
Flood & Skordaki, 1995), whether to dismiss company
directors and sell an insolvent party’s house and personal
possessions (Armstrong, 2005; Cousins et al., 2000). They
also decide whether directors have traded unlawfully.
17
Oakes et al. (1998) note that the contest over control of
legitimate violence is the ‘struggle to accumulate symbolic
capital’ (see also Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 40, 60–61, 1989, p.
136). Insolvency powers could be characterised as a form
of state legitimated ‘‘commercial private ordering.’’ Private
ordering is the coming together of non-governmental parties
as a central institutional form of law making and law apply-
ing. Schwarcz (2002) states that the sharing of regulatory
authority with private actors (‘‘private ordering’’) has a
lengthy historical precedent. In recent years, though, private
ordering has been rapidly expanding in scope throughout
the world particularly in the commercial, ?nancial and busi-
ness sector.
Given that private (as opposed to state) insolvency prac-
titioners would be handed control over signi?cant legiti-
mate violence one might have imagined that there would
have been a battle over this aspect of the bill. The Nietzs-
chian frame of Bourdieu’s work suggests that the most so-
cially productive struggles come over the struggles
between the dominants and the outcome of the Act was
a compromise between the dominant actors. The dominant
actors in this case were from the ?elds of accounting, law,
economics and the state. The Cork Committee Report, on
which much of the Bill was based, was chaired by Sir Ken-
neth Cork, an accountant at the top of the insolvency ?eld
and staffed by the leaders in the ?eld of insolvency (Cork &
Barty-King, 1988). Accountants through their Insolvency
Practitioners Association
18
had been campaigning for state
sanctioned symbolic capital which would ensure their
monopoly position. The compromise over the battle for
stronger legitimation and the privatisation of insolvency
was that the new insolvency profession would be comprised
of the extant dominant actors in the ?eld which would form
the Recognised Professional Bodies (RPBs) of the new ?eld of
insolvency. The inclusion of lawyers and accountants served
to prevent any potential interprofessional battles (Abbott,
1988) and can be seen as an excellent example of what
Abbott (1995) describes as ‘‘yoking’’. Yoking is the main
form used to create a profession when a social space is
15
‘‘That’s life’’ was a consumer programme which ran for over 20 years on
the BBC.
16
Report of the Review Committee on Insolvency Law and Practice (1982)
Cmnd 8558.
17
Through an established legitimacy in de?ning and solving insolvency
problems, the practitioners are able to justify their economic return (Power,
1992).
18
The IPA was formed in 1961 as a discussion group of accountants
specialising in insolvency (http://www.insolvency-practitioners.org.uk/
page.aspx?pageID=27 accessed 7/9/12).
114 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
already ?lled with entities, and when division of a social
space with entities is already established and
institutionalised in some way. RPBs included three pre-
existing accounting bodies,
19
two pre-existing lawyers’
bodies and the Insolvency Practitioners’ Association. The
seventh addition to the new profession, was the Govern-
ment’s own Department of Trade and Industry, thereby
ensuring that the State kept a hand in the formulation of
regulatory mechanisms (Halliday & Carruthers, 1996, p.
404). While there are multiple RPBs, as set out in the intro-
duction, accountants are the dominant profession in the
?eld.
Controversy arose over the ‘‘morality’’ aspects of the bill
which involved the proposal that insolvent directors be
automatically disquali?ed from practice (Halliday & Carru-
thers, 1996). At this stage, it was possible to see different
state bureaucratic ?elds at play. The automatic disquali?-
cation clause in the bill was defeated in the House of Lords.
Many members of the House of Lords would have been
non-executive directors. Their incomes would have been
decimated if they happened to serve on the board of a com-
pany which had carried on trading when it had known or
should have known that it was insolvent and therefore
deemed to be ‘wrongfully trading’. Lords ?nding them-
selves in such a situation could have been disquali?ed from
holding any future or current directorships if the liquidator
submitted a damning report to the DTI and liquidators
could have also brought an action for repayment of credi-
tors out of the directors’ personal funds. The government
had a suf?cient majority to push the bill through in its en-
tirety but Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet chose not to. Thus
the Thatcher government appeared to be sanctioning auto-
matic miscreant director disquali?cation and addressing
popular concerns even though this clause did not pass into
law (Halliday & Carruthers, 1996). The ‘‘phoenix provi-
sions’’ of the Act were reduced to the feeble sections 216
and 217 which ‘‘prohibit a director of a company that has
entered insolvent liquidation from being involved, for the
next 5 years, in the management of a company using the
same name as the insolvent company or a name so similar
as to suggest an association with it’’ (Finch, 2009, p. 703).
The original Cork proposals designed to deal with ‘‘immor-
al’’ directors form part of the Act. Nevertheless, the Act re-
mained intimately connected to the Thatcherite project. In
the next section we consider how the ?eld has developed
since the passing of the Act.
The UK ?eld of insolvency in the 21st century
Insolvency in the UK in the 21st century has developed
into a fully ?edged ?eld which prescribes its own particu-
lar values and possesses its own regulative principles.
These principles delimit a ‘‘a space of play which exists as
such only to the extent that players enter into it who be-
lieve in and actively pursue the prizes it offers’’ (Bourdieu
& Wacquant, 1992, p. 19). Akin to the ?eld of accounting
(Cooper & Robson, 2009) in which the senior partners of
the large accounting ?rms play a key role in the gover-
nance and development of professional associations, the
main formal written standards for IPs are set jointly by
the Insolvency Service (IS)
20
and the Joint Insolvency Com-
mittee (JIC) on which the RPBs are represented. Overall, the
regulatory regime is problematic with too many overlapping
organisations that regulate IPs.
The insolvency ?eld occupies a space which is domi-
nated by banks. Most banks have a panel of 12–15 IP ?rms
and in insolvency cases where indebtedness to a bank ex-
ceeds £200,000 the majority of banks will select an IP from
their panels. Panel ?rms range from the Big Four to smaller
specialised practices. Although formally the IP is appointed
by company directors, secured creditors (in the main
banks) can veto this choice, and, in most cases, where there
are secured creditors, they chose the IP and agree the fee
scale.
21
However, banks will not always insist on a panel
IP appointment where the directors’ appointed IP is from
what is considered to be a ‘‘reputable ?rm’’. The dominance
of banks over the ?eld has implications for the capitals
which are at stake on the ?eld. IP fees are paid before the lia-
bilities of secured creditors (and preferred creditors). This
means that well-resourced secured creditors like banks will
be concerned that their IPs maximise the amount of revenue
from the administration and minimise the fees which they
charge. Once the secured creditors have been paid, they will
cease to closely monitor IP’s activities. Unsecured creditors,
a heterogeneous group, ranging from large repeat creditors
(like HMRC, the State’s tax collecting body), to small naïve
creditors (mainly trade creditors and employees), who are
unable to exert control, can be harmed. Obstacles are in
place, even to large unsecured creditors with good knowl-
edge of the procedures, to prevent them exerting in?uence
over the process effectively.
22
This is particularly important
when considering the IP decision whether to liquidate a
company immediately or to allow it to continue trading in
order to try to rescue it as a going concern.
The Insolvency Act, 1986 sets out the purposes of
administration in order of priority—
1. Rescuing the company as a going concern.
2. Achieving a better result for the company’s creditors as
a whole than would be likely if the company were
wound up (without ?rst being in Administration), and
19
As in the past, by appearing to provide a solution to a problem within
the ‘‘global function of capital’’ (Armstrong, 1987, p. 420), the pre-existing
accounting profession were ready to expand their jurisdictional boundary.
20
The Insolvency Service is an executive agency of the UK’s Department
of Business Innovation and Skills.
21
Of?ce of Fair Trading (2010) found that ‘‘One bank told us it believed
panel rates were 33 per cent lower than normal hourly rates charged by IP
?rms.’’ (p. 39).
22
For example, a creditor that considers the amount paid to the IP to be
too high can apply to the court for an order that the IP’s fees be reduced if
this has the support of 10% by value of unsecured creditors. However,
unless the court orders otherwise, the costs must be paid by the applicant
and not as an expense of the Administration whereas the costs of an IP that
comes to court to have her remuneration assessed are normally allowable
out of the assets. The rules in Scotland are different but not much better.
Where there is no creditors committee, IPs’ fees are subject to approval by
the court which appoints a court reporter to assess the fees. Court reporters
are IPs and it is extremely rare for fee recommendations are not accepted.
And, Rule 2.33(5) of Insolvency Rules (1986) state that the Administrators
may dispense with creditors’ meetings if they believe that a company has
insuf?cient assets for a payout to be made to unsecured creditors.
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 115
3. Realising property in order to make a distribution to
one or more secured or preferential creditors.
Although it might be possible to query their evidence
base, The Of?ce of Fair Trading (2010)
23
was concerned that
the power of secured creditors (like banks and other ?nan-
cial institutions) means that they can exert pressure to en-
sure that, in the above list, purpose three takes precedence
over purpose one. In practice the various parties pursue their
own economic interests, for example, banks will police IPs
until their debts are repaid and IPs may decide that a com-
pany should be ‘‘rescued’’ in order to prolong the period over
which they can claim fees. But for IPs there is more at stake
than economic capital. With the dominance of banks and the
need for social connections to attract lucrative fee income,
IPs will develop the requisite capitals to gratify ongoing
and potential paymasters and while acting as IPs will be cog-
nisant of the need to act in a way which will give them the
reputation to attract new clients.
Insolvency is an individualised ?eld. Individual IPs will
be concerned to develop connections since their individual
reputations are at stake. For example, PKF is a large UK
accounting ?rm which has a speci?c expertise in football
insolvency. Its head of Corporate Recovery and Insolvency
practice, Trevor Birch, once played professional football.
24
After he retired from professional football, Birch specialised
in insolvency and took on several high pro?le jobs in football
clubs which were ?nancially distressed. Most notably, he
became chief executive of internationally renowned Chelsea
Football Club in 2002 when Chelsea had debts of £80m and
helped to broker Roman Abramovich’s takeover in 2003.
Birch undertook other quasi-restructuring roles in the foot-
ball industry, and served as chief executive of other promi-
nent English football clubs.
25
Birch’s ‘‘feel for the game’’ in
the ?eld of football would enable him to understand and
serve the needs of the dominant actors in the ?eld providing
PKF with a unique, potentially lucrative, market niche.
The challenge for IPs is that they have to apply a gener-
alised/formalised rule to particular cases (Millie, 2011). It
is at this point that insolvency practitioners apply an inter-
ested fuzzy logic (Osborn, 1999), where there is a potential
for virtuosi to appear and for battles over the activities of
IPs. In the following case study, we consider a speci?c case
of IP praxis in a ?eld which has very different motivations
from the economic ?eld and contrary written (and unwrit-
ten) rules – the ?eld of football. We analyse IPs’ practice
when their activities threatened to disrupt and diminish
the ?eld of Scottish football when Gretna Football Club
(Gretna) went into administration. This presents the
opportunity to examine the work of insolvency practitio-
ners and their interactions with another complex ?eld.
