Description
According to Bourdieu, legitimacy is a scarce symbolic resource that is subject to struggle
and (re)negotiation. Focusing on the emergence and operation of the salary cap audit programs
in the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia and Canadian Football League (CFL)
in Canada, this article explores the way in which auditors compete for legitimacy in new
audit spaces. We highlight the way that capital from intersecting semi-autonomous fields
were drawn upon to generate legitimacy for the new roles. We also draw attention to a
range of practical strategies, including conscious ingratiation, sanctioning, and fairness
appeals, which were mobilised to impose the auditors in their roles, populate the field with
new rules and confer a new order.
The legitimacy of new assurance providers: Making the cap ?t
Paul Andon
a,1
, Clinton Free
a,?
, Prabhu Sivabalan
b,2
a
Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
b
Faculty of Business, University of Technology, Sydney 2007, Australia
a b s t r a c t
According to Bourdieu, legitimacy is a scarce symbolic resource that is subject to struggle
and (re)negotiation. Focusing on the emergence and operation of the salary cap audit pro-
grams in the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia and Canadian Football League (CFL)
in Canada, this article explores the way in which auditors compete for legitimacy in new
audit spaces. We highlight the way that capital from intersecting semi-autonomous ?elds
were drawn upon to generate legitimacy for the new roles. We also draw attention to a
range of practical strategies, including conscious ingratiation, sanctioning, and fairness
appeals, which were mobilised to impose the auditors in their roles, populate the ?eld with
new rules and confer a new order. The contrasting case studies reveal the importance of
contextual elements and the con?guration of the ?eld of power in each case. Implications
for the claims of the accounting profession to new audit spaces are discussed.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The imposition of audit-styled technologies into a
diverse and growing range of societal domains has been a
persistent feature of recent decades (Jeacle & Carter,
2011; Power, 1995; Power, 2000b). The words audit and
assurance have attached to a wide array of theatres, some-
times of controversial provenance. These labels continue to
connect with idealised notions of accountability, steward-
ship and responsible administration, re?ecting the ‘‘vague
idea of audit’’ (Power, 2000b) as an important reference
point in public and private governance. As the emerging
vistas of auditing in the 21st century become more diverse
and far-reaching than ever, the movement of assurance
beyond the traditional boundaries of the ?nancial audit
raises important questions about the extent to which con-
ventional audit concepts can travel to new ?elds, as well as
the receptivity of new ?elds to purveyors of new
assurance services (who may or may not be professionally
credentialed).
Recognising a growing interest in auditing and assur-
ance in new audit spaces (Andon & Free, 2012; Free, Salte-
rio, & Shearer, 2009; Gendron & Barrett, 2004; Jamal &
Sunder, 2011; Jeacle & Carter, 2011), we aim to investigate
efforts by auditors to establish jurisdiction in new audit
spaces through two in-depth ?eld studies of the position-
ing of salary cap auditors
3
in the National Rugby League
(NRL) in Australia and Canadian Football League (CFL) in
Canada. The salary cap auditor in each league has estab-
lished himself as a respected and widely recognised ?gure
that has been increasingly invoked as a symbol of fair-play
and propriety by leaders within the respective codes:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2014.01.005
0361-3682/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
?
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9385 9705; fax: +61 2 9385 5925.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Andon), c.free@unsw.
edu.au (C. Free), [email protected] (P. Sivabalan).
1
Tel.: +61 2 9385 5821; fax: +61 2 9385 5925.
2
Tel.: +61 2 9514 3131; fax: +61 2 9514 3669.
3
In broad terms, salary cap auditors are responsible for monitoring and
enforcing the salary cap, a limit on the amount of money a team can spend
on player salaries in each league. The practice of salary caps remains a
highly controversial one; salary caps have been both held up as essential for
the sustainability of professional sports leagues (Hiestand, 2004) and
castigated as unfair, ineffective and even illegal (Buti, 1999).
Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
The salary cap audit team works incredibly hard to
monitor the clubs and deserves considerable recogni-
tion for the role it plays in making the Telstra Premier-
ship [the NRL’s elite national competition] the closest
and most exciting competition in Australian sport
(NRL, 2011).
The success of our salary management system under-
lines our teams’ commitment to putting a great product
on the ?eld and following sound business principles at
the same time. The work our board of governors and
our football leaders have done on this issue is an impor-
tant building block in our league’s strong foundation
(Mark Cohon, CFL Commissioner, quoted in Scianitti,
2012).
The motivation for this paper stems from two sources.
First, recent years witnessed an increase in auditing and
assurance of information published in a variety of new
spaces (Free et al., 2009; O’Dwyer et al., 2011). While many
authors have considered the way in which these services
have attached legitimacy to certi?ed data, auditees and
even third parties (Free et al., 2009), ‘‘much less has been
written about the process of acquiring and developing
the legitimacy of audit technologies themselves’’ (Robson,
Humphrey, Khalifa, & Jones, 2007, p. 421). Recent work
has begun to draw attention to a range of strategies em-
ployed by auditors seeking to promote their services in
new domains. Gendron and Barrett (2004) emphasise the
need for constructing stable and solid networks of support
while O’Dwyer et al. (2011) focus on key conforming,
selecting and manipulating activities aiming to secure
pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy for new assur-
ance forms (e.g. sustainability assurance). That is, while
several studies have examined the emerging vistas of
21st century auditing and initiatives aimed at professional
expansion, analysis of the efforts of ‘auditors’ appointed to
newly established roles to solidify their position and legit-
imacy remains in its infancy.
Second, this paper responds directly to calls for more
detailed empirical work examining the extension of
audit-type practices into new spaces (O’Dwyer et al.,
2011; Power, 2003) as well as ongoing calls for audit
researchers to enter the ?eld (Free et al., 2009; Gendron
& Spira, 2010; Humphrey, 2008). Due to a number of dif?-
culties in conducting ?eld research in the area, there have
been few empirical studies of the substance of these evolv-
ing discretionary assurance services (Pentland, 2000). Gi-
ven the phenomena under investigation, in-depth case-
based empirical work is suited to elaborating on an audi-
tor’s sources of legitimacy in practice. In both the CFL
and NRL, practitioners are revealed to be actively engaged
in pursuing strategies that draw upon their accumulated
capital and modify prevailing norms and modes of engage-
ment to develop and sustain networks of support.
We investigate these issues through an in-depth re-
view of archival sources and 18 interviews with key
stakeholders in the NRL and CFL salary cap. Our cases fol-
low the appointment and operation of the salary cap
auditor in each league. Despite inhabiting similar roles,
the appointed auditors are shown to possess markedly
different backgrounds and employ different resources,
tactics and dispositions to impose themselves in their
roles. The two case studies highlight practical strategies
– conscious ingratiation, sanctioning, and fairness appeals
– used by auditors seeking to establish themselves in
these new discretionary domains. They also raise ques-
tions about the applicability of conventional markers of
auditor legitimacy derived from ?nancial audit in new
assurance spaces, as well as prior claims made by many
in the accounting profession about the legitimacy of
accounting-trained auditors in new assurance spaces.
This paper is arranged as follows. The next section re-
views the emerging literature dealing with auditing and
assurance in new audit spaces. This is followed by an over-
view of the theoretical framework of the paper, informed
by the writings of Pierre Bourdieu. After a brief description
of the methods used in this study, we provide some back-
ground to the ?elds of football in which the two subject
cases are situated. The two case studies, documenting the
appointment and operation of the salary cap auditor roles
in the NRL in Australia and CFL in Canada, are presented,
compared and contrasted. The ?nal sections summarise
the major themes, contributions and conclusions of the
paper.
New ‘assurance’ services
In recent decades, numerous commentators have ob-
served a growing demand for audit-styled technologies
(Andon & Free, 2012; Free et al., 2009; Gendron & Barrett,
2004; Jamal & Sunder, 2011; Jeacle & Carter, 2011; Power,
2005). Power’s (1994, 2005) classic thesis regarding the
notion of the audit society is one of explosion – the immu-
table proliferation of programmes and practices of veri?ca-
tion in an ever growing range of organisational and social
domains, promulgated by the symbolic power of social
norms and expectations embodied in the notion of audit-
ing. According to Power, central to auditing’s symbolic
power is its ‘essential obscurity’ – that auditing work is
rather indeterminate and craft-like rather than precisely
codi?ed. This has led Power to suggest, along with pro-
grammatic shifts in styles of governance promoting desires
for accountability and veri?cation, that the foundations of
auditing’s rapid spread in organisational and social life lie
in the seductiveness of vaguely de?ned auditing ideals.
He emphasises that auditing, as such, remains a ‘craft’,
rather than a precisely codi?ed technique. Power sees it
as no accident that practitioners talk of providing ‘comfort’
(Pentland, 1993) rather than ‘proof.’
A range of researchers, commentators and professional
organisations have argued that the credibility that
accounting professionals have built up in ?nancial audit
has strong appeal in new assurance spaces. In the US in
the late 1990s, the Elliott Report earmarked a range of
new opportunities for the profession occasioned by the
‘audit society’ in areas as diverse as risk assessment, busi-
ness performance measurement, information systems reli-
ability, electronic commerce, health care performance
measurement and care of the elderly (AICPA, 1997). More
recently, in the burgeoning area of environmental and sus-
tainability reporting, some researchers have suggested that
76 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
accountants are especially well placed to provide assur-
ance services (Huggins, Green, & Simnett, 2011; Simnett,
Vanstraelen, & Chua, 2009).
However, accounting profession claims to new audit
spaces have proven neither automatic nor mechanical.
Power has documented both audit explosions (signi?cant
growth in audit activity in an expanding array of ?elds
(Power, 1994; Power, 2005)) and implosions (as audit-re-
lated functions become supplanted by the risk manage-
ment movement (Power, 2000a)). While the profession
has been successful in certain areas (for example, ‘auditing’
of Financial Times business school rankings (Free et al.,
2009) and value-for-money or performance auditing
(Radcliffe, 1998, 1999)), it has failed in others (such as
WebTrust (Barrett & Gendron, 2006)), while its status re-
mains contested elsewhere (as has been observed in sus-
tainability report assurance (Green & Zhou, 2011; Mock,
Strohm, & Swartz, 2007; Simnett et al., 2009), indeed
increasing digitisation of knowledge has led some to sug-
gest that the audit profession is at risk of being left behind
(D’Adderio & Pollock, 2012; Jeacle & Carter, 2011). Hum-
phrey and Owen (2000) contest the primacy placed by
Power on the strength of the very idea of audit as an over-
riding explanation for the signi?cant spread of auditing.
They argue that audit’s spread is also fundamentally condi-
tioned by efforts to establish legitimacy for auditing pro-
grams and practices, particularly in new spaces. Can the
observed spread of auditing merely be explained by its
inherent ‘saleability’ within contemporary life? Such an
explanation offers little in terms of the legitimisation of
auditors in practice, the challenges that such efforts endure
and how the means for establishing legitimacy may be
conditioned by context. Recent ?eld-based research
(O’Dwyer et al., 2011) has begun to challenge this position
and point directly to strategic activity by auditors and oth-
ers to establish demand and generate legitimacy within
new domains.
Our use of the term legitimacy derives from Bourdieu’s
articulation of the concept. He de?nes legitimacy as ‘‘[a]n
institution, action or usage which is dominant, but not
recognised as such, that is to say, which is tacitly accepted’’
(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 110). Put more prosaically, something
(e.g. auditing) is considered ‘legitimate’ in a particular do-
main (e.g. salary cap compliance) when it is generally and
implicitly acknowledged as valid and thus deemed conso-
nant with broadly accepted norms, values and beliefs of
that domain. This de?nition draws attention to the collec-
tive construction of legitimacy, where presumptions about
the social acceptability of prevailing beliefs and patterns of
behaviour take precedence over individual endorsement
and censure.
To summarise, we focus in this paper on the activities of
legitimising an emergent auditor in a new audit space. The
research literature has tended to portray auditors as
bestowing legitimacy, by offering a professional opinion
based on a rigorous program of audit testing and proce-
dures (for a discussion, see Free et al., 2009). As such, the
legitimacy of the auditor is largely presumed. While the lit-
erature has begun to examine the contested processes that
are involved in seeking to extend the legitimacy of auditing
to new areas (e.g. Barrett & Gendron, 2006; Gendron &
Barrett, 2004; O’Dwyer et al., 2011) and many commenta-
tors remain excited about the possibilities of 21st century
audit, little work has focused on the ways auditors seek to
secure legitimacy within newly established audit ?elds.
Thus, the key research question of this paper is: how do
‘auditors’ in new assurance spaces endeavour to accrue
legitimacy in their position in their ?eld?
Playing the game: Bourdieu and struggle for legitimacy
As a former rugby player himself (Calhoun, 2003), it is
perhaps unsurprising that Bourdieu was drawn to the met-
aphor of a game. The type of ‘game’ Bourdieu had in mind
is an intensely competitive one, where players compete on
a ?eld of play governed by conventions that players accept
for stakes that they consider to be important. However, as
Moi (1991) points out, not everyone will play the game in
the same way and participation in the game depends on
each individual’s habitus or their ‘feel for the game’ and
their various forms of capital. What makes for a good strat-
egy is determined by the rules of the game, but also by
assessing strengths and weaknesses of one’s opponents
and one’s self. In this way, at its broadest level, Bourdieu’s
work ‘‘integrates a theory of social structure (the ?eld), a
theory of power relations (the various forms of capital),
and a theory of the individual (habitus)’’ (Malsch, Gendron,
& Grazzini, 2011, p. 198) for understanding a given do-
main’s ‘logic of practice’, including its opus operatum of so-
cial structures and modus operandi for action (see Malsch
et al., 2011 for a review of Bourdieu in?uenced publica-
tions in accounting).
Field is a meso-level concept denoting the social world
in which actors are embedded and toward which they ori-
ent their actions (Sallaz & Zavisca, 2007). Martin (2004)
identi?es three distinct senses of the concept in Bourdieu’s
writings – a topological space of positions, a ?eld of rela-
tional forces and a battle?eld of contestation – but argues
that the latter is the most signi?cant, as exempli?ed by his
frequent use of a game metaphor. Each ?eld has rules for
how to play, stakes and forms of value and, in the process
of playing, participants effectively reaf?rm the game itself.
Bourdieu views society as comprised of semi-autonomous
?elds with both autonomous (such as athletic prowess in
rugby) and heteronomous elements (e.g. commercial inter-
ests underpinning the game). In each ?eld, there are struc-
tured positions that are reproduced or change according to
the agency of the players.
The most important game in any ?eld is establishing
the rules to de?ne ‘‘the legitimate principles of the ?eld’’
(Bourdieu, 1991, p. 242). In a given ?eld, agents invest time
and energy competing for, accumulating, exchanging and
exploiting various forms of capital, resources (e.g. attri-
butes, capacities, skills, knowledge) deemed valuable as
they can be mobilised as ‘weapons’ or stakes in struggles
over contextual ascendancy and status (Bourdieu & Wac-
quant, 1992; Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008). This depiction
of capital is reminiscent of classical political economy in
a broader sense, in that forms of capital are socially valued
and exchangeable for one another, as de?ned by the ?eld
(Thompson in Bourdieu, 1991, pp. 14–15). Further, it high-
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 77
lights that agents are positioned and gain authority to act
on the basis of the relative volume, composition and
?eld-speci?c value of capital they can access (Emirbayer
& Johnson, 2008; Malsch et al., 2011). Generic forms in-
clude economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. As
Bourdieu (1987, pp. 3–4) puts it:
. . .the structure of a [social] space is given by the distri-
bution of the various forms of capital, that is, by the dis-
tribution of the properties which are active within the
universe under study – those properties capable of con-
ferring strength, power and consequently pro?t on their
holder. . . These fundamental social powers are, accord-
ing to my empirical investigations, ?rstly economic cap-
ital, in its various kinds; secondly, cultural capital or
better, informational capital, again in its different kinds;
and thirdly two forms of capital that are very strongly
correlated, social capital, which consists of resources
based on the connections and group membership, and
symbolic capital, which is the form the different types
of capital take once they are perceived and recognized
as legitimate.
Economic capital simply refers to the accumulation of
money or other ?nancial resources that can be used to pur-
chase power, positions and people, as well as goods, ser-
vices and other forms of capital. Cultural capital consists
of forms of skill and expertise that agents consciously ac-
quire or passively absorb, which are valued in their ?eld.
Cultural capital can be embodied in personal qualities, cap-
tured in physical objects or institutionally recognised in
formal quali?cations or credentials. Social capital re?ects
the sum of resources agents are linked to by virtue of their
social connections, networks and alliances (Bourdieu,
1986, pp. 243 and 248). Symbolic capital refers to capital
that takes an elevated status because it is deemed to be
legitimate. Bourdieu draws a parallel between the concept
of symbolic capital and legitimacy because it is symbolic
capital that de?nes what forms and uses of capital are
recognised as legitimate bases of social positions in a given
?eld. Accordingly, the search for legitimacy in a given ?eld
is in effect an attempt to convert economic, cultural and
social capital so as to accrue symbolic capital. Bourdieu’s
analysis of semi-autonomous ?elds and differences in
forms of capital and the dynamics of conversion between
them is one of the most original and important features
of his work. These concerns are well suited to an analysis
of attempts to establish legitimacy by an auditor in a
new audit space.