The ?eld of football and Gretna FC’s administration
Research method
The case study presented in this paper is that of the
administration of Gretna. Multiple data-collection tech-
niques were employed including interviews, document
analysis and observation. Interviews were conducted with
the key actors in the ?elds of insolvency and football who
were affected by or directly involved with the administra-
tion, alongside other experts in these ?elds. The only key
individual who we were unable to interview was Brooks
Mileson, the owner of Gretna FC, who passed away on
3rd November 2008.
26
Interviews were semi-structured to
enable participants to discuss the issues freely, whilst still
centred around the core research issues (the written and
unwritten rules, the logic which was applied to them, and
the capitals which were employed by the key actors). By
ensuring the full range of ?eld participants were inter-
viewed, a rich perspective on the insolvency was developed.
Interviews lasted between 1 and 2 h and all except one
27
were recorded. The interviews were analysed with the
intention of ‘‘?lling gaps,’’ clarifying and con?rming the
case; and to understand the actors’ positions, interests and
capitals within their ?elds. The habitus of the participants
cannot be directly observed in empirical research. It has to
be apprehended interpretatively (Reay, 2010).
We started our interviews with two experts; a char-
tered accountant, who is also a specialist in football ?nance
and provides advice to the Scottish Football Association,
and a leading academic in the ?eld of football to con?rm
our understanding of the rules of the ?elds, how they have
been applied and whether or not there were issues which
we had not considered. We then interviewed an insolvency
practitioner who had handled three Scottish football club
insolvencies and had an excellent knowledge of insolvency
law and the rules of the ?eld of football. We then turned to
the key constituents – one of the Gretna IPs (David Elliot
from Wilson Field), the Scottish Premier League (SPL) (Ian
Blair, the Operations Director and Company Secretary,
and an SPL club owner), the players (Fraser Wishart, a for-
mer SPL player and now head of the Scottish players’ union
and two SPL footballers) and the fans (Craig Williamson,
the Chairman of the Gretna Supporters’ Trust).
Documents were also collected and analysed. These in-
cluded the publicly available annual reports of the SPL Ltd
and all SPL and Scottish ?rst division clubs alongside all the
documents lodged at Companies House relating to the
administration. As discussed later, this ?nancial informa-
tion was used to understand the ?nancial structure of the
?eld of football. The written rules (such as the Articles of
Association and the Memorandum of Association) of the
23
The Of?ce of Fair Trading is a non-ministerial government department
established in 1973. It acts as the UK’s consumer and competition authority
and its stated mission is to make markets work well for consumers.
24
In the ?eld of football, Birch has the distinction of being the last player
to be signed by Bill Shankley at Liverpool fc.
25http://www.pkf.co.uk/pkf/people/pshr-8lmjql/trevor_birch&cate-
gory=About%20us&subcategory=Our%20people&gobackto=6 (accessed
19th August 2012)
26
The press portrayed Mileson as an intriguing character. In 2005, a
football pundit reportedly asked Mileson what would make him die happy.
He is reported as replying ‘‘What would make me really proud is to see
Rowan (the then manager of Gretna) take us to the Premier League, but most
of all I’d like to see him lead the team out in the Scottish Cup ?nal at
Hampden and me standing in the crowd with most of the supporters’’
(Campbell, 2007, p. 13). Gretna achieved both of these.
27
This interview was by telephone.
116 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
SPL, Scottish Football Association (SFA), Scottish Football
League (SFL), Premier League, Football Association and
Football league were also analysed to understand the
?eld’s written rules on insolvency. We also drew from
archival sources including newspaper archives tracing
Gretna’s case as well as the law reports of other insolvent
football clubs. This enabled an understanding of the appli-
cation of the written rules of insolvency and the interests
of the key actors. Finally we attended the board rooms of
two different SPL clubs on various match days. This al-
lowed for ?rst hand observation of some of the most in?u-
ential actors in the ?eld and the social networking
opportunities which attendance at matches presents.
In order to provide a social and historical context for our
analysis we next set out a brief history of the ?eld of foot-
ball paying particular attention to the rule-makers and
their power, the capitals which dominate the ?eld and its
illusio which mean that insolvency plays an important part
of the disciplining of the ?eld, before turning in particular
to the Scottish ?eld and the interaction between the ?elds
of football and insolvency.
The ?eld of football – Brief history
During the 19th century, football was a popular sport in
English private schools, although the different football
rules in each school meant that they were unable to com-
pete with each other (Gibbons, 2002). In 1863 the Football
Association (FA) was established to create a single unifying
code for football. This normalisation and codi?cation of the
modern game can be set within the context of the growth
of the new industrial order in the 19th century (Glib,
1966). The FA was made up of a group of men from the
upper echelons of British society with their speci?c habi-
tus: ‘‘Men of prejudice, seeing themselves as patricians,
heirs to the doctrine of leadership and so law-givers by
at least semi-divine right’’ (Young, 1969). In Bourdieu’s
terms, the football elite’s habitus functioned (as it does in
the present day) to make their self-perceptions seem natu-
rally superior. The rules set out by the Football Association
were contested. Most signi?cant was a dispute over play-
ers’ wages which heralded the professionalisation of the
?eld, changing it from a game played exclusively in private
schools. The decision to pay players increased clubs’ costs.
It was therefore necessary to raise money by arranging
more matches that could be played in front of large
crowds. In 1888, William McGregor circulated a letter to
several large clubs suggesting that ‘‘ten or twelve of the
most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange
home and away ?xtures each season.’’ The following
month the Football League (FL) was formed. The creation
of the FA and the FL would, in time, institute the ‘‘?eld of
football’’ both in things and in minds, thus conferring upon
the cultural arbitrary all the appearances of the natural.
28
The genesis of Scottish football followed a similar pat-
tern. Queen’s Park, a Glasgow club founded in 1867, took
the lead, and following an advertisement in a Glasgow
newspaper, representatives from seven clubs attended a
meeting in 1873 to form the Scottish Football Association.
The game spread throughout the world and in 1904, the
Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)
was formed to oversee international ?xtures. FIFA has be-
come the world’s controlling body of football. More re-
cently, six confederations which supervise the game in
the different continents and regions of the world have been
created. To this day, the ?eld mainly polices itself and is
hostile to interference by bodies outside of football. For
example, the confederation in charge (UEFA) of European
football’s Articles 61–63 (which deal with its legal appeals’
process) state that football clubs who wish to appeal UEFA
decisions should not appeal to ‘‘ordinary’’ (non football/
sport) courts.
Aside from their power over national associations and
individual clubs, FIFA and UEFA hold signi?cant powers
over the players and their contracts. Prior to 1995, a FIFA
rule, which applied to all football players, stated that play-
ers must sign ?xed-term contracts to play with one foot-
ball club. However, under this rule, a player could not
leave without the agreement of their club, even at the end
of their contract. While, FIFA has signi?cant power over
member clubs and national associations, this rule was
challenged by an individual footballer, Jean-Marc Bosman,
in the European High Court. Bosman’s contract with RFC
Liege (in Belgium) had expired and he wanted to move to
a French club, Dunkerque. RFC Liege sought a large transfer
fee for Bosman which Dunkerque refused to pay, so RFC
Liege refused to allow Bosman’s move and reduced his
wages. The Court held that the FIFA rules were in breach
of EU law. Bosman won his case. Since the Bosman ruling,
players have been free to leave their clubs as soon as their
contracts have expired. Players with perceived high cul-
tural capital can demand huge wage increases for extend-
ing their contracts now and out of contract players moving
clubs can demand signing-on fees and higher salaries. To
prevent their best players leaving, clubs began signing
them to long-term and expensive contracts, increasing
clubs’ ?xed-costs. In our interviews with professional play-
ers it was clear that their habitus was a belief in their own
ability as well as an acceptance of the rules of the ?eld
which values their football skills.
The governing bodies of football derive their economic
power from their control of lucrative international compe-
titions which attract television and sponsorship revenues.
FIFA controls the World Cup while UEFA controls highly
pro?table competitions including the Champions’ League
and the UEFA Europa League in which 32 and 48 teams
participate respectively. Depending on their success, teams
competing in the Champions’ League received between
€7.2m and €51.0m in the 2010/2011 competition.
29
The
minimum amount participants in the Europa League would
have been paid was €1.0m.
30
To put this into perspective,
in the year of our case study the combined revenue of every
Scottish Premier League club was £175m. Only a few elite
clubs from the dominant European football nations are
28
The FA Cup and the Football League survive until the present day.
29http://www. uefa. com/uefa/management/?nance/news/new-
sid=1528290.html (accessed 17/9/12).
30http://www. uefa. com/uefa/management/?nance/news/new-
sid=1840941.html (accessed 17/9/12).
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 117
allowed entry into the Champions’ or Europa Leagues. Clubs
from smaller footballing nations (like Scotland) are typically
awarded the opportunity to compete in UEFA competitions
through qualifying rounds (worth €2.1m for each club in
the case of the Champions’ League). In effect, entry into
international competition rewards the participants with
the opportunity to earn signi?cant extra revenues unavail-
able to their national competitor clubs and has a distorting
impact on national ?elds. In the ?eld of football additional
revenue is used to maintain and enhance positions through
the acquisition of players and coaches (cultural capital). This
and other more unique aspects of the ?eld will be discussed
next.
The capitals and illusio of the ?eld of football
A key feature of the ?eld of football is the speci?c cap-
itals (a distinctive combination of economic and cultural
capital/football ability) required in order to reach the top
of the ?eld. The ‘‘trump card’’ in the ?eld of football is cul-
tural capital (football skill) and its importance is re?ected
in the increasingly large amount of the economic pro?ts
which those with the requisite cultural capital (notably
players and managers/coaches) can take from the ?eld. In
Bourdieusian terms, this is the logic of practice in the ?eld
which values winning over economic pro?ts. However eco-
nomic capital is essential to winning since there is a corre-
lation between investment (buying expensive players and
managers/coaches and keeping them by paying higher
wages) and success (Hall, Szymanski, & Zimbalist, 2002;
Szymanski & Smith, 1997). Carlsson (2009) makes the
point that conventional economic theory will not ?t the lo-
gic of the sports business and that there are otherwise suc-
cessful businessmen in the ?eld who have profoundly
failed in controlling the solvency of their clubs. Some clubs
pay more than 100% of their revenues as salaries
31
(Kuper,
2010).
A second distinctive feature of the ?eld of football is the
fans. The Bourdieusian concepts of illusio and habitus are
clearly discernable in the case of football fans. Football fans
are not like ‘‘customers’’ of other businesses in the sense
that their habitus dictates that they cannot move their
‘‘business’’ to a competitor. Fans are more likely to stop
watching the game altogether than to support another club
(Whelan, 1996). Although, possessing various amounts of
different capitals and inhabiting various positions in other
?elds (Kuper and Symanski, 2009), the fans share a com-
mon illusio which is well documented in Football Passions
(Social Issues Research Centre Report, 2008).
32
Re?ecting
Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective, the report states that to
be a ‘‘true fan’’ requires the ‘‘living’’ experience of football
– it is about being a participant (p 4). Garrigou (2006, p.
667) argues that-
For some people standing outside a game, not involved
in its proceedings and/or unfamiliar with its rules and
customs, sport can be incomprehensible. This might
be described as a complete absence of illusio, and in
such a situation the game, and participants’ and specta-
tors’ enthusiasm for it, looks quite odd. People who do
not understand or who do not like football, for example,
may describe it as just 22 people ?ghting over a pig’s
bladder (the ball)!
The Football Passions report details the extreme emo-
tions of fans. The psychological distress of relegated
33
teams’ fans has been likened to post traumatic stress syn-
drome (Banyard & Shevlin, 2001). This can be understood
through Bourdieu’s idea of an embodied habitus: those out-
side of the ?eld can totally fail to understand the physical
reactions of fans to winning and the frequently heated de-
bates over all aspects of the game. Yet football ?lls countless
pages in the press and is subject to hours of debate on the
TV, the radio and in homes and bars throughout the world.
Such dialogue is doxic in the sense that its importance goes
without saying.
The cultural importance of football, the amount of med-
ia coverage it attracts and the passion of its fans, has made
it a valued cultural form. It has thus attracted billionaires,
some of whom invest in the ?eld as a cultural artefact. One
of the merits of Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective is that
Bourdieu sets out an explanation of how his various capi-
tals can be transformed into one another. Bourdieu theor-
ised that under conditions of late modernity, culture,
credentialed and consumed, becomes the basis of symbolic
power (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 250). In the case of football
clubs, economic capital is transformed into cultural capital
(on acquisition of a club) and thence into symbolic capital.
Thus the acquisition of a football club will confer honour
and status upon the owner.
34
Bourdieu (1977, p. 181–2)
developed an understanding that this form of symbolic cap-
ital is always ‘‘credit’’ which only the group can grant. Fans
can withdraw this credit from an unpopular owner and sym-
bolic pro?ts will diminish if the club does not perform well.
This may help explain why some billionaire owners spend
signi?cant amounts of money on their clubs. Tellingly Bour-
dieu states that the exhibition of symbolic capital is always
very expensive in economic terms. Actors will invest in foot-
ball clubs without the direct expectation of economic re-
wards. However, the symbolic capital (honour and status)
of football clubs can be transferred to social capital (through
the directors’ lounges and corporate hospitality on match
days), and to the symbolic re?ection of their club and so
potentially to economic pro?ts. Paradoxically, if fans are
unhappy with what happens with the ownership of their
31
For an in-depth discussion of the effects of the illusio of the ?eld on
football ?nances see Cooper and Johnston (2012). In the 2008/09 season,
the English Premier League’s wages/revenue ratio increased to 67%
(Deloitte., 2010, p. 7).
32
The research carried out for this report involved 18 countries in Europe,
reinforced by ?eld work in six of the countries (Britain, France, Germany,
Italy, Netherlands and Spain) which involved observation, recordings of
heart rates at matches, interviews and in-depth discussions with fans. A
pan-European poll of 2000 fans was also conducted.
33
An explanation of ‘‘relegation’’ can be found later in the section on ‘‘The
Scottish Field’’.
34
In our analysis of the potential symbolic pro?ts accruing to the ?eld of
football we are adopting a different temporal/cultural perspective to that of
Bourdieu’s (1984) on the French ?eld of football. The cultural origins of
football in England are rather different from France; as set out earlier,
originally football was embraced by ‘‘anglophile segments of the upper
class.’’ (Guttman 1994; Kooistra, 2005; Lever, 1995; Walvin, 1975, 2001).
118 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
club, they have very little power to do anything about it and,
as explained earlier, will in all likelihood remain in the ?eld.
The habitus of individual fans can therefore be exploited by
the owners of clubs.
The convergence of the correlation between spending
on footballing skill and success, football’s position in the
social space as a valuable cultural good and the illusio of
the fans have given insolvency an important place in the
?eld of football. There is signi?cant pressure on the owners
of football clubs to overspend (by buying highly skilled but
expensive players) to enhance their position. If clubs over-
spend, then without rules which punish then for doing so,
they would be able to go into administration, shed their
debts and then start again. This could be a way for clubs
to gain an unfair competitive advantage. For example, it
would be possible for ‘‘Phoenix club’’ to win a match
against ‘‘non-Phoenix club’’ by ?elding highly skilled play-
ers acquired (but not paid for) from the ‘‘non-Phoenix
club’’. For this reason, the ?eld of football has developed
rules which insist that, on exiting administration, all foot-
ball debts are paid (see later), and imposes sanctions on
clubs who fail ?nancially. These rules may serve to disci-
pline the owners which try to acquire symbolic pro?ts by
over-reaching themselves.
The ?eld’s symbolic pro?ts can also accrue to IPs who
work in the ?eld of football. The massive amounts of media
attention devoted to football clubs means that the IPs deal-
ing with football clubs can become household names.
Bryan Jackson, a senior partner in PKF, is reported as saying
that other company collapses involving hundreds of jobs,
have received nothing like the publicity of the football
clubs where there may be at most 100 jobs on the line (Sy-
mon, 2004). The media attention is important to banks too
who appear to be reluctant to take steps to kill off a foot-
ball club because of the consequent negative press for
the bank (Campbell, 2003).
Aside from the entrance of billionaires, the ?eld has also
been economically altered by the advent of televised foot-
ball and later, technological changes to TV broadcasting.
35
Once television started to show football matches then extra
revenue ?owed to those clubs at the top of the ?eld whose
matches were more frequently televised. This was exacer-
bated by signi?cant increases in TV revenue in the late
1980s with the entry of British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB)
onto the ?eld and the end of terrestrial TV franchises in
1992. The impact of millionaires, TV revenue and interna-
tional competitions on national ?elds of football means that
some clubs are in a ‘‘virtuous circle’’; they receive more
money (from television and international competitions)
than the majority in their leagues and so can afford the best
players and coaches This means that they win matches and
so win more money.
These factors also have an impact between national
?elds of football; in the UK context, between the ?elds of
English and Scottish football. The differences in TV reve-
nues alone between the two countries are signi?cant. The
English ?eld of football’s 2007–2008 television rights for
the 20-team Premier League were valued at close to
£1bn. The Scottish Premier League’s TV contract for
2009–2010 with two broadcasters (ESPN and BSkyB) was
worth around £13 million to the 12 clubs. This gulf in the
amount of economic capital at stake in the two ?elds
means that the ?eld in Scotland has become relatively
weaker than its English counterpart. Bourdieu’s perspec-
tive would suggest that the Scottish ?eld would be strug-
gling to maintain its position vis-à-vis the English ?eld of
football. The ?nances of Scottish football at the time of
writing are extremely precarious. Many of the clubs in
the two top Scottish leagues are technically insolvent, with
a de?cit of net assets. It is within this context that we now
turn to the structure of the Scottish ?eld and the adminis-
tration of Gretna FC.
The Scottish ?eld
In Scotland, the ?eld of football is of economic and
social
36
importance. The only country which has a greater
attendance per head of population at football matches is
Albania (Boyle, 2008). Thus the social prestige (capital) at-
tached to football in Scotland is considerable. Re?ecting bat-
tles for dominance in the ?eld, the structure of the national
governance of Scottish football is complex with three differ-
ent controlling bodies. The Scottish Football Association is
the main governing body for football in Scotland.
37
Two sep-
arate bodies govern the hierarchically structured leagues.
The Scottish Premier League (SPL) with 12 clubs and is gov-
erned by the Scottish Premier League Ltd. Beneath this, there
are three divisions (1–3) governed by the Scottish Football
League (SFL), each with 10 clubs. At the end of each season,
the SPL club with the least points is relegated to division 1,
and the club with the most points in division 1 is promoted
to the SPL.
The battle over meagre Scottish television revenues
caused the creation of the SPL. The top clubs ‘‘broke away’’
from the SFL and created the SPL in the 1998–1999 season.
The breakaway was motivated by a scheme to increase the
?nancial rewards of the top clubs particularly through im-
proved television deals. The commercial (TV and other rev-
enues) are paid to, and distributed by, the SPL at the end of
each season. Rule C4.3.2 of the SPL (2010)
38
means that the
top team receives almost four times as much as the 12th
placed team.
39
The attraction of winning Champions’ or
Europa League places by ?nishing at the top of the SPL
strengthens this motivation. Scottish clubs also participate
in other domestic ‘knock-out’ competitions (the Scottish
Cup and Scottish League Cup being the most lucrative).
Remaining in these competitions is an important source of
35
The two are linked, for while football has always offered symbolic
pro?ts, these have been multiplied with matches being shown
internationally.
36
The cultural importance of football in Scotland can perhaps best be
exempli?ed by the fact that Glasgow, a city of 620,000 inhabitants, has
almost 100,000 football season-book seats in the city’s stadia. The
combined economic impact on the Scottish economy of the two largest
clubs in Glasgow is signi?cant (Fraser of Allander Institute, 2005).
37
beneath FIFA and UEFA.
38http://www.scotprem.com/content/mediaassets/doc/SPL Rule-
s%20at%2012-May-10%20[CURRENT].pdf (accessed 16th May, 2010).
39
In the 2007–2008 season, Celtic (the top club) received £3.06m, while
the bottom club received £810,000 (Halliday, 2009).
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 119
revenue for clubs. The winners of the Scottish Cup also win
entry to the Europa League.
Thus far it has been argued that each club will try to do
as well as possible by employing the best players that they
can afford, but operate with a high operating leverage since
wage bills are ?xed for the duration of their players’ con-
tracts. Their revenue streams are uncertain since clubs can-
not easily predict their league placing nor their cup runs.
Being knocked out early in a cup competition or failing to
do well in the league could easily turn a budgeted break-
even position into a loss. Thus, the structure and rules of
the ?eld make it an extremely precarious one ?nancially.
These features can be demonstrated through an analysis
of SPL clubs’ accounts.
The ?nancial structure of the SPL
The statutory accounts of the twelve SPL clubs for the
year ended 2007 show that the clubs yielded an aggre-
gate pro?t of £2.8m. This was the ?rst overall pro?t pro-
duced by the SPL since its formation. However, this pro?t
was mainly due to one dominant/oligopolistic club (Cel-
tic) making a pro?t of £15 m which cancelled out the
losses of some of the other clubs. Celtic’s pro?t was
attributable to winning the SPL and the Scottish Cup, pro-
gressing through the ?rst stage of the Champion’s League
competition and raising revenue from pre-season
matches overseas.
40
Celtic’s pro?ts exemplify the rewards
of doing well in a ?eld in which participants have high
operating leverages. The second most pro?table club
(Hibernian) made £7.4m. However, as explained below,
the majority of this pro?t did not derive from football
operations and Hibernian’s operating pro?t was £1.4m.
The majority of clubs made modest pro?ts (ranging from
£319,000 (Dunfermline Athletic) to £7000 (Motherwell).