Each agent occupying a position in a ?eld also acts
according to a particular habitus – personal dispositions,
inclinations, attitudes and values that inform an agent’s ac-
tions and thoughts within a particular ?eld (Bourdieu,
1977, 1995). Habitus is socially learned, in that agents ab-
sorb dispositions, inclinations and propensities over time
in much the same way that children learn to speak and
think in the language of their mother tongue (Bourdieu,
1990, p. 67). Like Giddens and others, Bourdieu seeks to
transcend traditional structure/agency dichotomies by
holding out habitus as a type of analytical glue that holds
together the notion of the agent reproducing or changing
structures through action. Habitus predisposes agents to
act and react in certain ways in particular situations
through the unconscious in?uence of dominant, natura-
lised beliefs and values (doxa), and learned ways of physi-
cal expression (bodily hexis: e.g. ways of speaking,
standing, walking). However, while habitus is the product
of conditioning and provides a set of feasible ways of
thinking and acting in given ?elds, agents are not rigidly
programmed by it (Bourdieu, 1998). Bourdieu’s formula-
tions here leave room for interpretation. At one extreme,
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus has been cast as deterministic
and reductive (see Fuchs, 2003; Jenkins, 1982; King, 2000),
while others recognise that while the habitus idea can be
applied as a reproductive force it can also be used in a
much more ?exible way (see Lizardo, 2004 for a discus-
sion). Following others (see Adams, 2006; Chia & Holt,
2006; Reay, 2004), we argue that Bourdieu leaves scope
for strategic agency within the broad con?nes of one’s
habitus.
In Bourdieusian terms, auditors are ‘‘cultural intermedi-
aries’’ involved in the provision of symbolic goods and ser-
vices (Negus, 2002). As such, they are able to exert, from
their position within cultural institutions, a certain amount
of cultural authority as shapers of opinion. However, espe-
cially in new audit spaces, there is an inherent contestation
for authority and recognition, whereby agents draw upon
various capitals and manoeuvre within their prevailing
habitus. The capitals which are most valued in this struggle
(the ‘‘trump cards’’ in Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1992)
terms) are cultural capital (technical knowledge), social
capital (relationships with clients and other stakeholders)
and symbolic capital (reputation). Building these capitals
becomes part of an auditors ‘‘feel for the game’’; it is what
animates their work in the ?eld. In new audit spaces, this
feel for the game must be developed through relational
interaction and attentiveness to doxically taken obligations
(Cooper & Joyce, 2013). It is these concerns in the context
of the NRL and CFL to which we now turn.
Methodology
In order to explore the processes through which legiti-
mation is pursued, we employed a comparative case study
design of the role of the salary cap auditor in two high-pro-
?le professional sports leagues – the NRL in Australia and
the CFL in Canada. Table 1 provides a brief dramatis perso-
nae of key agents within these two ?elds, as they relate to
the administration of and compliance to the salary caps of
the two leagues.
The use of comparative cases is important to our analy-
sis. As Bourdieu suggests, agents similarly positioned with-
in given ?elds may not necessarily ‘play the game’ in the
same way. Much depends on an individual’s background
– their capital and habitus – and how these enable/con-
strain one to cope with the expectations of their position-
ing in their ?eld. The CFL and NRL have many similarities in
terms of their respective structure and administration.
Both attract signi?cant domestic attention and employ a
similar regulatory regime, importantly underpinned by a
salary cap on player remuneration. The salary cap in both
leagues is remarkably similar in value – in 2012, the salary
78 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
cap in the NRL was $AUS4.4 million (for 25 players) while
in the CFL, it stood at $CAD4.35 million (for 45 players).
However, as will be explained further in later sections,
there were also signi?cant differences in how each auditor
came to be appointed within his respective league. Conse-
quently, the CFL and NRL cases provide a valuable compar-
ative for examining similarities and differences in how the
two salary cap auditors sought to impose themselves in
their roles following their respective appointments.
This study draws on 18 interviews with a range of key
actors in the NRL and CFL as well as a range of archival
sources. Table 2 offers a summary of this data source.
4
The interviews were supplemented with analysis of a range
of relevant archival materials, coming in two main forms:
(i) audit manuals and worksheet templates used by the
NRL and CFL audit teams and (ii) media releases and news-
paper coverage of the NRL and CFL salary cap and their im-
pacts. Table 3 provides further precisions about these two
sources.
We began our data analysis with an in-depth examina-
tion of each case through the lens of our research question
(Eisenhardt, 1989): how do ‘auditors’ in new assurance
spaces endeavour to accrue legitimacy in their position in
their ?eld? We read the cases independently to identify
the theoretical constructs, relationships and longitudinal
patterns within each case. We coded interviews using N-
Vivo and tables (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to facilitate
analysis. We each developed an understanding of major ac-
tions/events in the ?eld, which we reconciled by going
back to the data and informants in the ?eld. We then
turned to cross-case analysis, in which the insights that
emerged from each case were compared with those from
the other case to identify key patterns and themes (Eisen-
hardt & Graebner, 2007). Discrepancies and agreements in
the emergent ?ndings were noted and investigated further
by revisiting the data. We followed an iterative process of
moving between theory, data and the literature to re?ne
our ?ndings, relate them to existing theories and clarify
our contributions.
Bourdieu’s work played a pivotal role in analysing the
data. Numerous researchers have commented on the dif-
?culties in operationalising Bourdieu’s concepts (see
McNay, 1999; Reay, 2004; Sweetman, 2003), particularly
with respect to habitus. For clarity, we present our
empirics in three parts. First, we present the historical
context of the appointments in both ?elds, in keeping
with Bourdieu’s aversion for a-historical analyses. This
is followed by an overview of the capital possessed by
the appointees at the time of their respective appoint-
ments. Third, we outline the practical actions and strate-
gies undertaken in an effort to secure symbolic capital in
the new roles.
Table 1
Dramatis personae of key agents associated with the CFL and NRL salary caps.
Name Position and background
National Rugby League (NRL) – Australia
Ian Schubert NRL Salary Cap Auditor (1999 – present)
Formerly a rugby league player of note (1975–1989) with the Eastern Suburbs, Western Suburbs, and Manly-Warrin-
gah clubs
Following his playing retirement, he held lower grade coaching roles at Western Suburbs and Canterbury-Bankstown
Also held club-level administrative roles, including a marketing role for Eastern Suburbs (where he acted as the club’s
CEO for a time), and a role in Super League as its International Operations Manager
Jamie L’Oste Brown Assistant Salary Cap Auditor (2007 – present)
A quali?ed accountant
Experience in ?nancial accounting roles both prior to and while employed at the NRL
The only person who assists Schubert in his work on a full-time basis
David Gallop NRL CEO (2002–2012)
Formerly NRL Director of Legal and Business Affairs
Also known for his involvement with Super League, as their Legal Affairs Manager for Super League
Succeeded by David Smith (2013 – present)
Club Administrators CEOs, CFOs and salary cap compliance-related staff within each club
Players and club
football staff
Includes players, coaches, and other training staff
Canadian Football League (CFL) – Canada
Trevor Hardy Director, Salary Expenditure Reporting (2006 – present)
Professionally quali?ed with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants
Only one of 255 Canadian CAs with a specialist designation in Investigative and Forensic Accounting
Had several years of forensic accounting experience at accounting ?rm BDO Dunwoody prior to joining the CFL
Proclaimed expert in the use of analytics, statistical modelling and forecasting
Tom Wright CFL CEO (2002–2006)
Instrumental in driving a revitalised CFL salary cap regime, including the creation of the salary cap auditor role
Succeeded by Mark Cohon (2007 – present)
CFL Central
Administrators
Senior administrators in the CFL
Initially assisted Hardy in building rapport and social networks in the ?eld
Club Administrators CEOs, CFOs and salary cap compliance-related staff within each club
Players and club
football staff
Includes players, coaches, and other training staff
4
Except for those in of?cial salary cap auditing positions (Ian Schubert,
Jamie L’Oste-Brown, Trevor Hardy), the interviewees listed in Table 1 have
been de-identi?ed throughout the paper.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 79
The name of the game: The ?elds of football
Irrespective of the code, ?elds of football share many
similarities in terms of the logic of the ‘gaming space’
(Friedland, 2009), including the stakes at play, shared
illusio
5
in these stakes, ‘rules of play’ conditioning contests
over resources, stakes and in?uence, and valued capital in
these ?elds. At the same time, historical contingencies and
contextual in?uences importantly shape struggles that tran-
spire in different ?elds of football. This section elaborates on
these matters as they have informed the emergence and
positioning of salary cap auditing/auditors within the CFL
and NRL.
Central to ?elds of football is the value placed on cul-
tural accolades that accrue to clubs from on-?eld success,
captured in symbolic tokens like competition trophies,
?ags and plates. A central ingredient to competitive suc-
cess is the possession of particular forms of capital and
the right habitus (Cooper & Johnston, 2012) – strategies,
skills, tactics and feel for play possessed by a club’s players
Table 2
Table of interviewees.
No. Interviewee Position Organisation type
1 Ian Schubert Salary Cap Auditor NRL
2 NRL Club Administrator 1 CFO NRL Club
3 Ian Schubert Salary Cap Auditor NRL
4 Jamie L’Oste Brown Assistant Salary Cap Auditor NRL
5 NRL Club Administrator 2 General Manager Rugby League NRL Club
6 NRL Club Administrator 3 General Manager Operation NRL Club
7 Trevor Hardy Director, Finance & Business Operations CFL
8 Trevor Hardy Director, Finance & Business Operations CFL
9 NRL Club Administrator 4 CFO NRL Club
10 CFL Central Administrator 1 VP, Finance and Business Operations CFL
11 CFL Central Administrator 2 COO CFL
12 CFL Central Administrator 3 VP, Football Operations CFL
13 NRL Club Administrator 4 CFO NRL Club
14 CFL Club Administrator 1 CEO CFL Club
15 NRL Club Coach 1 Head Coach NRL Club
16 Trevor Hardy Director, Finance & Business Operations CFL
17 CFL Club Administrator 2 General Manager CFL Club
18 CFL Club Administrator 3 CEO CFL Club
Table 3
Summary table of background information and data sources.
Data source NRL CFL
Background information
Location Australia Canada
Founded 1998 1958
Number of
participating teams
(2012)
16 8
Salary Cap introduced
(latest attempt)
1998 2006
Headline Salary Cap
(2012 season)
$4.4 million for the 25 highest paid players at
each club
$4.35 million for a roster of 45 players
Appointed Salary Cap
auditor (current)
Ian Schubert Trevor Hardy
Interviews
Number 9 9
Public document sources
Newspaper articles 1,117 unique articles from major Australian
newspapers
234 unique articles from major Canadian newspapers
Websites NRL.com CFL.com
Salary Cap documents
Policy document 256 pages (NRL Playing Contract and
Remuneration Rules)
120 pages (CFL Collective Bargaining Agreement 2010)
Procedures
documents
20 pages (NRL template audit program, work
papers, and club (auditee) instructions)
40 pages (CFL template audit program, work papers, template
declarations from clubs, and club (auditee) instructions)
Published reports Sample audit report Sample audit report Sample interpretation bulletin
5
Bourdieu uses the term illusio to refer to the value that agents ascribe to
the stakes involved in a given ?eld, and the unthinking commitment that
agents make to pursue these stakes (Bourdieu, 1998).
80 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
and its coaching staff. For those invested in the stakes of a
particular club (e.g. players, club owners, boards and
administrators, coaching staff), competitive success brings
symbolic capital (prestige and status), which can be con-
verted to economic capital from gate receipts and mem-
bership sales, merchandise sales and sponsorships. In
turn, successful clubs are more able to invest in their cul-
tural capital (e.g. facilities, playing and coaching talent),
for even more success – a ‘victorious cycle’ of cultural, eco-
nomic, social and symbolic capital accumulation (Cooper &
Johnston, 2012).
Fields of football, like most elite professional sports, are
now also ‘big business’, generating economic capital on a
scale unimaginable only a few decades ago.
6
Entrepreneur-
ial sport administrators and their ?nancial backers have
turned ‘‘games that people love into pro?t-making ventures’’
(Schimmel, 2001, p. 37). Crucial to the commodi?cation of
?elds of football is attractive cultural and symbolic capital
(e.g. perceived quality, excitement and respectability of the
game and its participants) that entice ‘fan interest’ in its
stakes (i.e. to share in its illusio), and convert into economic
capital through merchandise royalties, sponsorships, and
broadcasting rights. To pursue greater economic capital,
football leagues seek to boost their cultural and symbolic
capital, taking actions such as: (i) changes to on- and off-
?eld ‘rules of the game’; (ii) participating in community
engagement programs and charity initiatives; (iii) conduct-
ing public investigations into and sanctioning player mis-
conduct; and (iv) deploying crisis management strategies
in response to serious scandals (see Andon & Free, 2012).
Salary caps are another manifestation of these efforts. By
limiting the economic capital clubs can use to attract playing
talent, salary caps are intended to enhance the competitive-
ness, and hence symbolic capital, of on-?eld competition. At
the same time, they aim to temper threats to a football lea-
gue’s cultural and symbolic capital from ?nancial instability
arising from unfettered spending as clubs compete for play-
ing talent.
Fields of football are also shaped by their own distinct
historical contingencies, and autonomous and heterono-
mous in?uences, which contextualise how stakes, contests
and power relations play out in a given football code. Coo-
per and Johnston (2012) and Cooper and Joyce (2013) high-
light some of the unique conditions bearing on
developments in Association Football (soccer) in the UK,
such as the economic and symbolic power of elite teams
and their billionaire owners relative to their competition
administrators, and the entrenched gulf between rich and
poor clubs in successfully accumulating key capital. The
CFL and NRL also have their own unique conditions, which
have shaped the emergence and positioning of salary cap
regimes within them.
The National Rugby League (NRL)
The NRL, based in Australia, is the world’s pre-eminent
rugby league competition. The origins of this ?eld of foot-
ball lie in cultural and economic struggles within the Eng-
lish Rugby Football Union (RFU) between the largely
upper-class leadership and working-class players, over its
strict amateur orthodoxy and the right to ‘broken-time
payments’ for time taken off work to play (Evans, 2012).
A breakaway movement (the Northern Union) was formed
in 1895, from which the game of rugby league emerged.
The ?rst Australian rugby league competition (The New
South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) premiership) was
formed in 1908, following a comparable breakaway move-
ment (Evans, 2012). Since the NSWRL’s inauguration, rug-
by league’s cultural appeal has burgeoned. In 1995,
governance of the game was transferred to the Australian
Rugby League (ARL), re?ecting its growing signi?cance.
Rugby league in Australia has also faced signi?cant
challenges to its symbolic capital. Arguably its greatest
challenge was the highly controversial ‘Super League war’
of the 1995–1997 seasons, which was primarily driven
by competition for pay television content between two of
Australia’s most powerful media identities (Kerry Packer
and Rupert Murdoch), and resulted in a second, break-
away News Limited-sponsored Super League competition
in 1997 (Rowe, 1997). Secret negotiations, a bidding war
for playing talent, protracted legal action, and bitter quar-
relling were hallmarks of this acrimonious struggle. Signif-
icant public disillusionment and the unsustainability of the
economic capital frenzy that took place saw the rival com-
petitions reunite to form a merged National Rugby League
(NRL) in 1998.
7
Following this most tumultuous period, the NRL was
charged with repairing the ?eld’s damaged symbolic
standing, and restoring ?nancial and organisational stabil-
ity. With the dangers of unfettered economic forces fully
realised during the Super League war, the ‘rules of the
game’ were seen to require urgent amendment. Close com-
petition and ?nancial stability became a priority for the
NRL administration. For these reasons, NRL CEO Neil Whit-
taker (himself a former player, and formerly the ARL CEO)
imposed a salary cap
8
from the commencement of the 1999
season (NRL, 2012).
9
Despite the signi?cant restraints it
placed on the exercise of economic power by clubs within
6
For example, the National Football League (USA) maintains a current
broadcast rights agreement reportedly worth USD 27 billion (Badenhausen,
2011). Although not on this scale, the NRL and CFL are growing their
economic capital potential. For example, they both recently signed
lucrative broadcast rights deals, worth AUD 1.025 billion (Ritchie &
Roth?eld, 2012) and approximately CAD 200 million (Ralph,
2013)respectively.
7
The NRL was initially structured as a 20 team competition, It is now
comprised of comprised of 16 teams, with all but one (the New Zealand
Warriors) spread across the east coast of Australia.
8
Originally, this cap was set at $3.25 million for the top 25 players at
each club. For the last fully completed season (2012), the salary cap stood at
$4.4 million, with a further $350,000 assigned for the salaries of players
outside the top 25 playing group. An additional $250,000 salary cap applies
for the top 20 players of a club who play in the NRL’s Toyota Cup Under 20s
youth competition (NRL., 2012).
9
A previous competition administration, the NSWRL, ?rst introduced a
salary cap to elite rugby league competition in Australia in the 1990 season.
This salary cap was in place until the beginning of the Super League war
1995, when the Super League war rendered the salary cap irrelevant (NRL.,
2010). During the time of the previous salary cap, Big-4 auditors were
intermittently engaged to provide salary cap assurance. According to
Schubert, ‘‘it wasn’t done fairly and equitably [across the league]’’ (Ian
Schubert, Interview #3).
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 81
the ?eld, the emerging salary cap orthodoxy was publicly ac-
cepted by NRL clubs and other key stakeholders. This re-
?ected the greater economic power of the central
administration of NRL relative to other ?elds of football
(such as the English Premier League), as NRL clubs rely on
?nancial grants and competition winnings funded by cen-
trally controlled competition sponsorships and television
rights deals. It also indicated a general recognition of the
fragile state of rugby league’s illusio by all stakeholders of
the code in the face of intense competition from rival ?elds
of football for cultural ascendancy.
10
Coinciding with the introduction of the salary cap in
1999, the NRL appointed Ian Schubert as the competition’s
inaugural salary cap auditor. As part of attempts to restore
prestige and stability to the game, key administrative
appointments in the NRL were rugby league ‘insiders’ –
people already well-established in the ?eld, possessing sig-
ni?cant cultural capital (knowledge of the code and its his-
tory), acculturated to the rugby league habitus (a feel for
the values, orthodoxies and personalities of the game)
and invested in its illusio (the welfare of rugby league com-
petition). As a former, highly decorated player, with expe-
rience in a range of coaching and administrative roles,
Schubert very much ?tted the insider mould. At the time,
Schubert’s appointment was relatively unheralded – there
was no discussion evident in media about the manner of
his appointment, or of other likely candidates.
The Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League (CFL), based on a form of
gridiron football closely related to American Football, is the
major elite form of football competition in Canada. The
?rst documented football game in Canada was held at
the University of Toronto in 1861. A de?ning moment in
?eld of Canadian football came in 1874, when modi?ed
rugby rules developed at the University of McGill were ?rst
used in a series of matches against Harvard University.
After various iterations of governance, the CFL was estab-
lished as a stand-alone professional football competition
in 1958 (Cosentino, 1995).
The league entered an extended period of ?nancial dif-
?culty in the mid-1980s. For some time prior, the CFL faced
intense competition for cultural ascendancy from the high
pro?le and well-resourced US sports leagues (Cosentino,
1995). Criticisms about the quality of play and broadcast-
ing in comparison to the National Football League (NFL)
contributed to a growing perception that the CFL was
‘‘hanging on’’ for survival (Cosentino, 1995, p. 218). Declin-
ing media coverage and television ratings followed, seri-
ously affecting the CFLs capacity to draw in economic
capital (Cosentino, 1995).Re?ecting deep-seated concerns
about the resulting ?nancial instability of the ?eld, the
CFL were compelled to change the ‘rules of the game’ by
instituting a ‘competitive expenditures limit’ (a salary
cap) in 1988.
11
While clubs paid lip service to the emerging
salary cap orthodoxy, assuring compliance was notoriously
dif?cult. CFL clubs felt compelled to spend beyond their
means to compete sustain to compete for playing talent (a
key part of their victorious cycle of capital accumulation)
against well-resourced NFL clubs. Allegedly, salary cap
cheating was ‘‘rampant’’ (Petrie, 2003), with players paid
via ‘‘under the table’’ arrangements or through appoint-
ments to spurious off-?eld roles (Bouw, 1998; Davidson,
1992). For a time, Big-4 auditors were brought in to help
provide assurance of salary cap compliance, but this proved
ineffectual without meaningful investigation or penalties
(Trevor Hardy, Interview #16).
The CFL was reluctant to penalise and/or publicly
identify offending clubs (Anonymous, 2001; Petrie, 2003),
largely because of its fragile symbolic standing at the time.
Consequently, the salary cap lacked legitimacy and
occupied a highly contested position in the ?eld. Media
proclamations of the ‘‘laughable’’ state of the salary cap
(see for example Petrie, 2003) came to a head in 2003,
when the newly appointed CFL Commissioner, Tom
Wright, sought to ‘‘harden the cap and hold teams account-
able for ducking the rules’’ (Petrie, 2003), proposing a new
‘‘salary management system’’ in 2004.
12
Consistent with
the polemic status of the CFL’s salary cap, the rati?cation
vote passed with the smallest possible majority. Two clubs
(the Montreal Alouettes and the British Columbia Lions
13
)
voted against it.
An integral part of the new salary cap regime was the
requirement to appoint a salary cap auditor role to ensure
compliance with its provisions. There was fervent debate
within the CFL administration about who would best ?t
this new role. Consideration was given to the engagement
of a professional accounting ?rm (thus leveraging off their
accounting-based cultural capital). However, as the fol-
lowing quote explains, it was decided that appointing
an ‘in-house’ auditor represented the best way to
proceed:
We had a long debate here about whether or not we
would outsource it to a ?rm or a third party to do the
audit or if we would hire someone internally. . . I was a
proponent of trying to ?nd someone to have on staff
here fulltime just because knowing the personalities
of professional sports and the issues that were going
to take place, I wanted to make sure we had someone
who was consistent visit over visit and club to
club. . . having the same person speaking the same lan-
guage to each and every club I thought was of critical
importance especially at the outset (CFL Central Admin-
istrator 1, Interview #10).
10
Australia has four main ?elds of football, Australian rules football,
rugby league, rugby union, and soccer. Consequently competition for
interest is intense.
11
This limit was initially set at $3 million, and included all player and
support staff expenditure, with a ‘‘marquee player’’ exception (whose
salary would not count against the limit).
12
Initially the cap was set at $3.8 million for up to 42 rostered players at
each club (Fitz-Gerald, 2006). As at the 2012 season, the cap had increased
to $4.35 million, with exclusions for pre- and post-season compensation,
per diems, pension payments and players on the nine-game injured list
(CFL., 2012).
13
It is worth noting that both of these clubs were privately-held and
backed by wealthy benefactors, as opposed the community-owned struc-
ture of several other clubs in the league.
82 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
An ‘in-house’ auditor was believed to offer distinct
advantages, particularly through developing requisite
?eld-speci?c cultural capital (knowledge of the personali-
ties and issues affecting the ?eld, and consistency through
knowledge of past actions) deemed necessary for the role.
After interviewing several applicants, Trevor Hardy, a
forensic auditor by training and experience, was formally
appointed as the Director, Salary Expenditure Reporting
on September 1, 2006. Although an ‘outsider’ with no pre-
vious involvement in the ?eld, CFL respondents empha-
sised the value of Hardy’s cultural capital in forensic
accounting. It was hoped Hardy’s qualities would ?nally
coerce clubs to take the salary cap seriously.
Analysis of capital
By virtue of their positioning as quasi-judicial agents,
both Hardy and Schubert were inserted into their respec-
tive ?elds of football with considerable potential for power
and in?uence. However, ful?lling this potential depended
in part on their deemed ?t to ?eld-speci?c perceptions
about the qualities of desirable appointees. In turn, this
conditioned the relative volume, composition and ?eld-
speci?c value of capital that Hardy and Schubert drewupon
for authority as they sought to inhabit their new roles.
Consistent with his insider status, Schubert possessed a
range of ?eld-speci?c capital that are now recognised as
crucial to the acquittal of his role. Over his many distin-
guished years of involvement as a player,
14
coach and
administrator,
15
being acculturated along the way in the his-
tory, values, and personalities of the ?eld (a rugby league
habitus), Schubert accumulated signi?cant intelligence (a
form of cultural capital) about the manner of inner workings
of the game. This equipped him with a sensitivity to the sub-
versive salary cap games likely to be played, along with a
sensibility for subtle cues that other possible auditors (e.g.
from the accounting profession) may fail to identify:
[T]he strength of our audit process is Schuey’s knowl-
edge of the game. . . Schuey can look at a team list and
just say ‘‘there’s no way that is right.’’ He understands
back-dating contracts and the tricks and when things
just don’t add up. I don’t think you’d get that from an
independent audit ?rm coming in (Jamie L’Oste Brown,
Interview #4).
Schubert’s social capital in the ?eld was striking. Schu-
bert had accumulated a wide range of friendships and per-
sonal contacts from his many years of involvement in the
game. Widespread use of the familiar moniker ‘‘Schuey’’
re?ects his social embeddedness in rugby league. Schubert
draws on his social networks to inform himself about likely
salary cap issues. Schubert’s capacity to convert his social
capital into cultural capital (speci?c intelligence about
otherwise unobservable salary cap happenings inside
clubs) highlights the socially transferred and translated
nature of much of Schubert’s initial evidence gathering
(Mizruchi & Fein, 1999). As David Gallop (NRL CEO
(2002–2012)) comments in the following quote, Schubert’s
social embeddedness in rugby league (something a ‘‘dorky
accountant’’ from outside the rugby league ?eld could not
access) is deemed crucial to his role:
That is one of the beauties of having a person like Schu-
ey, who understands footy clubs and has relationships
with people in footy clubs and picks up pieces of infor-
mation. If you had a team of accountants that nobody
knew going into footy clubs you may not get the infor-
mant who is prepared to walk up to the dorky accoun-
tant from the big city ?rm. But he may know Schuey
and he may have had a beer with Schuey at some stage
when he worked at the club and he might think I am
going to tell Schuey what I know. . . there are a lot of
advantages in the fact Schuey has relationships (David
Gallop, quoted in Jackson & Walter, 2010).
His accumulated personal cultural accolades from his
lengthy playing career, along with his extensive social cap-
ital (network of contacts in the game) accorded Schubert
with general standing and respect (symbolic capital) with-
in the rugby league fraternity.
Finally, it is interesting to note that in contrast to his
wealth of rugby-league speci?c capital, Schubert held lit-
tle accounting-related cultural capital. Schubert was not
professionally quali?ed, with only basic knowledge and
credentials from a TAFE course undertaken to obtain a
‘‘philosophical understanding of the accounting side of
administration’’ (Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
16
This was
initially confronting for some in rugby league administra-
tion with an auditing habitus from and experience in the
?eld of ?nancial audit. For them, Schubert’s ‘auditor’ desig-
nation was anathema to professional claims about auditing
roles and status (i.e. only accounting profession quali?ed
and experienced auditors have the right to inhabit auditing
roles). The following quote (from a professionally quali?ed
club CFO with extensive Big-4 experience) is a case in
point:
From my own snob value point of view, I actually
turned around and said, are they even auditors? A snob
like myself would turn around and say, I didn’t get my
professional year and my quali?cations and all the rest
14
Schubert’s playing career spanned 272 ?rst grade games in NSWRL
competition over the 1975-1989 seasons, with the Eastern Suburbs (149),
Western Suburbs (88) and Manly-Warringah clubs (31) (Langmack, 2008).
This was the third highest number of ?rst grade games played by an
individual at that time. Schubert’s playing achievements attracted many
individual cultural accolades, including being retrospectively awarded the
Clive Churchill medal for his ‘man of the match’ performance in the 1975
NSWRL Grand Final, and being selected to tour with the Australia rugby
league team for the 1975 Rugby-League World Cup and the 1978 Kangaroo
Tour (Wikipedia, 2012).
15
Following his playing retirement, Schubert was able to exchange
cultural and symbolic capital accumulated through his playing days for
access to various club administration and coaching roles, including lower
grade coaching roles at Western Suburbs and Canterbury-Bankstown, a
marketing role Eastern Suburbs (and also acted as the club’s CEO for a
time), and a role in Super League as its International Operations Manager
(Langmack, 2008; Wikipedia, 2012).
16
TAFE (Technical and Further Education) is a vocational education and
training provider in the Australian state of NSW, and is run by the NSW
Government. A TAFE quali?cation in accounting is a basic quali?cation,
suited to individuals preparing for bookkeeping roles. In Australia, a TAFE
quali?cation does not satisfy education requirements for entry to accred-
itation programs within the accounting profession.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 83
of it, to have someone else call themselves an auditor
simply because they can carry out an audit. We [the
accounting profession] did the same thing with the
engineers on carbon assurance. Morti?ed. . . horri?ed
that these guys could sign an audit report (NRL Club
Administrator 1, Interview #2).
But in Schubert’s view, and that of others in positions of
power, while some accounting-based cultural capital was
useful, acquiring further accounting knowledge (from
quali?cations and experience) was of limited value and
subordinate in this ?eld to the ‘insider’ qualities that Schu-
bert possessed. Even those from accounting backgrounds
with initial misgivings came to recognise this. Sentiments
expressed by the same CFO respondent exemplify this
acknowledgement:
Having been a player and all the rest of it, he knows all
the rules, he knows all the arguments, he knows exactly
how people get around it. Rugby league is a completely
different world and he’s from that world. People tell
him things, they trust him. In fact they tell him too
much. So, his credibility is both his skill set, his knowl-
edge and his relationship. He doesn’t tick any of the
normal boxes. He’s not a member of the Institute of
Chartered Accountants, he’s a footballer (NRL Club
Administrator 1, Interview #2).
This quote is particularly revealing about the distinc-
tiveness of the ?eld of rugby league, and how this helps
to explain perceptions about Schubert’s ‘?t.’ The rugby lea-
gue fraternity plays by its own logic, where ‘insider’ feel,
knowledge and social networks are paramount.
In contrast to the NRL case, Trevor Hardy’s appoint-
ment as the inaugural CFL salary cap auditor very much
re?ected a ?eld-speci?c desire to confront serious ?nan-
cial troubles in the code, and to redress the lack of pene-
tration of previous salary cap efforts. Hardy brought with
him a wealth of accounting-based cultural capital – he
was professionally quali?ed with the Canadian Institute
of Chartered Accountants (CA), one of only 255 CAs with
a specialist designation in Investigative and Forensic
Accounting, and had several years of forensic accounting
experience at accounting ?rm BDO Dunwoody. Being a
forensic accountant, highly skilled in ?nancial investiga-
tion, it was hoped that Hardy would be able to reveal sal-
ary cap indiscretions and imbue sensitivity to ?nancial
matters, something deemed absent from the CFL to this
point.
Hardy’s personal qualities were leveraged at the time of
his appointment to signal the seriousness of the CFL’s re-
solve to assure salary cap compliance:
[We wanted to appoint someone] speci?cally familiar
with forensic audit principles so that the clubs were
aware of the fact that were taking this extremely seri-
ously and we were going down to the nth degree in
terms of detail (CFL Central Administrator 2, Interview
#11).
Hardy’s cultural capital was unique in the CFL and it im-
bued him with standing and respect in the ?eld on ?nan-
cial matters. He was announced as someone who would
‘‘uncook the books, crunch the numbers and ensure that
all eight teams are paying only the $4.05-million each in
player salaries’’ (Maki, 2007).
17
As the following quote indi-
cates, this message resonated with the CFL clubs:
I think when he [Hardy] was hired, it showed the seri-
ousness of the cap itself. To have a forensic auditor
coming in here two or three times a year to go through
your books. . . whereas in the old days, your books wer-
en’t looked at period. And when Trevor ?rst arrived, it
rankled a few feathers and showed that, oh boy, they
are serious (CFL Club Administrator 2, Interview #17).
As a self-professed fan of the CFL, Hardy did share in the
illusio of the ?eld. Yet, he was an ‘outsider’ who did not
possess any social capital in the ?eld (he was detached
from extant social networks, prevailing orthodoxies and
personalities). Hardy’s ‘outsider’ status, along with his
forensic-based feel for how salary cap matters should be
handled, meant that his initial attempts to impose himself
in this role (described by Hardy as ‘‘a bit too aggressive’’ in
hindsight) were not well received. As the following
comment indicates, this initially caught Hardy by surprise
and he had to moderate his fervour in developing the
habitus of a salary cap auditor (rather than a forensic
auditor):
In 2006 I was gung-ho, I’d just come out of forensic
accounting. And probably scared my employers as well
as the clubs when I went out because it was. . . I was
probably too aggressive. . . Most guys I’m dealing with
on a day to day basis have been around for 30, 35 years
to have some hot-shot pencil-neck accountant come in
and tell them how things are going to be done, I didn’t
appreciate that as much back then as I do now. So I
probably didn’t do a very good job initially. . . especially
with the clubs that didn’t participate in the cap the ?rst
year. I was probably a bit too aggressive towards them
and didn’t focus on building relationships as well as I
should have (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
It was hoped that by being an ‘in-house’ appointment,
Hardy would acquire the football-speci?c cultural and so-
cial capital, a feel for how his position should be best han-
dled in the context of the CFL, and consistently build on
and apply these resources to his role over time.