Four clubs, including Heart of Midlothian (Hearts) and
Rangers made losses. At this time, Rangers was one of
the dominant clubs and in spite of its high ?xed costs
did not qualify for an international competition. Although
Rangers reduced its wages costs and improved its operat-
ing ef?ciency in this season, its results emphasise the
vagaries of the ?eld.
Re?ecting the importance of cultural capital, the
accounts show that wages were the most signi?cant ex-
pense. In the 2006/07 season, the wages/turnover ratio of
the SPL clubs combined was 57%. The highest ratio was
121% (Hearts) and the lowest was 41% (Hibernian). The
Hearts ?gure is re?ective of a rich owner who wishes to in-
vest money to improve their club’s position. Perhaps the
?gures which best exemplify the ?eld are the actual
amounts spent on wages. The total amount spent on wages
was £96.6m. The highest amount spent by an individual
club (almost 38% of the total) was £36.4m (Celtic) and
the lowest spend was £1.3m (Inverness Caledonian
Thistle). However, the wage spend of the SPL is dwarfed
by that of the English Premier League which amounted to
£1.2 billion–12 times higher than the SPL, albeit with 20
rather than 12 clubs (Deloitte., 2009). The average total
wages increased by 7% but this ?gure hid signi?cant varia-
tions, for example, Dunfermline’s wages increased by al-
most 95% as this club tried to prevent relegation by
acquiring additional players part way through the season.
While this increased spending did not prevent relegation,
Dunfermline reached a Scottish Cup Final which helped
to increase its turnover by 77%. The club which was pro-
moted to the SPL in this year (St Mirren) saw its turnover
increase by 74% (due to increased ticket sales and prices)
and its pro?ts increase from £27,558 to £276,932;
although its wage bill rose by 73% from £1m to £1.7m. St
Mirren’s accounts demonstrate the dramatic change in ?-
nances when a club is promoted from the SFL to the SPL.
The relegated club would face a similar but downward
trajectory.
The cost of players is only partly re?ected through
wages. The other signi?cant cost to clubs for players is
the amount paid for players who are in contract with other
clubs. These ‘‘transfer fees’’ can run into millions of
pounds. Overall the SPL made £19m on the sale of player
registrations. Almost 50% (£9.4m) of this amount was
made by Celtic for the sale of ?ve players (all to English
clubs)
41
and a further third (£6.4m) by Hibernian for the sale
of two players (one to Celtic and one to Rangers) helping to
increase Hibernian’s overall pro?t to £7.4m. The actual cash
in?ow from the sale of players for the SPL as a whole was
£17.1m and the out?ow to acquire new players was
£21.8m. Selling players has been an important way for clubs
to reduce their debts. Hibernian used the proceeds from the
sales of its players to reduce its debt by 58% to £2.9m. In the
year 2006/2007 the combined net debt of the SPL clubs was
£105.8m. Only two clubs had no net debt. Hearts had the
largest net debt (£38m) an increase of 31% on the previous
year. The majority of the Hearts debt could be considered
to be ‘‘connected debt’’ since it is owed to its owner’s (Roma-
nov) UAB Ukio Banko Investicine Grupe. Millionaire owners
of clubs frequently loan their clubs money. Hibernian used
the sale of players to reduce its debt by 58% from £6.8m to
£2.9m. The extreme outlier was Rangers whose debt in-
creased by 181% from £5.9m to £16.5m.
42
While in the period under analysis two teams domi-
nated the SPL, its governance is, on the surface at least,
democratic. Each of the twelve SPL clubs own one share
in the SPL which entitles clubs to participate in League
competitions. At the end of the season, the relegated club
transfers its share to the newly promoted club. This ‘‘share
transfer arrangement’’ gives signi?cant powers to the SPL
which can refuse to allow the transfer of this share (thus
refusing entry to formal football competitions). This is
important in the context of insolvency or administration
when clubs may be sold to newowners. In the next section,
we consider the written and unwritten rules of the ?eld
with respect to this share transfer in the event of
administration.
40
Celtic has international symbolic capital.
41
A dominant feature of the player transfer market in Scotland is its close
proximity to the economically more powerful ?eld of football in England;
the best Scottish players tend to move to the richer English ?eld.
42
During the 2011–2012 season Rangers entered administration. Rangers
CVA failed and the assets were acquired by a new company which at the
time of writing is playing in Division 3 of the SFL.
120 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
The interaction of the ?elds of football and insolvency – the
super-creditor rule
Bourdieu suggested that in situations where there are
signi?cant capitals at stake, and/or when the habitus fails
to produce the conduct required by the ?eld, that written
rules will be produced. It is therefore interesting to ?nd that
the relatively richer English ?eld has written rules with re-
spect to administration events whereas the Scottish ?eld
did not. The English Football League’s (FL) rules on clubs
entering insolvency proceedings are contained both within
their Articles of Association (AA) and their ‘‘Insolvency Pol-
icy’’ document. The rules state that whena clubenters insol-
vency, the FL is entitled to serve a Notice on a club, thereby
withdrawing the club’s membership of the League.
43
Fur-
thermore, any exit from administration must be by way of
Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) approved by the
creditors and that all football creditors must be paid in full.
44
A CVA is a rarely used procedure (outside of football) which
enables a company to exit administration through reaching
an agreement with its creditors about the amount of debt to
be repaid (this could be as much as 100% but would mostly
be a small proportion of the debts owed). A CVA requires
the approval of 75% of the voting creditors and binds all cred-
itors. The funds available to repay creditors under a CVAcould
be from the existing resources of the insolvent business or
from funds made available from a purchaser of the business.
Whendeciding whether or not to accept a CVA, creditors have
to decide whether liquidation (in which the assets are sold
piecemeal) wouldgive a higher payment thanthat offeredun-
der the CVA. Football creditors have an additional non-eco-
nomic consideration. It is possible that some creditors
might earnsymbolic pro?ts fromtheir associationwitha club
and so could be concerned not to be associated with the de-
mise of a clubandconceivablyvote for a CVA(andthe survival
of a club) even if it is not in their economic interests to do so.
It would appear as though the written rules of the ?eld
of English football contradict the provisions of the Insol-
vency Act 1986 relating to settlement of creditor claims.
This is because, in order to remain in professional football,
all football debts have to be paid in full even if preferential,
secured and unsecured creditors do not receive full (or
any) payment. ‘‘Football debts’’ are sums due to football
players (including their pensions), management and
coaching staff and debts due to football clubs and football-
ing bodies (Ward, 2002). This has been the subject of legal
action. The leading case on football insolvency and the
‘‘super-creditor’’ rule is Inland Revenue Commissioners v
The Wimbledon Football Club Ltd in which HMRC,
45
a prefer-
ential creditor of Wimbledon, challenged the rule. HMRC ar-
gued that the CVA resulted in a breach of S 4 (4) (a) of the
Insolvency Act 1986, whereby non preferential (football)
debts were being paid in priority to preferential debts.
46
More than 75% of the creditors of Wimbledon had voted
for the CVA even though it included clauses pertaining to
football debts which were to be paid in full. The Wimbledon
administrators’, (from accounting ?rm Grant Thornton)
statement of affairs, suggested that the only valuable asset
of the club was the player registrations which in the event
of liquidation would have no value at all and so the creditors
would be better off accepting the small amount of money on
offer rather than nothing at all. It is therefore unsurprising
that creditors voted for the CVA.
Wimbledon FC is an example of a situation where writ-
ten rules provide a space for a ‘‘double-game’’ – a space for
virtuosi who are able to play the game up to the limits,
even to the point of transgression, while managing to stay
within the rules of the game (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992,
p. 78). The participants on the ?eld of football are not
secured creditors but have managed to ensure that if any
particular club wishes to compete in professional football
then all football debts must be repaid. In the case of Wimb-
ledon, the ‘‘double-game’’ of the football authorities and
the insolvency practitioners turns on the question of
whether or not the acquisition of the club’s share by a
new shareholder constitutes a new company. The football
rules suggest that it is and it is not. Where the assets of
the club are transferred to a new owner as part of the
insolvency procedure, the relevant football league will only
register the club’s share if the ‘‘football debts’’ are paid in
full.
47
Thus when it exits administration through a CVA a
club is not responsible for the ‘‘old’’ debts, but it does have
to pay the football debts in order to participate in one of
the football leagues. While the Insolvency Act was
‘‘transgressed’’, Wimbledon’s administrator won the case.
These contradictory regulations provide a space for
insolvency practitioners (Hinks, 2003; Moher, 2004). In the
Wimbledon case, the company was sold to a new owner,
but regardless of whether a new owner takes over the
club, or the administrators manage to convince creditors
to accept a CVA by offering some of the club’s resources,
on exiting administration, clubs must pay their football
debts in full.
The situation in Scotland with respect to the ‘‘super-
creditor’’ rule was more ambiguous in that it was not writ-
ten into the rules of the SPL or the SFL. In our interview
with Iain Blair (Operations Director and Company Secre-
tary of the SPL), he stated that in Scottish football, there
is a ‘‘super-creditor’’ rule and ‘‘football debt’’, but there is
no equivalent ‘‘Insolvency Policy’’ document of the English
Leagues. He said that ‘‘football debt’’ is de?ned as unpaid
ticket revenue, unpaid transfer revenue and unpaid ele-
ments of player contracts. According to Blair, clubs become
in breach of the SPL rules if an administrator breaches
player contracts, for example, by cutting player wages or
making player redundancies. Blair summed up the position
in Scotland by saying that the ‘‘super-creditor rule has not
been as tested in Scotland as it is in England, but it still ex-
ists’’. Elliot (Gretna’s insolvency practitioner) substantiated
this by saying that in his opinion, the rule is not as strictly
43
Commissioners of Inland Revenue v The Wimbledon Football Club
Limited [2004] EWCA Civ 655, para. 12.
44
While the creditor aspect is important, the survival of the share is
important to those on the ?eld who value a club’s history.
45
The UK’s tax raising authority formerly known as the Inland Revenue.
To avoid confusion HMRC will be used in this paper.
46
The Commissioners of the Inland Revenue v The Wimbledon Football
Club Limited [2004] EWCH 1020 (Ch), para.14.
47
Similar written rules can be found in the Premier League’s Rules http://
www.premierleague.com/staticFiles/44/66/0,12306~157252,00.pdf.
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 121
monitored or policed as it is in England – ‘‘some clubs in
Scotland have got away with it. Some haven’t.’’ The IP
who dealt with three former insolvencies of Scottish foot-
ball clubs (including Motherwell) stated that the super-
creditor rule was not applied by himself and that the
super-creditor rule is not part of the Insolvency Act and
to the best of his knowledge not part of the Scottish foot-
balling authorities’ articles of association. A surprising as-
pect of the Motherwell case was that there were no
football creditors when it entered interim-administration;
this was surprising given the amount of interactions be-
tween the clubs in terms of ticket sales and lagged transfer
fees. In Motherwell’s case, football debt only arose when
players were sacked. The IP was reported as saying that
‘‘The money owed to players is not a footballing debt.
The only thing, I believe, which constitutes a football debt
is that if one club owes another money then it has to pay
the debt in full. Motherwell has no debts to other clubs.