Strategies pursuing symbolic capital
While favourable receptivity in the ?eld depended
importantly on the ?eld speci?c ?t and value of personal
capital, the NRL and CFL case studies also highlight the
in?uence of legitimating strategies (incorporating re?exive
action and dispositions) mobilised by Schubert and Hardy
to build and sustain their authority and status in their
audit roles. This section outlines the nature of the legiti-
mating strategies pursued by Schubert in the NRL and
Hardy in the CFL.
17
$4.05 million was the salary cap limit set for the 2007 CFL season, the
?rst season where breaches of the CFL salary cap would be sanctioned
(Zurkowsky, 2007b).
84 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
In the context of the NRL, certain visible attitudes and
dispositions were actively employed by Schubert to bolster
his legitimacy in his salary cap auditing role. One particular
element was a marked attempt to appear consistent and
discreet in the handling of salary cap matters. In part, this
strategy was an outgrowth of the operation of the salary
cap prior to the Super League war, where there were
doubts, at least in Schubert’s mind, about the closeness
and fairness with which this previous incarnation of the
salary cap had been audited.
[When the previous salary cap operated,] I was a part of
the governing body audit of the clubs at Wests, Bulldogs
and the Roosters over a period of about ?ve years, and I
was quite aware that there was three different audits
done – depending on how good lunch was. I thought
that was an injustice (Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
Schubert also seemed very aware that while his social
capital assisted him greatly as part of his processes of
informing, it would also expose him to accusations of bias
and favourable treatment. Thus, Schubert deemed it neces-
sary to demonstrate his capacity to rise above his social
embeddedness (his wide network of allegiances and
friendships), and project through his conduct an unerring
image of fairness and consistency.
The cornerstone of the rules are that we [now] treat each
club on its merits but most certainly consistently and
fairly without fear or favour, passion or ill will. And
that’s been somewhat of a philosophical success in rela-
tion to the credibility of what we do. . . there was always
going to be someone that would point the ?nger and say
oh, he gave Wests or the Roosters a good run because he
played there and he’s still friends with those blokes. That
was never going to wash with me so it was imperative
that we treated every club exactly the same as every
other club (Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
One particular demonstration of this has been Schu-
bert’s uncompromising stance to enforcing the NRL salary
cap. All evidence of breaching has been taken seriously,
irrespective of the scale or excuses offered. In this regard,
the public reporting of what appears to be relatively minor
anomalies have helped generate an aura of hard-nosed sal-
ary cap assurance. For example:
Is nothing is sacred – not even marriage – when it comes
to the National Rugby League’s probe into alleged salary
cap breaches. Unsubstantiated claims that the wedding
of Canberra Raiders skipper Simon Woolford was paid
for as part of a salary cap deal have seen his quaint coun-
try ceremony put under the microscopic gaze of NRL
auditor Ian Schubert. . . The probe has drawn a blank,
but the issue will be addressed again when the Raiders’
books are checked later this year. The Woolford inquiry
demonstrates the lengths the NRL is prepared to go to
enforce cap rules. . . (Frilingos, 2002).
Schubert’s fervour for strict salary cap compliance in the
?eld has not always been well received, and Schubert con-
ceded that others may see a need at times for more liberal
approaches in the interests of protecting the broader inter-
ests and stakes of the code. Schubert saw such ‘behind the
scenes’ considerations as a job for others in the NRL admin-
istration responsible for the broader interests and stakes
(economic and cultural) of the game, such as NRL CEO Da-
vid Gallop. Schubert was adamant that his legitimacy could
only endure if he remained detached from such matters,
and faithful to his fairness and consistency priorities:
David has to manage my penchant for black and white,
and rule adherence at all cost, with the broader image
of the game in relation to the ?nes. We sometimes have
our clubs in breach but not ?ned. Not often I might add
but he most certainly has a greater responsibility to the
game than I do. . . My responsibility is to treat every club
fairly and evenly and consistently and to the rules and I
take that responsibility very seriously (Ian Schubert,
Interview #3).
Further, and especially in a ?eld where ‘‘people leak
information like a sieve’’, Schubert also saw a need to act
with strict con?dentiality as important in building percep-
tions about the integrity of salary cap auditing. One partic-
ular manifestation of this strategy is Schubert’s avoidance
of the media (Weidler, 2010), despite wide press interest
in his work.
I’m never quoted ‘cause I never give quotes. My job is
primarily con?dential. . . 90% of what I do is of a con?-
dential nature and the only reason the media want to
talk to me is to ?nd out something that someone else
doesn’t know. My job is about doing what I do under
the radar and that’s how I want it to be. . . (Ian Schubert,
Interview #3).
Schubert readily acknowledged the role that his exten-
sive acculturation to the ?eld of rugby league has played in
discharging his responsibilities. It is evident that Schubert
embodies a rugby league habitus, cultivated from his many
years of involvement in the code. Rugby league is one of
the most ferocious codes in the ?eld of professional sport.
Elite players are conditioned to be tough, aggressive, and
uncompromising in imposing their physicality on the foot-
ball ground. Schubert found his assertive personality and
physical presence, a signi?cant product of his rugby league
conditioning, to be helpful in imposing his will on recalci-
trant club administrators and dealing with critics. Indeed
the following quote, corroborated by club interviewees,
emphasises Schubert’s perception of the importance of
these aspects of his bodily hexis.
[T]he con?ict [in the role] is very dif?cult to manage.
We deal with some bullies and I can be one too if I need
to be. But if I’m bullied, I most certainly don’t lose many
of those. . . As a general rule, I probably have a gruff per-
sonality and most certainly a black and white [attitude]
(Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
This uncompromising and brusque posture has not al-
ways been welcomed. Early on, one Club Chairman (ironi-
cally from the club charged with the ?rst major breach of
the cap system) publicly lambasted Schubert for being
‘‘Gestapo-like’’ and ‘‘selective’’ (Pritchard, 1999). He has
also drawn the ire of many key stakeholders in the ?eld
(including club administrators and player managers) for
what they consider to be unnecessary attention to petty
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 85
concerns and dispassionate treatment of player welfare is-
sues (such as the failure to exempt the cost of family ?ights
to Australia for certain international players (Massoud,
2009)).
Notwithstanding this, behind the scenes Schubert has
actively cultivated close engagement between many club
of?cials and his of?ce. Such engagement has fostered what
has become a valuable exchange of salary-related informa-
tion as the emerging rules of the game allowed for a certain
degree of informal dialogue. Schubert encourages clubs to
proactively consult with his of?ce on all salary cap matters,
thus aiding salary cap compliance. In return, Schubert has
promoted his of?ce as an informal ‘‘help-desk’’ to clubs,
offering benchmarking information on player remunera-
tion, along with general advice on matters such as player
contracting provisions, and recruitment/retention policies.
Club representatives consistently opined how they now
value these regular exchanges:
They [Schubert and his team] will answer their phone
and help you out. . . If I get a scenario that comes up that
I haven’t had before, I’ll ring them ‘cause at the end of
the day they do have the authority to make a decision
which might be different to mine. Their interpretation
has got to be for the game (NRL Club Administrator 4,
Interview #8).
So while he is very much seen as the salary cap ‘cop’,
Schubert also has endeavoured to show that his value to
the ?eld is rooted as much in assisting clubs with their
struggles in accumulating playing talent, as it is in regulat-
ing those struggles. As a consequence, Schubert has gone
some way to ingratiate himself with many club adminis-
trators. He is seen as a keeper of accumulated intelligence
and a mentor to club administrators on many aspects of
player remuneration and contract negotiations.
Schubert’s lack of formal training in accounting did not
preclude him from developing a formalised program of
work, borrowing from basic ?nancial audit principles,
rules and processes. The broad ?ow of this program of
audit work (as it presently stands) appears in Table 4.
As indicated in this table, embedded in this program
was a range of audit styled procedures – a schedule of
interactions with clubs, site visits, testing work (with
associated working papers and templates), and reporting.
As is the case with ?nancial audits, these procedures
aimed to identify key risks, test for evidence of transac-
tion compliance to recognised standards, document and
seek resolution of matters arising with clubs, and gener-
ate ?nal reports. As the Assistant Salary Cap Auditor
explained:
Anywhere between November and the end of February
the clubs are invited to make an appointment with us.
[This is when] we get in there and we’re just doing pure
audit work. . . we go through and do a typical audit pro-
cess on that. . . tick and bash. . . [looking at] bank state-
ments, invoices, cash payments, fringe bene?ts, the
tax return. . . Over time we’ve modi?ed it [the audit pro-
gram] to better suit what we do. But it was originally
based on a typical audit process (Jamie L’Oste Brown,
Interview #4).
In developing this program, Schubert brought in
accounting expertise through the employment of a salary
cap assistant with accounting credentials to assist him in
re?ning and executing the formal audit program.
18
While certain audit-styled practices were observed, so
too were signi?cant departures. Indeed, much of Schu-
bert’s intelligence gathering is through wider processes of
informing taking place beyond the boundaries of the for-
mal salary cap audit program. In addition to Schubert’s so-
cial networks, media monitoring of matters relating to
player signings and payments, along with ‘whistleblowers’
offering unsolicited allegations of possible salary cap
breaches also played important roles. According to Schu-
bert, a lot of the intelligence gathered from these channels
‘‘must be taken with a grain of salt.’’ This draws attention
to the importance Schubert’s rugby league habitus – an
intuitive feel for ?ltering mere rumour and innuendo from
potential leads for further inquiry.
Up to the end of the 2011 season, The NRL had publicly
reported some 79 separate salary cap infringements, rang-
ing from the relatively minor infringements to three major,
multi-million dollar breaches. A summary of these re-
ported breaches and the associated ?nancial penalties are
provided in Table 5.
This breach and sanction based reporting is intended to
threaten clubs into compliance, by placing the ‘victorious
cycle’ of cultural, economic, social and symbolic capital
accumulation at risk for offending clubs. L’Oste-Brown re-
?ects on this intention in the following comment:
I mean nobody wants to have their club talked about as
having cheated, whether it’s an administrative breach
or a Melbourne Storm scandal. That is our biggest stick
– the public shame if you like – to name and shame. It’s
personal pride. . . it all adds to the commercial viability
of the clubs (Jamie L’Oste Brown, Interview #4).
In an environment where detecting salary cap can be
notoriously dif?cult, this public reporting of breaches and
sanctions also seemed directed at building con?dence in
salary cap auditing and the NRL administration more gen-
erally. Regular public exposure of salary cap indiscretions
found, together with the penalties imposed, is meant to
be an ongoing public reminder that salary cap regime
works.
Just as Schubert has done in the football ?eld of the NRL,
Hardy has attempted to mobilise his own distinctive
assemblage of strategies, postures, and adaptations to raise
his symbolic capital in his salary cap role. Being accultur-
ated to an accounting-based habitus (from his professional
quali?cation, and experience in forensic accounting roles),
Hardy was quick to develop a program of audit procedures
and protocols following his appointment. These proce-
dures and protocols were designed in consultation with
18
At ?rst, Shane Mattiske (now General Manager of NRL Strategic
Projects) acted in this assistant capacity, aiding Schubert in designing his
salary cap audit program. Later, Jamie L’Oste Brown (the current Assistant
Salary Cap Auditor) took on this role. Both Mattiske and L’Oste Brown
possess requisite accounting-based cultural capital (both are quali?ed
accountants, and have accumulated accounting experience in a range of
commercial roles). L’Oste Brown is the only person assisting Schubert in his
work on a full-time basis.
86 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
other CFL administrators (primarily the Vice President, Fi-
nance and Business Operations, who was also a Chartered
Accountant) and were heavily in?uenced by audit pro-
grams Hardy had come across in his professional career.
But again, in?uenced by the conditions and audit-based
expectations of his ?eld, Hardy’s emerging audit program
was also pragmatically derived, re?ecting what seemed
appropriate to the ?eld of the CFL.
The resulting CFL salary cap audit programincorporated
many of the formal accoutrements of a ?nancial audit
(which, similar to the NRL’s program, included team
disclosures, ?eld visits, analytics, substantive testing,
documenting information, and reporting). There was also
a familiar rhythm to the timing and sequencing of this
work, which cycled through over the course of each CFL
season. Table 6 provides detailed information about the
sequencing and timing of the audit program that was
designed.
Hardy’s audit program also accommodated certain
adaptations and deviations from conventional audit work.
One example was his use of regression modelling, based
on selected on-?eld performance indicators, to help him
predict player salary levels. In part, Hardy found this mod-
elling to be useful for analytically directing the focus of his
assurance work at each of the clubs, particularly in an
environment where clues to salary cap indiscretions were
not easy to ?nd. Just as importantly, his demonstrated
mastery of statistics was also a means for Hardy to play
out what he described as the ‘‘theatrics’’ of his role –
combating the cavalier culture of his ?eld by projecting a
certain professional diligence and intellectual pre-
eminence:
19
The culture [of the CFL] is cavalier. . . old boys’ network.
So my introduction of statistics was really a conscious
attempt to make it more professional and formal. . . I’ve
developed some regression models and they’re quite
strong, they’re quite predictive ... I use them to give
Table 4
Overview of the NRL salary cap audit program.
Approximate timing Event
Pre-season February Pre-season statutory declarations must be submitted by each club to the NRL salary cap audit of?ce
Estimates of variable income (bonuses, match payments) based on prior year performance (e.g. number of
games played in the prior season)
Pre-season March Club declarations of all estimated player payments for the forthcoming year, based on the provisions of each
player contract in force at the time
Preliminary check of statutory declarations relating to the top 25 players for each club checked against NRL
records (registered contracts) for consistency. Identi?ed differences are raised with the clubs for explanation
During the
season
March–
September
Newly signed players must have their contract registered with the NRL at least three working days before their
?rst scheduled game
Clubs can seek compliance advice from the salary cap audit team to avoid falling foul of the rules
During the
season
March–April Detailed examination of statutory declarations for all player payments against NRL registered contracts. Incon-
sistencies are raised with the clubs for explanation
During the
season
July Mid-year review and ?eld visit to clubs (optional for clubs)
Discussion of club’s progressive salary cap position
Discussion of any pertinent salary cap issues arising in the club
Opportunity for clubs to raise grievances
Opportunity for intelligence gathering for the salary cap audit team through conversations with the clubs
Some preliminary veri?cation of player payments
Post season October 31 Salary cap year end
Post season November–
January
Clubs complete year end salary cap audit templates/schedules supplied by the NRL
Third party agreement payments
Current year bonus payments for representative honours
Player traineeships
Sponsors report
Living away from home allowance schedule
Tertiary education allowance
Apprenticeships allowance
Agents fees
Desk reviews of pre-?lled schedules performed by the NRL salary cap audit team
Clubs prepare relevant documentation and make an appointment for salary cap audit visits, as advised by the
NRL salary cap audit team
Clubs provide the following information at least 5 working days prior to the on-site audit:
Information about actual payments, games played and at what level. Injury allowances and stand-down
allowance requests
Report of all cash payments for the year to October 31
Copy of trial balance as at audit date
Scanned copies of living away from home allowance fringe bene?ts
Salary cap audit team completes on-site audit work, including audit testing of various player payment-related
accounts and transactions
Post season November–
January
Audit report issued – letter to each club highlighting issues identi?ed from the audit
19
An interesting example Hardy’s demonstration of statistical mastery
was his publication of regression model used to predict season scores in the
last 28 games of the 2011 season (Hardy, 2011), which reported an
astonishing 96.4% accuracy. This was followed up with a similar model in
2012 with a ‘‘perfect’’ prediction of correct winners in each game analysed
from that season (Hardy, 2012) .
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 87
me an expectation as to how much a player is actually
worth. And if my calculation of what that player is
worth is much higher than what the club has reported,
then that gives me an area to concentrate on when I’m
out doing my audit ?eld work. Another thing that the
analytics gives me is. . . to me it’s theatrical. If you show
them that you’re doing all this stuff then they might get
scared that it’s actually giving you more information
than it really is (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
Hardy’s forensic approach to the role was further rein-
forced by innovative methods he would employ to unearth
information and investigate leads about possible salary cap
indiscretions. The following comments from Hardy provide
an interesting case in point.
We heard that a club might have provided a car to a
player and then another example that a different club
might have provided housing to a player. So we went
and we spent the money to hire a private investigator
to go out and look at the housing records. . . the vehicle’s
license number, went to the motor registryauthority and
triedto see who ownedthe car. It all seemed like overkill,
but we did it to express to those teams that we do that
type of thing. . . so we will catch you, and if we don’t, on
the next one we will (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
These examples highlight Hardy’s attempts to publicly
project a self-image of professional diligence, intellectual
pre-eminence and resourcefulness in his acquittal of the
salary cap auditing role. Successfully projecting such an
image was seen to be important in communicating Hardy’s
effectiveness in the face of widespread doubts about the
workability of salary cap auditing in the CFL, along with
the limited resources he had at his disposal to achieve
his aims. As one CFL administrator re?ected, it was about
overtly demonstrating to the CFL clubs, in the face of these
challenges, that ‘‘we’re going to be smarter than you, we’re
going to work harder than you, we’re going to be more
thorough then you and we’re going to work later than
you’’ (CFL Central Administrator 2, Interview #11).
Hardy also recognised the need to build social capital
within the ?eld. Given his ‘outsider’ status, Hardy began
to actively to recruit support from other key ?gures within
the CFL’s administration, who possessed the requisite so-
cial capital he could leverage:
I didn’t initially focus on building relationships as well
as I should have. . . We have certain people here at the
of?ce in high level positions that have a football back-
ground. So since that time, what I’ve attempted to do
consciously is just try to align myself with them. Even
things as simple as taking our Vice-President of Football
Operations who’s a former player [to site visits]. He’s a
football guy and he’s in my corner and I think that gives
me credibility (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
This formed part of a wider strategy to ingratiate him-
self with the CFL clubs. To this end, part of the routine of
CFL salary cap audit program instituted by Hardy was reg-
ular reporting by clubs (communicated by 4 pm each day)
of player transfers and roster changes. What resulted from
this over time for Hardy was an unprecedented accumula-
tion of intelligence about player salaries across the CFL.
Hardy came to realise that this cultural capital would be
Table 5
Summary of reported NRL and CFL salary cap breaches.
Season National Rugby League Canadian Football League
Number of salary cap
infringements
a
Range of ?nes
issued
Total amount of ?nes
issued
Number of salary cap
breaches
a
Range of ?nes
issued
Total amount of ?nes
issued
2000 9 $6,890–
$100,000
$473,690 – – –
2001 3 $84,157–
$100,000
$274,061 – – –
2002 6 $57,533–
$500,000
$916,888 – – –
2003 11 $5,252–
$130,956
$301,208 – – –
2004 7 $5,000–
$120,000
$289,581 – – –
2005 6 $1,339–
$430,000
$476,023 – – –
2006 8 $5,000–
$173,203
$402,979 – – –
2007 7 $0–$70,135 $191,665 2 $76,552–
$116,570
$193,122
2008 5 $3,625–
$15,200
$41,438 1 $87,147 $87,147
2009 7 $2,500–
$15,000
$33,750 1 $44,687 $44,687
2010 6 $2,500–
$187,140
$358,359 1 $26,677 $26,677
2011 4 $5,000–
$80,000
$165,000 0 $0 $0
a
Note that there is a difference in reporting of breaches between the CFL and NRL. In the CFL case, only serious cap breaches are reported. In contrast, the
NRL publicly reports all salary cap related infringements, including minor things like failing to register a player contract.
88 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
helpful in fostering acceptance for his work amongst the
clubs. As much as Hardy’s salary cap work was meant to
economically constrain clubs in their competition for play-
ing talent, Hardy was also keen to show that there was also
a bene?cial ‘‘by-product’’ from this work for the clubs:
A positive by-product of all this is. . . a club can call me
up or write me an email and say Trevor, how much is
this player worth? And I can give them a range of values
for what that player is worth based on my regression
models. . . I’m not a football guy. But I’m increasingly
getting buy-in from. . . the old boys’ network (Trevor
Hardy, Interview #8).
That is, in the absence of CFL habitus Hardy developed
his own means of testing the appropriateness of player sal-
aries. In turn, this technology became embedded within
the cultural capital of the league and helped consecrate
Hardy as a player beyond his formal role.
Hardy periodically produces and publishes interpreta-
tion bulletins to educate clubs on particular compliance is-
sues. He also seeks to proactively engage with clubs about
their salary cap compliance concerns. Club administrators
interviewed stressed the accessibility of Hardy and his
audit infrastructure. For example:
If there is a grey area the easiest thing for us to do is just
pick up the phone and call Trevor and be proactive as
opposed to rolling the dice. Trevor’s easy to get a hold
of in the league (CFL Club Administrator 1, Interview
#14).
Through these initiatives, Hardy attempted to strike a
delicate balance between ‘hard-nosed’ analysis/investiga-
tion, and a more approachable style to his work. As one
interviewee re?ected, striking this balance was a challeng-
ing exercise, but vital to building his legitimacy in the role:
It’s a delicate balance Hardy’s got to strike between a
high level of respect, a little bit of fear and this strange
camaraderie you’ve got to develop where there’s a cer-
tain element of trust. You’ve got to have relationships so
that these guys [CFL club administrators] are bringing
issues such as structuring deals to you in the front
end instead of simply trying to conceal it. . . The real
challenge is that you want that sort of trust and respect
but at the same time you are going to be a pain in the
arse and there’s no way around it. . . It’s a really chal-
lenging dance that I don’t think many people on the
outside appreciate (CFL Central Administrator 1, Inter-
view #10).
Hardy also found himself caught in a delicate balancing
act in relation to sanctioning and public reporting of salary
cap indiscretions. From the outset, meaningful penalties
(including economic and cultural sanctions) were held
out as an important contributor to imbuing the revitalised
salary cap regime with ‘‘some ?rm teeth’’:
We decided the only way we could have some ?rm
teeth in it is to give an auditor, or somebody in the
CFL really, the ability to come in and get right in the
detail and if required to do forensic auditing. So give
Table 6
Overview of the CFL salary cap audit program.
Approximate timing Event
Pre-season June Receive all player contracts (continuing throughout the year)
Summarise Club’s projected position with respect to the salary cap
Statistical analysis of player salaries
6th Game August 6-game Salary Expenditure Cap (SEC) Game Report due from each club
For unexpected variances between reported and expected amounts, clubs consulted to deter-
mine reason
Should SEC Game Report not be received on time, a Notice of Non-Compliance under Sec-
tion 15.11 of Constitution is issued
During season Mid August Interim ?eld visits to some of clubs
Some interim audit work performed
12th Game Late September 12-game SEC Game Report due from each club
For unexpected variances between reported and expected amounts, clubs consulted to deter-
mine reason
Should SEC Game Report not be received on time, a Notice of Non-Compliance under Sec-
tion 15.11 of Constitution issued
During season Late September/Early October Interim ?eld visits to remaining clubs
Remaining interim audit work performed
18-Game Report January 18-Game SEC Game Report due from each club comprehensively covering 9-game injured
and disabled list, guaranteed veteran payments, sign-on payments, practice roster, other
bonuses, incentive bonuses, and non-cash bene?ts
Request reconciliation between General Ledger and 18-game SEC Game Report
Should SEC Game Report not be received on time, a Notice of Non-Compliance under Sec-
tion 15.11 of Constitution issued
Post-Season January–February Final ?eld visits and audit work performed
Post-Season Late March Club audit reports written and distributed
Club statistical supplement reports written and distributed
Post-Season April–May Relevant articles written for publication on the CFL website
Salary cap interpretation bulletins written and disseminated to clubs
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 89
them the audit and then put some ?nancial bur-
dens. . . But more importantly it’s the draft choice. And
this hits the football guys (CFL Club Administrator 3,
Interview #18).
Accordingly, penalties for teams found to have breached
salary cap thresholds were set in the form of: (i) ?nes of
the amount involved for the ?rst $100,000; (ii) ?nes of
double the amount involved and forfeiture of the ?rst-
round draft pick for the next $200,000; and (iii) ?nes of tri-
ple the amount involved and forfeiture of the ?rst and sec-
ond-round draft picks for any amount in excess of
$300,000. However, it was also seen as important that
clubs be given time to ease themselves into compliance.
Consequently, the initial impact of these newly-introduced
these penalties was softened by a decision to make cap
compliance voluntary and not subject to penalty in the ?rst
year (2006).
Once penalties came into place, attempts were made to
soften sanctioning for clubs. First, the language promoted
by the CFL around salary cap indiscretions was intended
to be less hostile to clubs. For example, the salary cap is re-
ferred to in the CFL as the Salary Management System. Tre-
vor’s of?cial title (Director, Salary Expenditure reporting)
obfuscates his audit, compliance and quasi-judicial respon-
sibilities. Sanctioning was talked about by Hardy and other
CFL administrators as a ‘luxury tax’ for excessive expendi-
ture, rather than a penalty for salary cap ‘cheating.’ Sec-
ondly, a measure of leniency was informally applied
where salary cap indiscretions were deemed ‘administra-
tive’ in nature. This was all meant to ‘‘make sure that peo-
ple stay on board’’ with the salary cap:
We’re a league with only eight teams [and] the view of a
relative few can kind of change the whole nature of
what you’re doing here so we have to make sure that
people stay on board. So initially we provided a Com-
missioner’s expectation or interpretation where we
could say, listen, if this [a salary cap breach] is adminis-
trative in nature and we know that you weren’t trying
to kind of pull one over on the league. . . we can ?ne
you a lesser amount or we can waive the ?ne and not
throw the book at you (CFL Central Administrator 2,
Interview #11).
Notwithstanding these strategies to soften the impact
of the salary cap, the two initially objecting clubs – the
Montreal Alouettes and British Colombia Lions – both con-
tinued to rail against the salary cap regime. They both re-
fused to participate in the season of voluntary
compliance (in 2006) and initially refused to submit to
compulsory audits in the following season (Serkes, 2007).
In response, the CFL was compelled to adopt a harder line.
To this end, the new CFL Commissioner (Mark Cohon) re-
leased a statement outlining that failing to submit to the
CFL’s audit ‘‘be met with swift and meaningful discipline
as outlined in the CFL constitution’’ (Serkes, 2007). Eventu-
ally, the Alouettes and Lions relented (Zurkowsky, 2007a).
Public reporting of indiscretions also proved to be a dif-
?cult strategic issue for Hardy and the CFL. Initially, the CFL
declared that salary cap indiscretions would not be pub-
licly reported. In addition, Hardy made a point of not
engaging directly with the media, and refraining from pub-
lic comment on salary cap matters. In the main, salary cap
matters within the CFL have been a relatively private affair,
with reporting limited to a select audience (CFL adminis-
tration and the clubs themselves). However, this stance
has been selectively set aside for serious breaches, particu-
larly where it was believed that a club was attempting to
‘‘pull one over on the league’’ (CFL Central Administrator
2, Interview #11). A total of 6 breaches have been publicly
reported by the CFL (see Table 5). The ?rst public trial of
strength for the new system occurred in 2008 with the ?rst
major breach reported to the public. This related to an
audit ?nding that the Montreal Alouettes (one of the two
resistant clubs) were found to have exceeded the $4.05
million cap by $108,285 in the 2007 season. CFL adminis-
trators considered this to be the ?rst true test of their re-
solve, and so decided not just to impose unprecedented
economic and cultural sanctions (the Alouettes were ?ned
$116,570 and stripped of a ?rst-round draft pick in the
2008 draft), but to publicly report the episode in the media
(see for example Ralph, 2008). The Alouettes publicly de-
fended their position, arguing they had to exceed the salary
cap to maintain medical bene?ts for injured lineman Steve
Charbonneau.
20
Ultimately, formal arbitration settled the
case, where the Alouettes’ arguments were dismissed and
the CFL sanctions upheld. This outcome was publicly pro-
claimed as a ‘‘victory’’ for CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon
(see for example MacKinnon, 2008), who reiterated ‘‘I think
it shows there’s a rigorous process is in place.’’ (TSN., 2008).
Another CFL executive commented on the episode as
follows:
[This] very clearly communicated to all the other teams
that, listen, we’ll be fair to you, but when it comes down
to something we believe in, we’re going to go to the
wall on it, which we did on this case and we were right.
I think it sent a very clear message to everybody that we
meant business and since then when we have had a
team that’s exceeded it, it has readily admitted it and
it’s been a relatively minor amount (CFL Central Admin-
istrator 2, Interview #11).
To summarise, this section highlights the importance of
practical strategies deployed as part of efforts by Schubert
and Hardy to legitimate their appointments and impose
the authority of their auditing positions. Due in part to
these gambits, Schubert has emerged as a senior and in?u-
ential member of the leadership of the NRL with wide pub-
lic support. While not all stakeholders happily accept his
status in the ?eld, few deny the level of scope and in?u-
ence Schubert now has within the game; a view recently
reinforced by a newspaper article listing Schubert in 5th
position in ‘‘the top 50 movers and shakers who walk in
league’s corridors of power’’ (Anonymous, 2010). Hardy
has also achieved a similar status, emerging as a highly re-
spected appointee within the CFL. Although different to
those employed by Schubert, Hardy’s own tactics and dis-
positions were no less effective in bolstering the impor-
20
Charbonneau, a 10-year CFL veteran, didn’t play any game in the season
because of a gastrointestinal illness. The Alouettes contended that had they
released him, Charbonneau would have lost his medical bene?ts.
90 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
tance and integrity of the CFL salary cap in the minds of CFL
and club administrators. Hardy was credited with making
his salary cap ‘‘the ?rst one to really stick’’, bringing ‘‘a
complete cultural shift in the mindset of how people
should work and behave within the cap structure’’ (CFL
Central Administrator 1, Interview #10). Hardy’s strategies
also found favour amongst club of?cials. As one CFL Club
Administrator commented, Hardy is now ‘‘in a good spot’’
(CFL Club Administrator 2, Interview #17), having won re-
spect through actively complementing his forensic exper-
tise with a growing knowledge of CFL, building rapport
with key players amongst the clubs. As they accumulated
symbolic capital in their roles, and were seen to be legiti-
mate ‘auditors’, both Hardy and Schubert earned power
not just to export legitimacy through their audit work,
but the power to consecrate – to write the ‘rules of the
game’,
21
interpret these rules and evaluate what counts as
legitimate, de?ne what is fair in relation to player salaries,
and to have heavy in?uence over the legitimate use of a
wide ranging sanctions (symbolic violence in Bourdieu’s
terms). In turn, this legitimacy also reinforces the cultural
and symbolic capital of the NRL and CFL more generally.
Discussion
We investigate ‘auditors’ competing for legitimacy in
their newly-appointed positions, both of which are each
considered crucial to the effective administration of the
NRL and CFL. While the structural positioning of these
auditors in their ?elds bestowed potential for power and
in?uence, imposing this potential necessitated ‘plays’ for
legitimacy through the deployment of speci?c resources,
tactics, and dispositions, which were framed importantly
by each appointee’s ‘feel for the game’ as well as the con-
ditions of the respective ?elds. In our cases, we see how
the two audit appointees, while competing for similar
stakes in similar ?elds (the legitimacy of newly created sal-
ary cap auditor positions in ?elds of football) played the
game differently.
An important element in these plays for legitimacy was
the ?eld-speci?c value of the composition of resources
(capital in Bourdieusian terms) the two salary cap auditors
possessed. In the NRL case, the selection and positioning of
the auditor was importantly in?uenced by a drawn out
ownership battle (the so-called ‘Super League war’) that
led to deep antagonism and mistrust between factions of
the game’s administration. As such, several interviewees
talked about the premium placed on the social capital
and commitment of an ‘insider’ who was widely known
and respected within rugby league circles. In the CFL case,
the salary cap auditor appointment was made amid ongo-
ing concerns about the ?nancial viability of the league. This
conferred signi?cant value on cultural capital relating to
?nancial management, particularly in the skills attached
to forensic accounting expertise. While there is no recipe
for success, the cases demonstrate that the value of capital
in a given ?eld is importantly conditioned by historical and
contextual contingencies resulting in two different audit
styles within similar roles.
Schubert’s strong social capital meant his networks of
support were largely in place, drawn from contacts devel-
oped during his playing career and extended service to the
game. Consequently, Schubert placed heightened reliance
on his social capital in carrying out his responsibilities,
and in sustaining legitimacy as the salary cap auditor in
his ?eld. To complement his con?guration of capital, Schu-
bert recruited supporting individuals (initially Shane Matt-
iske, and later Jamie L’Oste Brown) with professional
accounting credentials and experience. The consecration
of Hardy took a decidedly different path. As an outsider
with particular credentials and expertise derived from
the ?eld of accounting, Hardy’s con?guration of capital
was inverted when confronted with the conditions of the
CFL ?eld. Notwithstanding this, Hardy was able to draw
upon his particular capital to call attention to his profes-
sional capacity and resourcefulness in catching out salary
cap breaches. These capital translated into Canadian foot-
ball by dint of his active leveraging of social capital from,
key stakeholders in the CFL who were consecrated for dif-
ferent reasons.
While a number of authors have criticised Bourdieu’s
notion of habitus for his apparent denial of conscious deci-
sion making in the determination of human behaviour
(Crossley, 2001; Jenkins, 2002), Bourdieu explicitly allows
for ‘the possibility of re?exive self-awareness’ in shifting
between unevenly aligned, semi-autonomous ?elds. Habi-
tus re?ects socially learned predispositions for thinking
and acting derived from a particular ?eld. As such, when
one encounters a new ?eld, the possibility of a lack of ?t
is always apparent (Adams, 2006), problematising one’s
feel for his/her altered ?eld conditions. This opens up pos-
sibilities for more re?exive awareness and practical action
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 131).