The footballers are like all other creditors – they’ll get paid
so many pence in the pound. We are governed by insol-
vency legislation, and the players have no more rights than
any other creditors’’ (Campbell, 2003, p. 11).
The head of the Players Union in Scotland (Fraser Wis-
hart) said that a plausible interpretation of the inconsistent
application of the super-creditor rule in Scotland (espe-
cially in relation to players) is that it has served the inter-
ests of the rich owners of Scottish football clubs at the
expense of the footballers. He explained that in Mother-
well’s interim-administration, it was the owner, who as
in many clubs is also the main creditor, who put the club
into interim-administration in effect to reduce staf?ng lev-
els and wages bills as well as writing off some debt.
48
In
this case the ‘‘super-creditor’’ rule was not applied and
accordingly players’ outstanding claims were dealt with
according to statute and not according to the unwritten
rules of the SPL. When Blair (SPL Operations Director and
Company Secretary) was asked about this, he said that no
players had complained to the SPL about the IP’s decision
not to follow the super-creditor rule. This seemed to contra-
dict press reports which stated that the players had ap-
pealed to the SPL in May 2003. Their appeal was upheld
and players’ claims for breach of contract did constitute a
footballing debt and that the players must be paid in full
(Campbell, 2003). Ian Blair, is reported
49
as saying that
‘‘The SPL have ruled that these contracts should be hon-
oured. Motherwell’s duty is to abide by the SPL’s rules. If
compromise can be reached between both parties that will
be the end of the matter so far as we are concerned.’’ In
the end, players accepted the same payout as all other cred-
itors. It appears that the SPL allowed Motherwell to breach
its own albeit unwritten rules. The Motherwell case raised
the question of whether the SPL would have been more
forceful in defending the super-creditor rule if money had
been owed to other football clubs rather than players.
Bourdieu writes that rules and explicit principles are
created when dispositions fail to produce the practices
required by the structure. It seems that in Scotland, practices
so far have met the needs of the most powerful within the
structure.
Thus far we have set out an understanding of the Scot-
tish ?eld as one which is both economically stressed, pre-
carious and unpredictable. It struggles to maintain its
position vis-à-vis other ?elds of football while at the same
time positioned in a country with a high proportion of
football fans and consequently high symbolic pro?ts. It is
within this context that millionaire Brooks Mileson ac-
quired Gretna and took it on a journey which ultimately
led to administration and liquidation.
Gretna football club – The rise and fall
On 28th April, 2007, Gretna football club won promo-
tion to the Scottish Premier League on the last day of the
season (Coates J. & N., 2007). For those suffering from foot-
ball illusio, this was a spectacular event. Gretna was the
?rst British team to achieve three successive promotions.
Witnessing this pivotal game was a crowd of 500 (almost
20% of the local population).
50
The population was too small
to ?nancially sustain an SPL team. Gretna was primarily a
product of the historically enduring and important role it
played in the community.
While the Gretna fans may have enjoyed their club’s
rise, it would have been at odds with their habitus which
would give them a sense of what is possible – they will
know instinctively what ‘‘level’’ within the ?eld they can
expect to achieve. From our discussions with Craig Wil-
liamson the Chairman of the Gretna Supporter’s Society, it
seems that the majority of Gretna fans were satis?ed to
see their teamplay in the lower leagues of Scottish football.
There were a number of people who said ... that we
should have said thank you very much we’ve won the
league but no thanks we are staying where we are. . .
the majority of Gretna fans, the proper fans, would be
happy to swap all of that to still be playing in the 3rd
division.
Gretna’s climb through the leagues was fuelled by the
substantial cash injections provided by its millionaire
owner. The latest available accounts for Gretna were for
the year ended 31 May 2006. These show a net liability po-
sition of £4,085,000 (Gretna FC Ltd, 2006). An amount of
£4,949,840 (Gretna FC Ltd., 2006) is due to Heartshape
Limited, which is Gretna’s ultimate holding company and
which Mileson owned. Mileson was also owed £402,040
(Gretna FC Ltd., 2006) directly from Gretna. Thus in the
space of approximately 3 years, if we assume Mileson
had not taken any sums out of the Club, Mileson invested
£5,351,880. A ?gure closer to £6.8m was suggested by El-
liot (one of the administrators of Gretna), with Mileson
pumping in a weekly cash injection of about £40,000. At
time of insolvency, Mileson was owed £1,871,428; the rest
of his investment took the form of shares (6,070,039 Â £1
shares).
48
In many ways this is parallel to the application of Chapter 11 in the US
(Tweedale & Warren, 2004).
49
SPORT Section FOOTBALL: EX-STARS COULD STILL BLOCK THE WELL
DEAL Daily Record, September 18, 2003.
50
In the most recent census, Gretna’s population was 2705http://www.
scrol.gov.uk/scrol/browser/pro?le.jsp?pro?le=Population&mainArea=Gretna&
mainLevel=Locality.
122 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
The promotion to the SPL presented logistical problems
since Grenta’s stadium was not of the standard required
by the SPL, forcing the club to ‘‘ground-share’’ with another
club. The club chosen was Motherwell whose stadium is
75miles north of Gretna. Different sources estimated the
cost of the ground-share at between £228,000 and
£600,000. The total attendance (of both Gretna and oppos-
ing teamfans) at Gretna’s 19 home matches during the sea-
son was 41,180
51
which would have been barely enough to
cover the cost of the ground-share without all of the other ex-
penses of the club (players’ wages and so on). Therefore, on
the face of it, without Mileson’s economic input, Gretna could
not survive ?nancially in the SPL. It is possible, with the ben-
e?t of hindsight, to question Mileson’s business plan for Gret-
na. It is conceivable that Mileson saw the tenfold increase in
pro?ts of St. Mirren (the club promoted to the SPL the previ-
ous year) and so perhaps could have foreseen that Gretna
would survive ?nancially in the SPL without his economic in-
put. He also may have factored in the possibility of winning
the Scottish Cup which would have enabled Gretna entry into
the Europa League since, remarkably for a ?rst division team,
Gretna had won Europa League participation through reach-
ing the ?nal of the Scottish Cup in the previous season.
By February 2008 Gretna was struggling. It was at the
bottom of the league and it was reported that Mileson
was lying seriously ill in hospital. While he was in hospital
there appeared to be no-one else with suf?cient money
and authorisation to deal with the ?nances and so around
60 players, coaches, administrative and other members of
Gretna’s staff went unpaid. In addition, HMRC were threat-
ening the club with potential winding up proceedings. On
7th March 2008, the Gretna board resolved to call in
administrators after a day of meetings with debt advisors
(Wilson Field). On 10th March, they ?led a formal notice
of intention to move into administration (Gray, March 29,
2008). Insolvency practitioners, David Elliot and Lisa Hogg,
from Wilson Field were appointed formally on the 12th
March to take over the running of Gretna. Wilson Field’s
Statement of Administrator’s Proposals (section 4.5) stated
that
Wilson Field Limited advised on the insolvency options
available to the Company and recommended that the
company sought the protection of an Administration
appointment.
Gretna’s Administrators, the SPL and the creditors
Wilson Field had to negotiate the rules of the ?eld of
football and of the Insolvency Act. As in any insolvency,
there would be battles by the key actors over the allocation
of the club’s meagre capitals. In Gretna’s case, there was
more at stake than economic capital. The illusio (interest)
of the IPs and the SPL were rather different. David Elliot
speci?cally stated in our interview that he had no interest
in football. The formal written rules of administrators
according to the Insolvency Act are that the administrator
must act in the interests of all the creditors and attempt to
rescue the company as a going concern. If this proves
impossible she or he must work to maximise the recovery
of the creditors as a whole. The mission statement of the
SPL states that it aims to ‘‘. . ..provide an environment in
which Scotland’s foremost clubs can improve their quality
and image, maximise the commercial value of the game
and thus ensure its long term future and prosperity’’. The
prestige, ?nances and honour of the SPL were not, accord-
ing to the formal insolvency legislation, the concern of Wil-
son Field; nor was their legally sanctioned concern to
ensure that the SPL ?xtures survived. However, the admin-
istrators were interested in maintaining and increasing
their social, symbolic and economic capitals. The SPL was
interested in Gretna as an essential component of the Lea-
gue. While the written rules governing IPs and the SPL may
have seemed to be at odds, fuzzy logic could be applied to
ensure that the interests of the dominant actors could be
met.
When the administrators arrived on the 12th March,
there were insuf?cient funds to enable the administrators
to pay the wages. The SPL had two choices:it could have
decided to carry on the remainder of the season with only
11 teams or, it could have tried to convince the administra-
tors to keep Gretna alive, at least until the end of the sea-
son. The former course was attractive since the SPL
(drawing precedence from the written rules in England)
could have decided to suspend all rights associated with
Gretna’s share in the SPL and to keep Gretna’s payment un-
der Rule C4.3.2 (see earlier). This course of action would
also have been attractive to clubs which may have been
relegated – they would have been able to ?nish the season
knowing that they would remain in the SPL. The SPL hier-
archy would have been extremely concerned that its
inability to complete a season would make it less presti-
gious in the eyes of other ?elds of football around the
world
52
and so opted for the latter course. It was reported
that, at ?rst, there was a stalemate between the administra-
tors and the SPL over the continuance of Gretna (Pattullo,
2008). Wilson Field would have been concerned ?rst and
foremost with where funding would come from to cover
the expenses of the remaining ?xtures as well as their fees.
The solution was for the SPL to ‘‘advanced suf?cient monies
to allow footballing ?xtures to be completed and to pay the
costs of Administration during this period’’ (Notice of Move
from Administration to Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation).
Until 5th August, 2008, the SPL advanced funds of
£572,532 to the administrators. However, in our interviews
we were given con?icting stories about the amount and nat-
ure of the payment from the SPL to Wilson Field.
53
Rescuing Gretna as an SPL club would have been a dif?-
cult challenge for anybody, given their tiny fan base and
costly ground share, except perhaps for a millionaire buyer.
Elliot (the IP) said that he too felt that there was little that
could be done to rescue Gretna. Yet the administrators ran
51http://www.scotprem.com/content/default.asp?page=home_Statistics
accessed 6th July, 2011. The club with the highest attendance was Celtic at
1,067,449. The club with the second lowest attendance was St Mirren with
86,400 – more than double that of Gretna.
52
Carlsson (2009, p 484) states that UEFA is afraid that economic failure
in football clubs will challenge the credibility of football.
53
This perhaps demonstrates the closed structure and lack of transpar-
ency on both the ?eld of football and insolvency.
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 123
the club until the end of the season incurring trading ex-
penses for 83 days between the date of their appointment
and ?nally putting the grounds up for sale. However, due
to the SPL funding, the administrators were not incurring
any trading losses and so were able to allow Gretna to con-
tinue trading and to complete the ?xtures for that season,
whilst seeking to ?nd an interested buyer for the club.