22
In our cases, at the intersection of the ?elds of account-
ing and football, we identify a number of legitimating
strategies employed in order to build symbolic capital for
the respective auditors. These strategies take the form of
practical coping mechanisms – purposive, pragmatic ac-
tion aimed at resolving an immediate impediment at hand
rather than some grand, overall purposeful scheme. This is
in keeping with Bourdieu’s (2000, pp. 63–64)preference for
practical sense-making rather than pure rational calcula-
tion. Three important practical gambits used in both cases,
although differently pursued, were (i) conscious ingratia-
tion; (ii) sanctioning; and (iii) appeals to fairness, a key
doxic notion in both ?elds.
In both cases, the salary cap auditors were keen to ingra-
tiate themselves (e.g. project a stance of approachability
and availability on compliance ‘grey areas’) and facilitate an
exchange of bene?ts that often went beyond their formal
auditing remit (e.g. providing advice on matters like player
21
To this end, Schubert importantly drafted the quali?cations for future
appointments of Salary Cap Auditor in the NRL Playing Contract and
Remuneration Rules as follows: 13. The Salary Cap Auditor shall be a person
who is in the opinion of the Chief Executive Of?cer: (1) Experienced in
business affairs; and (2) Possessed of a broad base of knowledge regarding
the administration of Rugby League.
22
McNay (1999a) argues that contemporary society is in fact much more
routinely marked by ‘crises’ emanating from movement between ?elds
than Bourdieu allows.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 91
valuationand contract provisions). Froma Bourdieusian per-
spective, relative stability and certainty in the salary cap re-
gime emerges from the relational interactions, or collusion,
of dominant players (clubs, players) which maintains the
sports administration illusion of legitimacy to control and
regulate spending on playing talent. Given that club acqui-
escence was necessary for the effective operation of the sal-
ary cap infrastructure, such tactics were central to attempts
to placate club resistance relating to salary cap restrictions.
In this sense, even though most clubs remained publicly
hostile to efforts to control their spending, there was consid-
erable inter-play and exchange away from the public view.
The desire to build rapport was also evident in the CFL’s rel-
atively gentle introduction of their salary cap and recruit-
ment of high-pro?le administrators with football-speci?c
capital to accompany Hardy on his ?eld visits.
Sanctioning of salary cap indiscretions was also an
important tactic across both leagues. For the NRL, the
importance of sanctions was observed from the outset.
While the CFL initially exercised some leniency as part of
attempts to ingratiate clubs to their revamped salary cap
regime, this was only temporary and public penalties came
to the fore in the face of serious salary cap breaches. Con-
sequently, in both leagues, sanctions became an accepted
backstop to the audit regimes, adhering to Bourdieu’s no-
tion of symbolic violence. The ‘corporeal inculcation’ of
symbolic violence is, as McNay argues, ‘exercised with
the complicity’ of the individual.
The third strategy related to appeals to fairness.
23
The
stakes of the ?eld and the quasi-judicial nature of the role
(departing importantly from attest auditing) placed an
emphasis on the notion of fairness. In effectively regulating
player recruitment, the salary cap auditor has the capacity to
dramatically alter the competitive dynamics of the ?eld in a
way that directly impacts the winners and losers in the ?eld;
any club deemed to have been advantaged by a salary cap
ruling effectively means that others are disadvantaged. This
juridical element to the role elevates the importance of per-
ceived fairness and the need for rigorous deduction from a
body of internally coherent rules. While it is almost a truism
that an important part of a credible audit is a formal audit
routine, both Schubert and Hardy were at pains to commu-
nicate the uniform application of procedures to all clubs and
deny any sense of bias or favouritism in the application of
the salary cap procedures.
To this end, it is clear that club representatives from
both ?elds were in?uenced by the scope and depth of the
audit programs created and audit procedures produced
by both the NRL and CFL auditors. From the perspectives
of auditees in the ?eld, these programs impressed the re-
solve, professionalism and comprehensiveness of the ap-
proach. In the same way that audit ?rms generally have
invested heavily in publicly promoting in audit planning
and risk assessment models, training, and other means of
projecting legitimacy (Humphrey & Owen, 2000), the cases
presented in this paper demonstrate how impression man-
agement was used in the presentation of audit program-
ming to in?uence the main players in the ?eld. Positive
interactions with the assurance providers were found to
aid perceptions of a shared moral purpose with the clubs:
to protect and promote the code and its participants.
Concern with fairness also in?uenced the practices of
the auditors. Schubert was re?exively conscious of the
need to project a black-and-white, by-the-rules approach
to enforcement, no matter how minor the breach. For
Hardy, this concern found expression in his extensive use
of ‘objective’ statistical approaches to uncovering deviant
outcomes. Either way, both Schubert and Hardy sought
to project the role of lector, or interpreter, taking refuge be-
hind the appearance of a simple application of the rules.
This paper prompts important re?ections on the posi-
tioning of accounting professionals as demands for assur-
ance services continue to expand into new domains. The
continued success of professional accounting ?rms has
had much to do with their ability to expand into new areas
of advice from their traditional base (Suddaby & Green-
wood, 2001). The conventional argument emanating from
within the profession is that accounting professionals pro-
vide higher quality assurance, irrespective of the ?eld, ow-
ing to their professional organisation, reputation and
global standing, as well as their wealth of assurance-ori-
ented expertise. For example:
[W]e classify members of the auditing profession as the
higher quality assurance providers (DeAngelo, 1981;
Watts & Zimmerman, 1986). This classi?cation is sup-
ported by the fact that the auditing profession has in
place a well-developed ‘‘global’’ standards, indepen-
dence and ethical requirements, and quality control
mechanisms to help ensure the quality of any assurance
reports that are issued by their members. The argument
is further supported by the fact that ?rms (especially
the major ?rms) within the profession also bring a high
level of reputation capital to their engagements (Sim-
nett et al., 2009, p. 943).
But despite these claims, professional accounting forays
into a range of new assurance spaces have met with mixed
success. One of the more recent and notable examples of
the contested presence of accounting professionals in new
spaces is in sustainability reporting, where emerging re-
search has highlighted signi?cant participation by both
accounting and non-accounting assurance providers (Green
& Zhou, 2011; Mock et al., 2007; Simnett et al., 2009),
24
and
some ambivalence over who provides such assurance
23
The term fairness refers to an egalitarian division of resources, and to
that which ‘‘follows the rules’’ (akin to the notion of procedural justice). It
should be noted that for many stakeholders, and most certainly for the
private owners of teams like the Montreal Alouettes and the BC Lions,
salary caps are unfair as they distort price signals and thus undermine
market ef?ciency and, consequently, player welfare (the economic utili-
tarian position). Salary caps also undermine personal freedoms and liberty
(the libertarian position).
24
Mock et al. (2007) reported from a worldwide sample of 130 entities
which issued assured their sustainability reports between 2002 and 2004
that 65% of the assured reports were audited by a non-Big 4 provider.
Simnett et al. (2009) found from their archival study of 2,113 sustainability
reports released from various countries for the years 2002–-2004 that 43%
of reports assured were veri?ed by members of the accounting profession.
Green and Zhou (2011) showed from their international study of 3,008
companies issuing greenhouse gas statements for the years 2006–-2008
that 56% of those statements assured were audited by non-accounting
providers.
92 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
(Simnett et al., 2009). Consistent with these experiences, our
?ndings contest the ubiquity of claims by the accounting pro-
fession to assuming high status in new auditing spaces.
Professionally quali?ed auditors are ‘‘?sh in water’’
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 127) to the practice and
logic of assurance services conventional to the professional
accounting world of which they are a product. However,
when audit ideals are transported to different ?elds, the
value of ingrained and taken-for-granted qualities of pro-
fessionally quali?ed auditors may not travel well. Conse-
quently, refashioning audit logics and practices to better
?t their ?eld-speci?c environs played a signi?cant part in
Hardy’s and Schubert’s endeavours to establish their
legitimacy.
One such deviation was the unconventional manner in
which both salary cap auditors mobilised a range of per-
sonal resources – forms of social (networks of supporting
and informing contacts), symbolic (e.g. reputation and sta-
tus in the respective leagues), and non-technical forms of
cultural capital (e.g. deep contextual knowledge) – both
Hardy and Schubert used to credibly instantiate and pur-
sue their respective audit remits. Interchanges of capital
that took place to augment the two auditors’ composition
of personal resources highlight the exchangeability of
auditing-based cultural capital. This was particularly ob-
served in the NRL case, where the audit programwas direc-
ted by an individual without professional accounting
credentials or experience, and who simply acquired
accounting expertise when needed through using appro-
priately quali?ed assistants. It appears that in the same
way that auditors can acquire subject matter expertise to
overcome knowledge barriers when entering new audit
spaces (Simnett et al., 2009), others with different skill sets
seem able to acquire auditing expertise for similar ends.
Another marked departure from conventional audit lo-
gic and practice is re?ected in the expectations and opera-
tion of the new audit positions. The audit profession has
been eager to publicly acknowledge its limitations with re-
spect to collusion in recent years
25
and circumscribe its
responsibilities over fraud (see Humphrey, Moizer, & Turley,
1992). This has been an important element of the so-called
‘‘expectations gap’’ between what the public and users of
?nancial statements perceive the role of an audit to be (Free,
1999; Hassink, Bollen, Meuwissen, & Vries, 2009; Sikka,
Puxty, Willmott, & Cooper, 1998). It is clear that the very rai-
sin d’être of the salary cap auditors relates to uncovering at-
tempts at fraudulently manipulating the salary cap
regulations. In this way, their emphasis is squarely on detec-
tive skills rather than the production of trust and comfort for
players in the capital markets. As the function of audit and
assurance spreads to other societal domains, it may be that
they draw more heavily on this detective-style role than the
production of comfort role of the traditional ?nancial audit.
The marked departures of our cases also provide in-
sights on key dispositions conventionally associated with
auditor legitimacy, such as independence. For many years,
researchers, regulators and the profession have viewed
auditor independence as a crucial legitimating element
(Sucher & Kosmala-MacLullich, 2004). However, it must
be remembered that the symbolic value of independence
is historically and contextually contingent (Everett, Green,
& Neu, 2005), and deeply ingrained in an accounting habi-
tus reproduced by socialising rituals within the profession
(Carter & Spence, 2013; Hamilton & Ó hÓgartaigh, 2009).
As our cases indicate, when audit ideals travel to new
spaces, independence may not always be as prized as one
might think. In our cases, the cap is an endogenously gen-
erated limit on the amount of economic capital that can be
spent by clubs in order to ensure that the league is charac-
terised by meaningful competition. Consequently, there is
perhaps not the same requirement for an auditor to be
independent as is desired in other audit situations. This
is consistent with, and helps to explain, ?ndings about
independence in research on the attributes of assurance
providers in new audit spaces generally (Knechel, Wallage,
Eilifsen, & van Praag, 2006), as well as speci?c assurance-
based studies of TripAdvisor (Jeacle & Carter, 2011) and
the online baseball card market (Jamal & Sunder, 2011).
26
Taken together, these papers led Power (2011) to conclude
that ‘‘the very meaning of independence as a presumed
[legitimating] attribute of assurors is much more ?uid than
we might realise’’ (p. 325). As one interview respondent
commented:
I think that the way independence is taught is getting
further and further away from what independence is.
It’s because what we look at is technical independence,
not independence of mind, not the ability to act freely
in your capacity to do that job. (NRL Club Administrator
1, Interview #4).
Conclusion
Bourdieu uses the metaphor of ‘game’ to evoke an expe-
rience of passionate participation in competitive sport. For
Bourdieu, social life is like a game, only the stakes are high-
er. In Bourdieusian terms, auditors are cultural intermedi-
aries seeking to attach symbolic capital to reported data
and, by extension, entities and ?elds. Within the tradi-
tional con?nes of ?nancial auditing, the audit profession
has managed to position itself such that it importantly reg-
ulates the game, delineating the limits of audit work and
responsibility and de?ne credible agents in the ?eld. Re-
cent decades have seen the word ‘audit’ being attached
to activities that bear only passing resemblance to the
work of a ?nancial auditor and which may be performed
by non-credentialed practitioners. Referred to as ‘‘folk
audits’’ by Cooper and Morgan (2013), these audits often
have a more broad-ranging evaluative and investigative
25
See SAS No. 99 in the United States, ASA 240 in Australia and the
international audit standard ISA 240.
26
Knechel et al. (2006) ?nd from their study of desirable attributes of
assurance services providers (via a survey of a sample of senior accounting
and ?nancial of?cers from 350 companies in the Netherlands) that
independence was not an important consideration. Jeacle and Carter
(2011) demonstrate via their TripAdvisor case that assurance programmes
can sustain legitimacy in the absence of demonstrated independence when
the assurance provision is highly democratised. Jamal and Sunder (2011)
demonstrate that baseball certi?ers who are ‘‘deeply immersed’’ in the
market (i.e. they also provide other services) are seen to be more credible
than their ‘independent’ contemporaries.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 93
character, and require different assemblages of capitals
and practical action (moving beyond the remit of ‘‘timid’’
?nancial auditor ‘‘watchdogs who never bark’’ (Power,
2003, p. 195)). While the habitus and symbolic capital of
auditing resonate beyond its traditional con?nes, in new
audit spaces the audit profession enjoys no automatic
ascendancy and most compete with others for
consecration.
The central concern of this paper is the struggle by new-
ly appointed auditors for legitimacy in a discretionary
assurance space. In these domains, auditors are unable to
rely on their traditional state-backed monopoly of ?nancial
audit. While a number of studies have examined the pro-
fession’s attempts to enter new ?elds (Barrett & Gendron,
2006; Gendron & Barrett, 2004; O’Dwyer et al., 2011), our
paper examines efforts to establish jurisdiction by parties
positioned in new assurance roles. This involved negotiat-
ing a complex and challenging terrain comprising clubs
seeking to push their own interests and mistrust about
the proprietary of rival club’s practices and bona ?des.
Rather than focusing on technical skills and knowledge,
we focus on the way that speci?c capital from different
?elds (the ?elds of professional auditing and professional
football) combined to create symbolic capital for the newly
created positions. In so doing, we highlight practical coping
mechanisms employed to boost the legitimacy of the new
audit functions. Our analysis of the gambits used reveals
three primary mechanisms: ingratiation; symbolic vio-
lence; and appeals to fairness.
This paper augments a small but growing stream of re-
search contemplating the ways in which the perceptions
and practices of assurance and certi?cation practices can
be transmogri?ed when imported into new realms (Andon
& Free, 2012; Free et al., 2009; Gendron & Barrett, 2004; Ja-
mal & Sunder, 2011; Jeacle & Carter, 2011; O’Dwyer et al.,
2011; Power, 1994, 2005). It is subject to the conventional
limitations attendant with ?eld work, and caution is war-
ranted in generalising conclusions from a very limited set
of cases. Nonetheless, we believe that this paper opens
up several interesting lines of future inquiry. We concur
with recent calls for greater ?eld-based work in auditing
which deal directly with the actual practices of auditors.
The continuing advance of auditing into other societal do-
mains has deep implications for the practice, expectations
and norms of the craft. It seems likely that assurance ser-
vices emerging outside of ?nancial audit look quite differ-
ent and are subject to different historical contingencies,
rules and dispositions. The hopes of the accounting profes-
sion that these new assurance spaces will unproblemati-
cally open up all manner of applied opportunities for the
profession may require revisiting.
Acknowledgements
This research has been assisted by The Institute of Char-
tered Accountants in Australia through its Academic Re-
search Grant Scheme. Paul Andon acknowledges the
support of the Australian School of Business Research
Grants Scheme. Clinton Free acknowledges the support of
an ARC Future Fellowship (FT110100272). The authors also
gratefully acknowledge the comments of the two anony-
mous reviewers and the editor. Last, but not least, we
thank all our interviewees for supporting this study.
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doc_158413222.pdf
According to Bourdieu, legitimacy is a scarce symbolic resource that is subject to struggle
and (re)negotiation. Focusing on the emergence and operation of the salary cap audit programs
in the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia and Canadian Football League (CFL)
in Canada, this article explores the way in which auditors compete for legitimacy in new
audit spaces. We highlight the way that capital from intersecting semi-autonomous fields
were drawn upon to generate legitimacy for the new roles. We also draw attention to a
range of practical strategies, including conscious ingratiation, sanctioning, and fairness
appeals, which were mobilised to impose the auditors in their roles, populate the field with
new rules and confer a new order.
The legitimacy of new assurance providers: Making the cap ?t
Paul Andon
a,1
, Clinton Free
a,?