In April the administrators published a list of 139
known creditors jointly owed £3,734,812. Fifty per cent
(£1,871,428) of this was owed to Mileson and his company
Heartshape. Football debt was owed to ten different foot-
balling bodies and amounted to £81,488. There was also
£829,000 owing to three ex-employees who had been dis-
missed prior to administration (it is unclear as to whether
this would constitute football debt). The other major cred-
itors were the HMRC (£576,055), and the sole secured
creditor, Lloyds Bank (£22,631). It is unlikely that Lloyds
would be interested in attracting the negative press associ-
ated with disrupting the SPL for this relatively small
amount of money. Moreover, Lloyds would receive any
remaining revenues from Gretna after the IP fees had been
met. There was also a preferential creditor
54
(the Depart-
ment of Employment) for wages to players of £51,718. The
major asset was the freehold land and property which had
a book value of £824,000. The ownership of the land was
disputed.
The administrators called a creditors meeting in early
May. It was clear that creditors felt that their interests
were not being served by the administrators. One of the
attendees, a director of The Barron Wright Partnership,
which was owed £23,500 called on the administrator to
close the club on the spot (Smith, 2008). Barron said his
reasoning for seeking immediate closure was to ‘‘wave
two ?ngers’’ at what he ironically described as the ‘‘Self
Preservation League’’ which he believed had helped pro-
long the agony at Gretna to avoid the chaos which would
have ensued had they not been able to ful?l their ?xtures
(Smith, 2008). The administrator is quoted as replying: ‘‘I
was asked by one irate creditor to stop and wind the club
up now, but I said having gone this far I was not prepared
to do that. I am not going to stop and not give Gretna the
chance of keeping its football club. We go to the end of
the season.’’ In our interview with Elliot, he said that Gret-
na was being funded and when the funding ran out, he had
no choice but to close down the club.
The logic of any ?eld according to Bourdieu is de?ned
by its distributive possibilities between groups of people
differentially positioned within it, the stances and strate-
gies those positions afford, and the conditions of access
to those positions and the capitals they command (Fried-
land, 2009). The economic interests of the creditors were
not satis?ed by the continuing trading of Gretna yet they
had little power to force the administrators to act in their
interests.
At the time of writing, Gretna is still ‘‘in liquidation’’.
The IPs sold Gretna’s land for £300,251. This and
£572,532 receipts from the SPL were used to enable Gretna
to complete the season, pay the secured and preferential
creditors, the IP fees of £482,851, leaving £715.65 in Gret-
na’s liquidation account to cover the debts of the unse-
cured creditors (£3.66m). However economic capital was
not Wilson Field’s only concern. The IPs entry into the ?eld
of football may have allowed them to see other opportuni-
ties (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008, p. 30). Given the signi?-
cant amount of press interest surrounding the ?eld of
football, they could have seen the symbolic pro?ts which
might accrue to them. To have closed Gretna and seriously
disrupted the SPL could have meant being portrayed in a
very poor light in the media. Perhaps more importantly,
it could have ended any hope that Wilson Field may have
been harbouring in terms of attracting other football insol-
vency or restructuring business. In our interview with El-
liot, we discussed the state of Scottish football ?nances.
He appeared to have researched the number of technically
insolvent clubs in Scotland. He could have seen that there
may be other work in the ?eld of football if he was per-
ceived as being ‘‘football-friendly’’; this would not have
necessarily meant following the rules of the ?eld. As set
out earlier, the SPL did not insist on Motherwell complying
with the super-creditor rule with respect to players. We
found a similar scenario in the Gretna case.
Gretna and the super-creditor rule
In spite of payments made by the SPL, on 26th March,
28 staff (including 22 players) were made redundant. Play-
ers who are under contract are subject to stringent rules
which prevent them from leaving that club to play for an-
other one. The football rules in Scotland and England spec-
ify two speci?c periods or ‘‘transfer windows’’ during
which players can be bought and sold. The transfer win-
dow can be seen as another football rule which serves
the interests of the richest clubs who will have more qual-
ity players to take the place of injured or suspended play-
ers. In 2008, the transfer deadlines were 5 pm on 27th
March for English clubs and 31st March for Scottish clubs.
It would have been almost impossible for any Gretna
player dismissed on 26th March to transfer to another club
given these deadlines. At this late stage the majority of
clubs would be in the ?nal stages of completing their
transfers and even if an excellent player suddenly became
available the clubs could be reluctant to break their ?nan-
cial plans. In any case, redundant players are bound by
FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players.
These regulations placed an additional hurdle in front of
Gretna players who, even if they found a new club, would
have to submit the proposed contract from this new club
alongside a letter from the administrator ?rst to the SFA
and then to FIFA.
55
This could take a considerable amount
of time. Although Blair (SPL) speci?cally stated that clubs
become in breach of the SPL rules if an administrator
breaches player contracts, for example, by cutting player
wages or making player redundancies, it appears that the
54
Preferential creditors (frequently employees) have a claim by statute –
they normally represent a tiny proportion of creditors.
55
FIFA rules also state that a player cannot play for more than two clubs
in one season. So on-loan players (who had played for Gretna and another
club) would have had to apply for dispensation from FIFA.
124 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
SPL did not insist that Wilson Field treat the sacked players
as super-creditors.
Elliot stated that he had hopes of ?nding a buyer for
Gretna. The symbolic pro?ts accruing to the owners of
SPL clubs are greater than those of the lower leagues and
thus a higher price could be sought for Gretna in the SPL
than if it were a club in a lower league. At the end of the
season, Gretna ?nished in bottom place and was conse-
quently demoted from the SPL. Gretna was then also rele-
gated from the First to the Third Division for breaching a
Scottish Football league rule, 76.2, relating to insolvency.
This would have made the administrator’s task of ?nding
a buyer for the club almost impossible especially if the
SFL invoked the super-creditor rule and made the new
buyer pay off the football debts. Williamson (Gretna Sup-
porters’ Association) told us that a fan’s consortium was
interested in buying Gretna when it was placed in the
Third division, but were put off by having to pay all of
the football debts. In effect, the super-creditor rule could
have been used to prevent a fans’ takeover.
Discussion of the Gretna case in the context of the Insolvency
Act
The Gretna case raises the question of the culpability
of the SPL in allowing Mileson’s Gretna to participate in
the SPL. This aspect of the case demonstrates a misalign-
ment of the ?eld of legislation and the ?eld of football.
The legislation deals with individual clubs, whereas, the
SPL is a collective actor, in that it requires the participa-
tion of several teams. However, the laws of insolvency ap-
ply to the clubs as corporations, but not to the league,
that in some respects is the effective economic actor.
The initial step in the demise of Gretna (allowing Gretna
to join the SPL) was approved and to our knowledge, no
formal steps were taken to consider whether or not Gret-
na could survive ?nancially in the SPL. The then Chairman
of the SPL (Gold) stated that ‘‘we are not an organisation
that goes in and audits our clubs, in a ?nancial sense’’
(Smith, 2008). In our interview with Blair (SPL), he stated
that they were satis?ed with the promotion of Gretna to
the SPL since the club came with a clean audit report
and accordingly felt that no action was required on their
part.
However, even if insolvency legislation was aligned to
the structure of the ?eld of football, this case has demon-
strated how those in positions of power, notably, the IPs
and the SPL, maintained their position by obeying (or not
obeying) written and unwritten rules. A doxic assumption
could be that state laws should trump the rules of a ?eld.
But the case has demonstrated that state laws do not nec-
essarily trump private ?eld rules, as in the super-creditor
rule. IPs enabled the SPL to ?nish the 2007/2008 season in-
tact. As with all ?elds, the ?eld of insolvency has speci?c
stakes and interests which animate actors on the ?eld.
The Gretna case demonstrates that actors are animated
to build social and symbolic capital by serving the needs
of clients and when there are rules (written and unwritten)
this may mean acting as virtuosi and playing a double-
game.
The capitals which made a difference in the struggle
as to whether or not Gretna continued until the end of
the season were economic (the SPL ?nancial arrange-
ment with Wilson Field) and social/symbolic (the honour
and status of the IP being ‘‘attached’’ to the ?eld of foot-
ball). This raises the question as to whether actors would
be interested in non-economic forms of capital unless
they could, at some time, either be translated into eco-
nomic capital or enable the economic capital accumula-
tion process. Bourdieusian theory would suggest that
this question can only be answered in relation to a spe-
ci?c ?eld. On the private ?eld of insolvency, non-eco-
nomic forms of capital are essential in order to gain
economic pro?ts. But the ?eld of football presents as a
?eld in which the ends are not economic pro?t, some-
what akin to the ?eld of cultural production in Bour-
dieu’s work, which conceives art as an autonomous
value (see for example Fowler, 2000). The looseness of
Bourdieu’s notion of ?elds means that it would be possi-
ble to conceive of a narrow ?eld (for example amateur
football) in which the ends are not economic pro?t. Thus
the Bourdieusian ?eld may be differentially conceived
and reconceived, presenting alternative distributions of
capitals and restructuring the relative importance of cap-
itals. Whether or not economic capital is always the
trump card depends upon how the ?eld on which the
game is being played is con?gured.
In the broader context of insolvency in Scottish foot-
ball, we found that different insolvency practitioners
took diverse positions on the super-creditor rule depend-
ing on the capitals which could be brought to bear by
heterogeneous actors. Interestingly the Bourdieusian in-
sight here is that codi?cation is supposed to ensure the
interchangeability of agents whose responsibility it is to
dispense justice (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 80–
84). Each IP has identical state sanctioned credentials.
We doxically expect our laws to be applied consistently
and fairly by faceless, homogenous ‘‘professionals’’. How-
ever, IPs are not homogeneous. They too have different
capitals and occupy different positions in their ?eld.
While in Thatcher’s terms, IPs might have been ‘‘freed
from the state’’, they are not independent This and other
broader concerns with the ?eld of insolvency will be dis-
cussed next.
Summary and discussion of the insolvency profession
The privatised ?eld of insolvency was created in Britain
in a period during which the Thatcher cabinet had a policy
of divesting itself of core responsibilities thereby creating
economic opportunities for the private sector. This was
articulated to their symbolic moral project to revalorise
the market. Thatcher stated that-
We need a free economy not only for the renewed
material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indis-
pensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a
more just, more honest society. We want a society
where people are free to make choices, to make mis-
takes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what
we mean by a moral society; not a society where the
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 125
state is responsible for everything, and no one is
responsible for the state.
56
The reforms to insolvency legislation were intimately
connected to the state’s moral and economic project. From
the outset, IPs had a ‘‘moral purpose’’. The Insolvency Act
codi?ed Thatcherite state doxa that business is synony-
mous with morality. Bourdieu’s work draws attention to
the way language is used to pass off as necessities what
are really deliberate choices of policy (Grenfell, 2004).
Thatcher was careful to say that ‘‘we need a free economy’’.
It is by these means that ‘‘schemes of thought’’ are con-
structed; ways of viewing the world which hide their prov-
enance, the values they represent, and the interests they
ultimately serve (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 2001).
There was very little opposition to the insolvency re-
forms. The accounting profession had been campaigning
for some time for the state to sanction private insolvency
practitioners in order to expand and enhance the profes-
sional boundaries and work for accountants. The only seri-
ous challenges to the legislation came from the House of
Lords over automatic director disquali?cation. This aspect
of the Bill was quietly dropped as was the Cork recommen-
dation that creditors should be able to sanction miscreant
directors. In effect any potential for some of the weaker
victims of insolvency to be empowered by the Act were
unful?lled. However, with large amounts of economic cap-
ital at stake, the Act set out the order in which different
creditors should be paid from the remains of an insolvent
company. Financial institutions (secured debt) were given
priority.
A key characteristic of the insolvency ?eld is that, from
the outset, it was structurally inferior to the economic ?eld
(especially banks) from which it receives economic capital.
The capitals which are most valued in the ?eld of insol-
vency (the trump cards) are cultural capital (technical
knowledge), social capital (connections with banks, clients
and potential clients) and symbolic capital (reputation).
The way in which social and symbolic capital are won by
IPs is to carry out their work in a way which is consistent
with client (and potential client) interests. Building these
capitals becomes part of an IPs ‘‘feel for the game’’; it is
what animates their work in the ?eld. IPs are, in the main,
professionally quali?ed accountants, and as such, on entry
to the ?eld of insolvency, already have the habitus of an ac-
tor in a professional service ?rm. Acting in a way to en-
hance capital is not a written rule and in some senses
this makes it more powerful. Since the Thatcher revolution,
serving the needs of the market, has become a moral posi-
tion concerned with just and ef?cient public service. Ab-
bott (1983) argued that written ethics codes are the most
concrete cultural form in which professions acknowledge
their societal obligations. The most recent Insolvency Prac-
titioner Association Ethics Code for members (November
2008) does not mention any general public service obliga-
tions. Serving the needs of business clients is doxically ta-
ken to be ful?lling the insolvency profession’s societal/
moral obligation.
It isn’t argued here that IPs are ‘‘immoral’’ rather that
their ‘‘feel for the game’’ animates certain practices. Overall
this can lead to what Abbott (1983) describes as ‘‘ethical
regression’’ which others may describe as the playing out
of the neoliberal project. An example of ethical regression
in the case of insolvency is that IPs continue trading for
too long thereby enabling IPs to earn more money at the
expense of creditors. Individual IPs may well argue that
their decisions are justi?able – continued trade was neces-
sary because a buyer was interested and so on. But, there
may overall be an ‘‘aggregate offense’’ if, it turns out that
in the majority of cases, there is virtually nothing left for
unsecured creditors. The OFT concern that bank appointed
IPs systematically charge lower fees than non-bank
appointed IPs could be described as another example of
‘‘an aggregate offence’’. In practice, IPs ‘‘feel for the game’’
may construct aggregate offences which are dif?cult to
prove in individual cases. The individualised structure of
the insolvency ?eld is one in which ethics codes deal with
individuals and individual behaviour (Abbott, 1983). There
is a case-at-a-time approach to control and discipline.
The violation of rules is deemed to occur in individual
cases and formal control of IPs is on a sporadic basis.
Rather than the state stepping in to rectify the situation,
and changing the structure of the insolvency ?eld, under
the individualistic professional model, it is up to social
actors to bring an action against individual IPs. In the Gret-
na case, whether the club should have been placed straight
into liquidation or allowed to continue is a grey area. The
small creditors of Gretna may well have been better off
with liquidation rather than administration but had no
power to insist that Gretna was wound up and no power
to bring an action against the directors of Gretna for
wrongful trading.
Overall, actors in the ?eld of insolvency, like in any ?eld,
struggle over the appropriation of certain species of capi-
tal. Whilst IPs would argue that their actions are governed
by statute and by their ‘‘professional judgment’’ (which
Bourdieu would describe as fuzzy logic), there is little, if
anything, which those caught up in insolvency, can do un-
less they have suf?cient resources to participate in the
competition over the outcome. Serious questions sur-
rounding democracy are raised especially since IPs have
such strong state sanctioned powers.
Re?ections and aftermath
The outcomes of the Gretna case are that the SPL has
maintained its position in relation to other ?elds, the IPs
made some money and attempted to enhance their posi-
tion vis-à-vis the ?eld of football, 136 creditors lost almost
£4m, the state lost £576,055, Gretna employees lost their
jobs, some talented footballers had damaged careers and
the fans felt the physical pain of losing their team. The
Act’s categorisation (homogenisation) of creditors served
to render them ‘‘equal’’; whereas in ‘‘real life’’ creditors dif-
fer in their knowledge, skill, leverage and costs of litigating
(Finch, 2009, p. 36) and thus in their ability to weather an
insolvency event. The relative impact of the insolvency to
56
14/3/77 speech to Zurich Economics Society –http://www.margaret-
thatcher.org/document/103336.
126 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
heterogeneous creditors will be different and not always
?nancial.
Bourdieu has been criticised for not having solutions to
the problems which he identi?es (Giroux, 1983) and for
leaving no space for resistance (Proust, 1970). Although
in response to this Bourdieu insisted that his work enables
the ‘‘right questions to be asked’’ (Grenfell,2004). Bour-
dieu’s portrayal of actors as having an embodied accep-
tance of their position through the habitus and
Bourdieu’s doxa represent the most radical form of accep-
tance of the world; although Bourdieu says that doxa ‘‘in
no way excludes practical forms of resistance and the pos-
sibility of revolt’’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 74). In
our analysis of Gretna, there is little in Bourdieu’s theory
which would suggest a ‘‘blueprint
57
’’ for action for the Gret-
na fans, employees or small creditors. Moreover, Bourdieu’s
Nietzschian frame which mainly concentrates on the strug-
gles between the dominant classes could mean that it is all
too easy to forget those lower down the social structures.
Perhaps Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction serves
to remind those at the bottom of social hierarchies that their
interests may be best served by taking matters into their
own hands, which is precisely what happened in Gretna’s
case. Craig Williamson, who had been the Chairman of the
Gretna Supporters’ Club joined with other fans and set up
a new amateur team Gretna 2008, which managed to gain
entry into the East of Scotland division 1 league.
58
He told
us that
We could have said OK that’s it, end of story. The
dream has turned into a nightmare. It’s gone. But what
we’ve done. We’ve actually created a new team called
Gretna 2008. . . and it’s proving very successful. . . I’m
not carried away with living any dreams that’s for
sure.
Gretna 2008 adopted the original Gretna club
colours and in May, 2009 won the right to play at
Raydale Park, Gretna’s home ground.
59
The 2010–2011
season was a memorable one for the Gretna 2008 fans;
they were promoted to the East of Scotland Premier
League. Things are back to normal for the ‘‘real’’ Gretna
fans – the team will be playing at their original ground,
in their original strip and like countless fans throughout
the world, knowing without a doubt that, ‘‘the game is
worth a candle’’.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank everyone that agreed to be
interviewed for this project for their time and help; Brid-
get Fowler and Patricia Arnold for their comments; the
outstanding reviewers and special thanks to Julia and
Mia.
References
Abbott, A. (1983). Professional Ethics, 88(5), 855–885.
Abbott, A. (1988). The System of Professions: An essay on the division of
expert labour. London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Abbott, A. (1995). Things of boundaries. Social Research, 62(4), 857.
Archel, P., Husillos, J., & Spence, C. (2011). The institutionalisation of
unaccountability: Loading the dice of Corporate Social Responsibility
discourse. Accounting, Organizations and Society.
Aris, S. (1986). Going bust: Inside the bankruptcy business. London: Coronet
Books.
Armstrong, P. (1987). The rise of accounting controls in British capitalist
enterprises. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 12(5), 415–436.
Armstrong, P. (2005). The ?ight of the Accountant: A romance of air and
credit. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 16(3), 165–183.
Arrington, C. E., & Francis, J. (1989). Letting the chat out of the bag:
Deconstruction, privilege and accounting research. Accounting,
Organisations and Society, 14(1–2), 1–28.
Banyard, P., & Shevlin, M. (2001). Responses of football fans to relegation
of their team from the English Premier League: PTS? Irish Journal of
Psychological Medicine, 18(2), 66–67.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Bourdieu, P. (1988). Vive la Crise! For heterodoxy in Social Science. Theory
and Society, 17(5), 773–787.
Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory,
7(1), 14–25.
Bourdieu, P., (1990a). The logic of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990b). In other words: essays towards a re?exive sociology
(M. Adamson, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical reason. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (2000). Propos sur le champ politique. Lyon, France: Presses
Universitaires de Lyon.
Bourdieu, P. (2008). Political interventions: Social science and political action
(D. Fernback, Trans.). UK: Verso.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). Invitation to re?exive sociology.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (2001). New liberal speak: Notes on the new
planetary vulgate. Radical Philosophy, 105(January-February), 1–7.
Boyle, R. (2008). From troubleshooter to the apprentice: The changing
face of business on British television. Media, Culture and Society, 30(3),
415–424.
Bryer, R. A. (1993). The late nineteenth-century revolution in ?nancial
reporting: Accounting for the rise of investor or managerial
capitalism? Accounting, Organizations and Society, 18(7–8), 649–690.
Buchanan, R., Davie, J. R., Dezalay, Y., & Trubek, D. M. (1994). Global
Restructuring and the law: Studies of the internalization of legal ?elds
and the creation of transnational arenas. Case Western Reserve Law
Review, 44(2), 407–498.
Campbell, A. (2003). Final demand: Pay up or shut up. The Sunday Herald,
June 29, p. 11.
Campbell, A. (2007, 12 August), The end of the affair. Sunday Herald,
Sports section, p. 13.
Carlsson, B. (2009). Insolvency and the domestic juridi?cation of football
in Sweden. Soccer and Society, 10(3–4), 477–494.
Chua, W. F., & Poullaos, C. (1993). Rethinking the profession-state
dynamic: The case of the Victorian charter attempt, 1885–1906.
Accounting, Organizations and Society, 18(7–8), 691–728.
Chua, W. F., & Poullaos, C. (1998). The dynamics of ‘closure’ amidst the
construction of market, profession, empire and nationhood: An
historical analysis of an Australian accounting association, 1886–
1903. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 23(2), 155–187.
Cixous, H., & Clement, C. (1986). The newly born woman (B. Wing, Trans.).
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Coates J., & Woods, N. (2007, April 29). Gretna secure Premier league
football and third successive promotion with last-gasp winner. The
Sunday Herald, Sports section, p. 1.
Cooper, C. (1992). The non and nom of accounting for (m)other nature.
Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 5(3), 16–39.
Cooper, C., & Johnston, J. (2012). Vulgate accountability – Insights from
the ?eld of football. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal,
24(4), 602–634.
Cooper, D., & Robson, K. (2009). Practitioners, work and ?rms. In J.
Edwards & S. Walker (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Accounting
History. London: Routledge.
Cork, K., & Barty-King, H. (1988). Cork on Cork. London: Macmillan.
57
Bourdieu admitted his involvement with the French strikes of Decem-
ber 1995 directly led to a change from the Weberian (Weber, 1958)
in?uence in his work (Bourdieu, 2008, p. 279).
58
This league was formed by the East of Scotland FA in 1923.