, Prabhu Sivabalan
b,2
a
Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
b
Faculty of Business, University of Technology, Sydney 2007, Australia
a b s t r a c t
According to Bourdieu, legitimacy is a scarce symbolic resource that is subject to struggle
and (re)negotiation. Focusing on the emergence and operation of the salary cap audit pro-
grams in the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia and Canadian Football League (CFL)
in Canada, this article explores the way in which auditors compete for legitimacy in new
audit spaces. We highlight the way that capital from intersecting semi-autonomous ?elds
were drawn upon to generate legitimacy for the new roles. We also draw attention to a
range of practical strategies, including conscious ingratiation, sanctioning, and fairness
appeals, which were mobilised to impose the auditors in their roles, populate the ?eld with
new rules and confer a new order. The contrasting case studies reveal the importance of
contextual elements and the con?guration of the ?eld of power in each case. Implications
for the claims of the accounting profession to new audit spaces are discussed.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The imposition of audit-styled technologies into a
diverse and growing range of societal domains has been a
persistent feature of recent decades (Jeacle & Carter,
2011; Power, 1995; Power, 2000b). The words audit and
assurance have attached to a wide array of theatres, some-
times of controversial provenance. These labels continue to
connect with idealised notions of accountability, steward-
ship and responsible administration, re?ecting the ‘‘vague
idea of audit’’ (Power, 2000b) as an important reference
point in public and private governance. As the emerging
vistas of auditing in the 21st century become more diverse
and far-reaching than ever, the movement of assurance
beyond the traditional boundaries of the ?nancial audit
raises important questions about the extent to which con-
ventional audit concepts can travel to new ?elds, as well as
the receptivity of new ?elds to purveyors of new
assurance services (who may or may not be professionally
credentialed).
Recognising a growing interest in auditing and assur-
ance in new audit spaces (Andon & Free, 2012; Free, Salte-
rio, & Shearer, 2009; Gendron & Barrett, 2004; Jamal &
Sunder, 2011; Jeacle & Carter, 2011), we aim to investigate
efforts by auditors to establish jurisdiction in new audit
spaces through two in-depth ?eld studies of the position-
ing of salary cap auditors
3
in the National Rugby League
(NRL) in Australia and Canadian Football League (CFL) in
Canada. The salary cap auditor in each league has estab-
lished himself as a respected and widely recognised ?gure
that has been increasingly invoked as a symbol of fair-play
and propriety by leaders within the respective codes:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2014.01.005
0361-3682/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
?
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9385 9705; fax: +61 2 9385 5925.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Andon), c.free@unsw.
edu.au (C. Free), [email protected] (P. Sivabalan).
1
Tel.: +61 2 9385 5821; fax: +61 2 9385 5925.
2
Tel.: +61 2 9514 3131; fax: +61 2 9514 3669.
3
In broad terms, salary cap auditors are responsible for monitoring and
enforcing the salary cap, a limit on the amount of money a team can spend
on player salaries in each league. The practice of salary caps remains a
highly controversial one; salary caps have been both held up as essential for
the sustainability of professional sports leagues (Hiestand, 2004) and
castigated as unfair, ineffective and even illegal (Buti, 1999).
Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
The salary cap audit team works incredibly hard to
monitor the clubs and deserves considerable recogni-
tion for the role it plays in making the Telstra Premier-
ship [the NRL’s elite national competition] the closest
and most exciting competition in Australian sport
(NRL, 2011).
The success of our salary management system under-
lines our teams’ commitment to putting a great product
on the ?eld and following sound business principles at
the same time. The work our board of governors and
our football leaders have done on this issue is an impor-
tant building block in our league’s strong foundation
(Mark Cohon, CFL Commissioner, quoted in Scianitti,
2012).
The motivation for this paper stems from two sources.
First, recent years witnessed an increase in auditing and
assurance of information published in a variety of new
spaces (Free et al., 2009; O’Dwyer et al., 2011). While many
authors have considered the way in which these services
have attached legitimacy to certi?ed data, auditees and
even third parties (Free et al., 2009), ‘‘much less has been
written about the process of acquiring and developing
the legitimacy of audit technologies themselves’’ (Robson,
Humphrey, Khalifa, & Jones, 2007, p. 421). Recent work
has begun to draw attention to a range of strategies em-
ployed by auditors seeking to promote their services in
new domains. Gendron and Barrett (2004) emphasise the
need for constructing stable and solid networks of support
while O’Dwyer et al. (2011) focus on key conforming,
selecting and manipulating activities aiming to secure
pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy for new assur-
ance forms (e.g. sustainability assurance). That is, while
several studies have examined the emerging vistas of
21st century auditing and initiatives aimed at professional
expansion, analysis of the efforts of ‘auditors’ appointed to
newly established roles to solidify their position and legit-
imacy remains in its infancy.
Second, this paper responds directly to calls for more
detailed empirical work examining the extension of
audit-type practices into new spaces (O’Dwyer et al.,
2011; Power, 2003) as well as ongoing calls for audit
researchers to enter the ?eld (Free et al., 2009; Gendron
& Spira, 2010; Humphrey, 2008). Due to a number of dif?-
culties in conducting ?eld research in the area, there have
been few empirical studies of the substance of these evolv-
ing discretionary assurance services (Pentland, 2000). Gi-
ven the phenomena under investigation, in-depth case-
based empirical work is suited to elaborating on an audi-
tor’s sources of legitimacy in practice. In both the CFL
and NRL, practitioners are revealed to be actively engaged
in pursuing strategies that draw upon their accumulated
capital and modify prevailing norms and modes of engage-
ment to develop and sustain networks of support.
We investigate these issues through an in-depth re-
view of archival sources and 18 interviews with key
stakeholders in the NRL and CFL salary cap. Our cases fol-
low the appointment and operation of the salary cap
auditor in each league. Despite inhabiting similar roles,
the appointed auditors are shown to possess markedly
different backgrounds and employ different resources,
tactics and dispositions to impose themselves in their
roles. The two case studies highlight practical strategies
– conscious ingratiation, sanctioning, and fairness appeals
– used by auditors seeking to establish themselves in
these new discretionary domains. They also raise ques-
tions about the applicability of conventional markers of
auditor legitimacy derived from ?nancial audit in new
assurance spaces, as well as prior claims made by many
in the accounting profession about the legitimacy of
accounting-trained auditors in new assurance spaces.
This paper is arranged as follows. The next section re-
views the emerging literature dealing with auditing and
assurance in new audit spaces. This is followed by an over-
view of the theoretical framework of the paper, informed
by the writings of Pierre Bourdieu. After a brief description
of the methods used in this study, we provide some back-
ground to the ?elds of football in which the two subject
cases are situated. The two case studies, documenting the
appointment and operation of the salary cap auditor roles
in the NRL in Australia and CFL in Canada, are presented,
compared and contrasted. The ?nal sections summarise
the major themes, contributions and conclusions of the
paper.
New ‘assurance’ services
In recent decades, numerous commentators have ob-
served a growing demand for audit-styled technologies
(Andon & Free, 2012; Free et al., 2009; Gendron & Barrett,
2004; Jamal & Sunder, 2011; Jeacle & Carter, 2011; Power,
2005). Power’s (1994, 2005) classic thesis regarding the
notion of the audit society is one of explosion – the immu-
table proliferation of programmes and practices of veri?ca-
tion in an ever growing range of organisational and social
domains, promulgated by the symbolic power of social
norms and expectations embodied in the notion of audit-
ing. According to Power, central to auditing’s symbolic
power is its ‘essential obscurity’ – that auditing work is
rather indeterminate and craft-like rather than precisely
codi?ed. This has led Power to suggest, along with pro-
grammatic shifts in styles of governance promoting desires
for accountability and veri?cation, that the foundations of
auditing’s rapid spread in organisational and social life lie
in the seductiveness of vaguely de?ned auditing ideals.
He emphasises that auditing, as such, remains a ‘craft’,
rather than a precisely codi?ed technique. Power sees it
as no accident that practitioners talk of providing ‘comfort’
(Pentland, 1993) rather than ‘proof.’
A range of researchers, commentators and professional
organisations have argued that the credibility that
accounting professionals have built up in ?nancial audit
has strong appeal in new assurance spaces. In the US in
the late 1990s, the Elliott Report earmarked a range of
new opportunities for the profession occasioned by the
‘audit society’ in areas as diverse as risk assessment, busi-
ness performance measurement, information systems reli-
ability, electronic commerce, health care performance
measurement and care of the elderly (AICPA, 1997). More
recently, in the burgeoning area of environmental and sus-
tainability reporting, some researchers have suggested that
76 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
accountants are especially well placed to provide assur-
ance services (Huggins, Green, & Simnett, 2011; Simnett,
Vanstraelen, & Chua, 2009).
However, accounting profession claims to new audit
spaces have proven neither automatic nor mechanical.
Power has documented both audit explosions (signi?cant
growth in audit activity in an expanding array of ?elds
(Power, 1994; Power, 2005)) and implosions (as audit-re-
lated functions become supplanted by the risk manage-
ment movement (Power, 2000a)). While the profession
has been successful in certain areas (for example, ‘auditing’
of Financial Times business school rankings (Free et al.,
2009) and value-for-money or performance auditing
(Radcliffe, 1998, 1999)), it has failed in others (such as
WebTrust (Barrett & Gendron, 2006)), while its status re-
mains contested elsewhere (as has been observed in sus-
tainability report assurance (Green & Zhou, 2011; Mock,
Strohm, & Swartz, 2007; Simnett et al., 2009), indeed
increasing digitisation of knowledge has led some to sug-
gest that the audit profession is at risk of being left behind
(D’Adderio & Pollock, 2012; Jeacle & Carter, 2011). Hum-
phrey and Owen (2000) contest the primacy placed by
Power on the strength of the very idea of audit as an over-
riding explanation for the signi?cant spread of auditing.
They argue that audit’s spread is also fundamentally condi-
tioned by efforts to establish legitimacy for auditing pro-
grams and practices, particularly in new spaces. Can the
observed spread of auditing merely be explained by its
inherent ‘saleability’ within contemporary life? Such an
explanation offers little in terms of the legitimisation of
auditors in practice, the challenges that such efforts endure
and how the means for establishing legitimacy may be
conditioned by context. Recent ?eld-based research
(O’Dwyer et al., 2011) has begun to challenge this position
and point directly to strategic activity by auditors and oth-
ers to establish demand and generate legitimacy within
new domains.
Our use of the term legitimacy derives from Bourdieu’s
articulation of the concept. He de?nes legitimacy as ‘‘[a]n
institution, action or usage which is dominant, but not
recognised as such, that is to say, which is tacitly accepted’’
(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 110). Put more prosaically, something
(e.g. auditing) is considered ‘legitimate’ in a particular do-
main (e.g. salary cap compliance) when it is generally and
implicitly acknowledged as valid and thus deemed conso-
nant with broadly accepted norms, values and beliefs of
that domain. This de?nition draws attention to the collec-
tive construction of legitimacy, where presumptions about
the social acceptability of prevailing beliefs and patterns of
behaviour take precedence over individual endorsement
and censure.
To summarise, we focus in this paper on the activities of
legitimising an emergent auditor in a new audit space. The
research literature has tended to portray auditors as
bestowing legitimacy, by offering a professional opinion
based on a rigorous program of audit testing and proce-
dures (for a discussion, see Free et al., 2009). As such, the
legitimacy of the auditor is largely presumed. While the lit-
erature has begun to examine the contested processes that
are involved in seeking to extend the legitimacy of auditing
to new areas (e.g. Barrett & Gendron, 2006; Gendron &
Barrett, 2004; O’Dwyer et al., 2011) and many commenta-
tors remain excited about the possibilities of 21st century
audit, little work has focused on the ways auditors seek to
secure legitimacy within newly established audit ?elds.
Thus, the key research question of this paper is: how do
‘auditors’ in new assurance spaces endeavour to accrue
legitimacy in their position in their ?eld?
Playing the game: Bourdieu and struggle for legitimacy
As a former rugby player himself (Calhoun, 2003), it is
perhaps unsurprising that Bourdieu was drawn to the met-
aphor of a game. The type of ‘game’ Bourdieu had in mind
is an intensely competitive one, where players compete on
a ?eld of play governed by conventions that players accept
for stakes that they consider to be important. However, as
Moi (1991) points out, not everyone will play the game in
the same way and participation in the game depends on
each individual’s habitus or their ‘feel for the game’ and
their various forms of capital. What makes for a good strat-
egy is determined by the rules of the game, but also by
assessing strengths and weaknesses of one’s opponents
and one’s self. In this way, at its broadest level, Bourdieu’s
work ‘‘integrates a theory of social structure (the ?eld), a
theory of power relations (the various forms of capital),
and a theory of the individual (habitus)’’ (Malsch, Gendron,
& Grazzini, 2011, p. 198) for understanding a given do-
main’s ‘logic of practice’, including its opus operatum of so-
cial structures and modus operandi for action (see Malsch
et al., 2011 for a review of Bourdieu in?uenced publica-
tions in accounting).
Field is a meso-level concept denoting the social world
in which actors are embedded and toward which they ori-
ent their actions (Sallaz & Zavisca, 2007). Martin (2004)
identi?es three distinct senses of the concept in Bourdieu’s
writings – a topological space of positions, a ?eld of rela-
tional forces and a battle?eld of contestation – but argues
that the latter is the most signi?cant, as exempli?ed by his
frequent use of a game metaphor. Each ?eld has rules for
how to play, stakes and forms of value and, in the process
of playing, participants effectively reaf?rm the game itself.
Bourdieu views society as comprised of semi-autonomous
?elds with both autonomous (such as athletic prowess in
rugby) and heteronomous elements (e.g. commercial inter-
ests underpinning the game). In each ?eld, there are struc-
tured positions that are reproduced or change according to
the agency of the players.
The most important game in any ?eld is establishing
the rules to de?ne ‘‘the legitimate principles of the ?eld’’
(Bourdieu, 1991, p. 242). In a given ?eld, agents invest time
and energy competing for, accumulating, exchanging and
exploiting various forms of capital, resources (e.g. attri-
butes, capacities, skills, knowledge) deemed valuable as
they can be mobilised as ‘weapons’ or stakes in struggles
over contextual ascendancy and status (Bourdieu & Wac-
quant, 1992; Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008). This depiction
of capital is reminiscent of classical political economy in
a broader sense, in that forms of capital are socially valued
and exchangeable for one another, as de?ned by the ?eld
(Thompson in Bourdieu, 1991, pp. 14–15). Further, it high-
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 77
lights that agents are positioned and gain authority to act
on the basis of the relative volume, composition and
?eld-speci?c value of capital they can access (Emirbayer
& Johnson, 2008; Malsch et al., 2011). Generic forms in-
clude economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. As
Bourdieu (1987, pp. 3–4) puts it:
. . .the structure of a [social] space is given by the distri-
bution of the various forms of capital, that is, by the dis-
tribution of the properties which are active within the
universe under study – those properties capable of con-
ferring strength, power and consequently pro?t on their
holder. . . These fundamental social powers are, accord-
ing to my empirical investigations, ?rstly economic cap-
ital, in its various kinds; secondly, cultural capital or
better, informational capital, again in its different kinds;
and thirdly two forms of capital that are very strongly
correlated, social capital, which consists of resources
based on the connections and group membership, and
symbolic capital, which is the form the different types
of capital take once they are perceived and recognized
as legitimate.
Economic capital simply refers to the accumulation of
money or other ?nancial resources that can be used to pur-
chase power, positions and people, as well as goods, ser-
vices and other forms of capital. Cultural capital consists
of forms of skill and expertise that agents consciously ac-
quire or passively absorb, which are valued in their ?eld.
Cultural capital can be embodied in personal qualities, cap-
tured in physical objects or institutionally recognised in
formal quali?cations or credentials. Social capital re?ects
the sum of resources agents are linked to by virtue of their
social connections, networks and alliances (Bourdieu,
1986, pp. 243 and 248). Symbolic capital refers to capital
that takes an elevated status because it is deemed to be
legitimate. Bourdieu draws a parallel between the concept
of symbolic capital and legitimacy because it is symbolic
capital that de?nes what forms and uses of capital are
recognised as legitimate bases of social positions in a given
?eld. Accordingly, the search for legitimacy in a given ?eld
is in effect an attempt to convert economic, cultural and
social capital so as to accrue symbolic capital. Bourdieu’s
analysis of semi-autonomous ?elds and differences in
forms of capital and the dynamics of conversion between
them is one of the most original and important features
of his work. These concerns are well suited to an analysis
of attempts to establish legitimacy by an auditor in a
new audit space.