59
Williamson told us that the IP would not allow Gretna 2008 to play at
the Gretna ground, Raydale Park, even though the new team offered to
cover the costs. In June 2011, Gretna 2008 signed a 25-year lease for
playing at Raydale Park.
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 127
Cousins, J., Mitchell, A., Sikka, P., Cooper, C., & Arnold, P. (2000). Insolvent
abuse: Regulating the insolvency industry. Basildon: Association for
Accountancy and Business Affairs.
Crouch, C. (2004). Post democracy. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Cmnd 8558 (1982). Report of the Review Committee on Insolvency Law and
Practice (The Cork Report). London: HMSO.
Dean, M. (1984, October 24). Bankruptcies doubled/Annual statistics
published. The Guardian, p. 13.
de Beelde, I. (2002). Creating a profession ‘out of nothing’? The case of the
Belgian auditing profession. Accounting, Organizations and Society,
27(4–5), 447–470.
Deloitte. (2009). Annual review of football ?nance. Sports Business Group.
Deloitte. (2010). Annual review of football ?nance. Sports Business Group.
Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and difference (A. Bass, Trans.). London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Durkheim, E. (1982). The rules of sociological method (W.D. Halls, Trans.).
New York: The Free Press.
Emirbayer, M., & Johnson, V. (2008). Bourdieu and organizational analysis.
Theory and Society, 37(1), 1–44.
Edwards, J. R., & Walker, S. P. (2010). Lifestyle, status and occupational
differentiation in Victorian accountancy. Accounting, Organizations
and Society, 35(1), 2–22.
Ezzamel, M., Zezhong Xiao, J., & Pan, A. (2007). Political ideology and
accounting regulation in China. Accounting, Organizations and Society,
32(7–8), 669–700.
Fisher, L. (2010). Insolvency Boom. Accountancy Magazine, January: Tax
Stands Still, p. 27.
Flood, J., Abbey, R., Skordaki, E., & Aber, P. (1995). The professional
restructuring of corporate rescue: Company voluntary arrangements and
the London approach. London: ACCA.
Flood, J., & Skordaki, E. (1995). Insolvency practitioners and big corporate
insolvencies. London: ACCA.
Fowler, B. (2000). Reading Bourdieu on society and culture. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Friedland, R. (2009). The endless ?elds of Pierre Bourdieu. Organization,
16(6), 887–917.
Finch, V. (2009). Corporate insolvency law: Perspectives and principles (2nd
ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gamble, A. (1988). Privatization, Thatcherism, and the British State.
Journal of Law and Society, 16(1), 1–20.
Gamble, A. (1994). The free economy and the strong state: The politics of
Thatcherism (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan.
Garrigou, A. (2006). Illusio in Sport. Sport in Society, 9(4), 665–673.
Gibbons, P. (2002). Association Football in Victorian England – A History of
the Game from 1863 to 1900. Peterborough, England: Fast Print
Publishing.
Gillard, M. (2009, December 13). Advisers rake in £3bn from failed ?rms;
Money men take fat fees from bankrupt companies as creditors lose
out. The Sunday Times, p. 5.
Giroux, H. (1983). Theories of Reproduction and Resistance in the new
sociology of education: A critical analysis. Harvard Educational Review,
53(3), 257–293.
Glib, C. L. (1966). The growth of modern professions. Harper Row: London &
New York.
Grenfell, M. (2004). Pierre Bourdieu: Agent provocateur. London & New
York: Continuum.
Guttman, A. (1994). Games and empires: Modern sports and cultural
imperialism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hall, S., Szymanski, S., & Zimbalist, A. S. (2002). Testing causality between
team performance and payroll: The cases of major league baseball
and English soccer. Journal of Sports Economics, 3(2), 149–168.
Halliday, S. (2009, 5th February) Clubs receive early payment from SPL,
The Scotsman, p. 68.
Halliday, T. C., & Carruthers, B. G. (1996). The Moral Regulation of
Markets: Professions, Privatization and the English Insolvency Act
1986. Accounting Organizations and Society, 21(4), 371–413.
Hamilton, G., & Ó hÓgartaigh, C. (2009). The third policeman: ‘The true
and fair view’, language and the habitus of accounting. Critical
Perspectives on Accounting, 20(8), 910–920.
Hao, Z. P. (1999). Regulation and organization of accountants in China.
Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 12(3), 286–302.
Heelas, P., & Morris, P. (1992). Enterprise culture: Its values and value. In
P. Heelas & P. Morris (Eds.), The values of the enterprise culture: The
moral debate. London: Routledge.
Hinks, G. (2003, May 22). Solving football’s cash crisis. Accountancy Age, p.
7.
Jayasinghe, K., & Wickramasinghe, D. (2011). Power over empowerment:
Encountering development accounting in a Sri Lankan ?shing village.
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 22(4), 396–414.
Jones, E. (1981). Accountancy and The British Economy, 1840–1980: The
Evolution of Ernst & Whinney. London: B. T. Batsford.
Joseph, K. (1976). Monetarism is not enough. London: Centre for Policy
Studies.
Kooistra, Paul (2005, August 12). Bend it Like Bourdieu: Class, Gender and
Race in American Youth Soccer. Paper presented at the annual meeting
of the American Sociological Association, Marriott Hotel, Loews
Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA. Accessed 18.08.11.
Kuper, S., & Symanski, S. (2009), Soccernomics: Why England Lose, Why
Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey and
Even India are Destined to Become the New Kings of the World’s Most
Popular Sport. New York: Nation Books.
Kuper, S. (2010, April 16). Why football players’ salaries will keep
rising. The Financial Times. Accessed 18.
08.11.
Kurunmaki, L. (1999). Professional vs. ?nancial capital in the ?eld of
health care–struggles for the redistribution of power and control.
Accounting, Organizations and Society, 24(2), 95–124.
Lever, J. (1995). Soccer Madness. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Macdonald, K. M. (1995). The sociology of the professions. London: Sage
Publications.
Malsch, B., Gendron, Y., & Grazzini, F. (2011). Investigating
interdisciplinary translations: The in?uence of Pierre Bourdieu on
accounting literature. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal,
24(2), 194–228.
Millie, A. (2011). Value judgments and criminalization. British Journal of
Criminology, 51(2), 278–295.
Moher, B. (2004, February 26). Tackling football’s ?nancial goliaths.
Accountancy Age, p. 7.
Neu, D., Ocampo Gomez, E., Graham, C., & Heincke, M. (2006). ‘Informing’
technologies and the World Bank. Accounting, Organizations and
Society, 31(7), 635–662.
Oakes, L., Townley, B., & Cooper, D. J. (1998). Business planning as
pedagogy: Language and control in a changing institutional ?eld.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 43, 257–292.
Of?ce of Fair Trading (2010), The market for corporate insolvency
practitioners: A market study. OFT, 1245, June.
Osborn, D. (1999). From pollution control to sustainable development:
Lucid law for fuzzy objectives. Environmental Law Review, 1(2),
79–81.
Pattullo, A. (2008, March 13). Gretna face closure if GBP 30,000 isn’t
found. The Scotsman, p. 68.
Power, M. (1992). After calculation? Re?ections on critique of economic
reason by André Gorz. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 17(5),
477–499.
Power, M. (1997). Expertise and the construction of relevance:
Accountants and environmental audit. Accounting, Organizations and
Society, 22(2), 123–146.
Proust, A. (1970). Une sociologie sterile: « La Reproduction ». Esprit, Dec.,
851–861.
Ramirez, C. (2001). Understanding social closure in its cultural context:
Accounting practitioners in France (1920–1939). Accounting,
Organizations and Society, 26(4–5), 391–418.
Ramirez, C. (2009). Constructing the governable small practitioner: The
changing nature of professional bodies and the management of
professional accountants’ identities in the UK. Accounting,
Organizations and Society, 34(3–4), 381–408.
Reay, D. (2010). From the theory of practice to the practice of theory:
Working with Bourdieu in research in higher education choice. In E.
Silva & A. Warde (Eds.), Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu’s Legacy: Setting
Accounts and Developing Alternatives. London: Routledge.
Schwarcz, S. L. (2002). Private Ordering. Northwestern University Law
Review, 97(1), 319–349.
Smith, D. (2008, May 9) Irate creditor says ‘no way’ club will play next
season. The Scotsman, p. 64.
Social Issues Research Centre Report (2008). Football Passions. Accessed 18.08.11.
Stein, M. J. (2008). Beyond the boardroom: Governmental perspectives on
corporate governance. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal,
21(7), 1001–1025.
Suddaby, R., Cooper, D. J., & Greenwood, R. (2007). Transnational
regulation of professional services: Governance dynamics of ?eld
level organizational change. Accounting, Organizations and Society,
32(4–5), 333–362.
Symon, K., (2004). Hat trick; After working on three football club
insolvencies Bryan Jackson believes only cool business sense can
save the day. The Sunday Herald, May 30, p. 5.
128 C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129
Szymanski, S., & Smith, R. (1997). The English Football Industry, Pro?t,
Performance and Industrial Structure. International Review of Applied
Economics, 11(1), 135–153.
Tweedale, G., & Warren, R. (2004). Chapter 11 and Asbestos: Encouraging
private enterprise or conspiring to avoid liability? Journal of Business
Ethics, 55(1), 31–42.
Uche, C. U. (2002). Professional accounting development in Nigeria:
Threats from the inside and outside. Accounting, Organizations and
Society, 27(4–5), 471–496.
Walker, S. P. (1995). The genesis of professional organization in Scotland:
A contextual analysis. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 20(4),
285–310.
Walker, S. P. (2004). The genesis of professional organisation in English
accountancy. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 29(2), 127–156.
Walvin, J. (1975). The people’s game. London: Allen Lane.
Walvin, J. (2001). The only game: Football in our times. London: Longman.
Ward, B. (2002). A guide to insolvency. In S. Binns, S. Hamil, M. Holt, J.
Michie, C. Oughton, L. Shailer, et al. (Eds.), The state of the game: The
corporate governance of football clubs 2002 (pp. 53–56). Football
Governance Research Centre.
Weber, M. (1958). Politics as a vocation. In H. H. Gerth, & C. Wright Mills
(Eds.), Essays in sociology (M. Weber, Trans.) (pp. 77–128). New York:
Oxford University Press.
Whelan, T. (1996). A voice for the ordinary football supporter. Consumer
Policy Review, 6(4), 142–149.
Willmott, H. (1986). Organizing the profession: A theoretical and
historical examination of the development of the major
accountancy bodies in the UK. Accounting, Organizations and Society,
11(6), 555–580.
Xu, Y., & Xu, X. (2003). Becoming professional: Chinese accountants in
early twentieth-century Shanghai. The Accounting Historians Journal,
30(1), 129–153.
Xu, Y., & Xu, X. (2008). Social actors, cultural capital, and the state: The
standardization of bank accounting classi?cation and terminology in
early twentieth-century China. Accounting, Organizations and Society,
33(1), 73–102.
Young, P. (1969). A History of British Football. London: Sportsmans Book
Club.
C. Cooper, Y. Joyce / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 108–129 129

doc_666095813.pdf