Each agent occupying a position in a ?eld also acts
according to a particular habitus – personal dispositions,
inclinations, attitudes and values that inform an agent’s ac-
tions and thoughts within a particular ?eld (Bourdieu,
1977, 1995). Habitus is socially learned, in that agents ab-
sorb dispositions, inclinations and propensities over time
in much the same way that children learn to speak and
think in the language of their mother tongue (Bourdieu,
1990, p. 67). Like Giddens and others, Bourdieu seeks to
transcend traditional structure/agency dichotomies by
holding out habitus as a type of analytical glue that holds
together the notion of the agent reproducing or changing
structures through action. Habitus predisposes agents to
act and react in certain ways in particular situations
through the unconscious in?uence of dominant, natura-
lised beliefs and values (doxa), and learned ways of physi-
cal expression (bodily hexis: e.g. ways of speaking,
standing, walking). However, while habitus is the product
of conditioning and provides a set of feasible ways of
thinking and acting in given ?elds, agents are not rigidly
programmed by it (Bourdieu, 1998). Bourdieu’s formula-
tions here leave room for interpretation. At one extreme,
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus has been cast as deterministic
and reductive (see Fuchs, 2003; Jenkins, 1982; King, 2000),
while others recognise that while the habitus idea can be
applied as a reproductive force it can also be used in a
much more ?exible way (see Lizardo, 2004 for a discus-
sion). Following others (see Adams, 2006; Chia & Holt,
2006; Reay, 2004), we argue that Bourdieu leaves scope
for strategic agency within the broad con?nes of one’s
habitus.
In Bourdieusian terms, auditors are ‘‘cultural intermedi-
aries’’ involved in the provision of symbolic goods and ser-
vices (Negus, 2002). As such, they are able to exert, from
their position within cultural institutions, a certain amount
of cultural authority as shapers of opinion. However, espe-
cially in new audit spaces, there is an inherent contestation
for authority and recognition, whereby agents draw upon
various capitals and manoeuvre within their prevailing
habitus. The capitals which are most valued in this struggle
(the ‘‘trump cards’’ in Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1992)
terms) are cultural capital (technical knowledge), social
capital (relationships with clients and other stakeholders)
and symbolic capital (reputation). Building these capitals
becomes part of an auditors ‘‘feel for the game’’; it is what
animates their work in the ?eld. In new audit spaces, this
feel for the game must be developed through relational
interaction and attentiveness to doxically taken obligations
(Cooper & Joyce, 2013). It is these concerns in the context
of the NRL and CFL to which we now turn.
Methodology
In order to explore the processes through which legiti-
mation is pursued, we employed a comparative case study
design of the role of the salary cap auditor in two high-pro-
?le professional sports leagues – the NRL in Australia and
the CFL in Canada. Table 1 provides a brief dramatis perso-
nae of key agents within these two ?elds, as they relate to
the administration of and compliance to the salary caps of
the two leagues.
The use of comparative cases is important to our analy-
sis. As Bourdieu suggests, agents similarly positioned with-
in given ?elds may not necessarily ‘play the game’ in the
same way. Much depends on an individual’s background
– their capital and habitus – and how these enable/con-
strain one to cope with the expectations of their position-
ing in their ?eld. The CFL and NRL have many similarities in
terms of their respective structure and administration.
Both attract signi?cant domestic attention and employ a
similar regulatory regime, importantly underpinned by a
salary cap on player remuneration. The salary cap in both
leagues is remarkably similar in value – in 2012, the salary
78 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
cap in the NRL was $AUS4.4 million (for 25 players) while
in the CFL, it stood at $CAD4.35 million (for 45 players).
However, as will be explained further in later sections,
there were also signi?cant differences in how each auditor
came to be appointed within his respective league. Conse-
quently, the CFL and NRL cases provide a valuable compar-
ative for examining similarities and differences in how the
two salary cap auditors sought to impose themselves in
their roles following their respective appointments.
This study draws on 18 interviews with a range of key
actors in the NRL and CFL as well as a range of archival
sources. Table 2 offers a summary of this data source.
4
The interviews were supplemented with analysis of a range
of relevant archival materials, coming in two main forms:
(i) audit manuals and worksheet templates used by the
NRL and CFL audit teams and (ii) media releases and news-
paper coverage of the NRL and CFL salary cap and their im-
pacts. Table 3 provides further precisions about these two
sources.
We began our data analysis with an in-depth examina-
tion of each case through the lens of our research question
(Eisenhardt, 1989): how do ‘auditors’ in new assurance
spaces endeavour to accrue legitimacy in their position in
their ?eld? We read the cases independently to identify
the theoretical constructs, relationships and longitudinal
patterns within each case. We coded interviews using N-
Vivo and tables (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to facilitate
analysis. We each developed an understanding of major ac-
tions/events in the ?eld, which we reconciled by going
back to the data and informants in the ?eld. We then
turned to cross-case analysis, in which the insights that
emerged from each case were compared with those from
the other case to identify key patterns and themes (Eisen-
hardt & Graebner, 2007). Discrepancies and agreements in
the emergent ?ndings were noted and investigated further
by revisiting the data. We followed an iterative process of
moving between theory, data and the literature to re?ne
our ?ndings, relate them to existing theories and clarify
our contributions.
Bourdieu’s work played a pivotal role in analysing the
data. Numerous researchers have commented on the dif-
?culties in operationalising Bourdieu’s concepts (see
McNay, 1999; Reay, 2004; Sweetman, 2003), particularly
with respect to habitus. For clarity, we present our
empirics in three parts. First, we present the historical
context of the appointments in both ?elds, in keeping
with Bourdieu’s aversion for a-historical analyses. This
is followed by an overview of the capital possessed by
the appointees at the time of their respective appoint-
ments. Third, we outline the practical actions and strate-
gies undertaken in an effort to secure symbolic capital in
the new roles.
Table 1
Dramatis personae of key agents associated with the CFL and NRL salary caps.
Name Position and background
National Rugby League (NRL) – Australia
Ian Schubert NRL Salary Cap Auditor (1999 – present)
Formerly a rugby league player of note (1975–1989) with the Eastern Suburbs, Western Suburbs, and Manly-Warrin-
gah clubs
Following his playing retirement, he held lower grade coaching roles at Western Suburbs and Canterbury-Bankstown
Also held club-level administrative roles, including a marketing role for Eastern Suburbs (where he acted as the club’s
CEO for a time), and a role in Super League as its International Operations Manager
Jamie L’Oste Brown Assistant Salary Cap Auditor (2007 – present)
A quali?ed accountant
Experience in ?nancial accounting roles both prior to and while employed at the NRL
The only person who assists Schubert in his work on a full-time basis
David Gallop NRL CEO (2002–2012)
Formerly NRL Director of Legal and Business Affairs
Also known for his involvement with Super League, as their Legal Affairs Manager for Super League
Succeeded by David Smith (2013 – present)
Club Administrators CEOs, CFOs and salary cap compliance-related staff within each club
Players and club
football staff
Includes players, coaches, and other training staff
Canadian Football League (CFL) – Canada
Trevor Hardy Director, Salary Expenditure Reporting (2006 – present)
Professionally quali?ed with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants
Only one of 255 Canadian CAs with a specialist designation in Investigative and Forensic Accounting
Had several years of forensic accounting experience at accounting ?rm BDO Dunwoody prior to joining the CFL
Proclaimed expert in the use of analytics, statistical modelling and forecasting
Tom Wright CFL CEO (2002–2006)
Instrumental in driving a revitalised CFL salary cap regime, including the creation of the salary cap auditor role
Succeeded by Mark Cohon (2007 – present)
CFL Central
Administrators
Senior administrators in the CFL
Initially assisted Hardy in building rapport and social networks in the ?eld
Club Administrators CEOs, CFOs and salary cap compliance-related staff within each club
Players and club
football staff
Includes players, coaches, and other training staff
4
Except for those in of?cial salary cap auditing positions (Ian Schubert,
Jamie L’Oste-Brown, Trevor Hardy), the interviewees listed in Table 1 have
been de-identi?ed throughout the paper.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 79
The name of the game: The ?elds of football
Irrespective of the code, ?elds of football share many
similarities in terms of the logic of the ‘gaming space’
(Friedland, 2009), including the stakes at play, shared
illusio
5
in these stakes, ‘rules of play’ conditioning contests
over resources, stakes and in?uence, and valued capital in
these ?elds. At the same time, historical contingencies and
contextual in?uences importantly shape struggles that tran-
spire in different ?elds of football. This section elaborates on
these matters as they have informed the emergence and
positioning of salary cap auditing/auditors within the CFL
and NRL.
Central to ?elds of football is the value placed on cul-
tural accolades that accrue to clubs from on-?eld success,
captured in symbolic tokens like competition trophies,
?ags and plates. A central ingredient to competitive suc-
cess is the possession of particular forms of capital and
the right habitus (Cooper & Johnston, 2012) – strategies,
skills, tactics and feel for play possessed by a club’s players
Table 2
Table of interviewees.
No. Interviewee Position Organisation type
1 Ian Schubert Salary Cap Auditor NRL
2 NRL Club Administrator 1 CFO NRL Club
3 Ian Schubert Salary Cap Auditor NRL
4 Jamie L’Oste Brown Assistant Salary Cap Auditor NRL
5 NRL Club Administrator 2 General Manager Rugby League NRL Club
6 NRL Club Administrator 3 General Manager Operation NRL Club
7 Trevor Hardy Director, Finance & Business Operations CFL
8 Trevor Hardy Director, Finance & Business Operations CFL
9 NRL Club Administrator 4 CFO NRL Club
10 CFL Central Administrator 1 VP, Finance and Business Operations CFL
11 CFL Central Administrator 2 COO CFL
12 CFL Central Administrator 3 VP, Football Operations CFL
13 NRL Club Administrator 4 CFO NRL Club
14 CFL Club Administrator 1 CEO CFL Club
15 NRL Club Coach 1 Head Coach NRL Club
16 Trevor Hardy Director, Finance & Business Operations CFL
17 CFL Club Administrator 2 General Manager CFL Club
18 CFL Club Administrator 3 CEO CFL Club
Table 3
Summary table of background information and data sources.
Data source NRL CFL
Background information
Location Australia Canada
Founded 1998 1958
Number of
participating teams
(2012)
16 8
Salary Cap introduced
(latest attempt)
1998 2006
Headline Salary Cap
(2012 season)
$4.4 million for the 25 highest paid players at
each club
$4.35 million for a roster of 45 players
Appointed Salary Cap
auditor (current)
Ian Schubert Trevor Hardy
Interviews
Number 9 9
Public document sources
Newspaper articles 1,117 unique articles from major Australian
newspapers
234 unique articles from major Canadian newspapers
Websites NRL.com CFL.com
Salary Cap documents
Policy document 256 pages (NRL Playing Contract and
Remuneration Rules)
120 pages (CFL Collective Bargaining Agreement 2010)
Procedures
documents
20 pages (NRL template audit program, work
papers, and club (auditee) instructions)
40 pages (CFL template audit program, work papers, template
declarations from clubs, and club (auditee) instructions)
Published reports Sample audit report Sample audit report Sample interpretation bulletin
5
Bourdieu uses the term illusio to refer to the value that agents ascribe to
the stakes involved in a given ?eld, and the unthinking commitment that
agents make to pursue these stakes (Bourdieu, 1998).
80 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
and its coaching staff. For those invested in the stakes of a
particular club (e.g. players, club owners, boards and
administrators, coaching staff), competitive success brings
symbolic capital (prestige and status), which can be con-
verted to economic capital from gate receipts and mem-
bership sales, merchandise sales and sponsorships. In
turn, successful clubs are more able to invest in their cul-
tural capital (e.g. facilities, playing and coaching talent),
for even more success – a ‘victorious cycle’ of cultural, eco-
nomic, social and symbolic capital accumulation (Cooper &
Johnston, 2012).
Fields of football, like most elite professional sports, are
now also ‘big business’, generating economic capital on a
scale unimaginable only a few decades ago.
6
Entrepreneur-
ial sport administrators and their ?nancial backers have
turned ‘‘games that people love into pro?t-making ventures’’
(Schimmel, 2001, p. 37). Crucial to the commodi?cation of
?elds of football is attractive cultural and symbolic capital
(e.g. perceived quality, excitement and respectability of the
game and its participants) that entice ‘fan interest’ in its
stakes (i.e. to share in its illusio), and convert into economic
capital through merchandise royalties, sponsorships, and
broadcasting rights. To pursue greater economic capital,
football leagues seek to boost their cultural and symbolic
capital, taking actions such as: (i) changes to on- and off-
?eld ‘rules of the game’; (ii) participating in community
engagement programs and charity initiatives; (iii) conduct-
ing public investigations into and sanctioning player mis-
conduct; and (iv) deploying crisis management strategies
in response to serious scandals (see Andon & Free, 2012).
Salary caps are another manifestation of these efforts. By
limiting the economic capital clubs can use to attract playing
talent, salary caps are intended to enhance the competitive-
ness, and hence symbolic capital, of on-?eld competition. At
the same time, they aim to temper threats to a football lea-
gue’s cultural and symbolic capital from ?nancial instability
arising from unfettered spending as clubs compete for play-
ing talent.
Fields of football are also shaped by their own distinct
historical contingencies, and autonomous and heterono-
mous in?uences, which contextualise how stakes, contests
and power relations play out in a given football code. Coo-
per and Johnston (2012) and Cooper and Joyce (2013) high-
light some of the unique conditions bearing on
developments in Association Football (soccer) in the UK,
such as the economic and symbolic power of elite teams
and their billionaire owners relative to their competition
administrators, and the entrenched gulf between rich and
poor clubs in successfully accumulating key capital. The
CFL and NRL also have their own unique conditions, which
have shaped the emergence and positioning of salary cap
regimes within them.
The National Rugby League (NRL)
The NRL, based in Australia, is the world’s pre-eminent
rugby league competition. The origins of this ?eld of foot-
ball lie in cultural and economic struggles within the Eng-
lish Rugby Football Union (RFU) between the largely
upper-class leadership and working-class players, over its
strict amateur orthodoxy and the right to ‘broken-time
payments’ for time taken off work to play (Evans, 2012).
A breakaway movement (the Northern Union) was formed
in 1895, from which the game of rugby league emerged.
The ?rst Australian rugby league competition (The New
South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) premiership) was
formed in 1908, following a comparable breakaway move-
ment (Evans, 2012). Since the NSWRL’s inauguration, rug-
by league’s cultural appeal has burgeoned. In 1995,
governance of the game was transferred to the Australian
Rugby League (ARL), re?ecting its growing signi?cance.
Rugby league in Australia has also faced signi?cant
challenges to its symbolic capital. Arguably its greatest
challenge was the highly controversial ‘Super League war’
of the 1995–1997 seasons, which was primarily driven
by competition for pay television content between two of
Australia’s most powerful media identities (Kerry Packer
and Rupert Murdoch), and resulted in a second, break-
away News Limited-sponsored Super League competition
in 1997 (Rowe, 1997). Secret negotiations, a bidding war
for playing talent, protracted legal action, and bitter quar-
relling were hallmarks of this acrimonious struggle. Signif-
icant public disillusionment and the unsustainability of the
economic capital frenzy that took place saw the rival com-
petitions reunite to form a merged National Rugby League
(NRL) in 1998.
7
Following this most tumultuous period, the NRL was
charged with repairing the ?eld’s damaged symbolic
standing, and restoring ?nancial and organisational stabil-
ity. With the dangers of unfettered economic forces fully
realised during the Super League war, the ‘rules of the
game’ were seen to require urgent amendment. Close com-
petition and ?nancial stability became a priority for the
NRL administration. For these reasons, NRL CEO Neil Whit-
taker (himself a former player, and formerly the ARL CEO)
imposed a salary cap
8
from the commencement of the 1999
season (NRL, 2012).
9
Despite the signi?cant restraints it
placed on the exercise of economic power by clubs within
6
For example, the National Football League (USA) maintains a current
broadcast rights agreement reportedly worth USD 27 billion (Badenhausen,
2011). Although not on this scale, the NRL and CFL are growing their
economic capital potential. For example, they both recently signed
lucrative broadcast rights deals, worth AUD 1.025 billion (Ritchie &
Roth?eld, 2012) and approximately CAD 200 million (Ralph,
2013)respectively.
7
The NRL was initially structured as a 20 team competition, It is now
comprised of comprised of 16 teams, with all but one (the New Zealand
Warriors) spread across the east coast of Australia.
8
Originally, this cap was set at $3.25 million for the top 25 players at
each club. For the last fully completed season (2012), the salary cap stood at
$4.4 million, with a further $350,000 assigned for the salaries of players
outside the top 25 playing group. An additional $250,000 salary cap applies
for the top 20 players of a club who play in the NRL’s Toyota Cup Under 20s
youth competition (NRL., 2012).
9
A previous competition administration, the NSWRL, ?rst introduced a
salary cap to elite rugby league competition in Australia in the 1990 season.
This salary cap was in place until the beginning of the Super League war
1995, when the Super League war rendered the salary cap irrelevant (NRL.,
2010). During the time of the previous salary cap, Big-4 auditors were
intermittently engaged to provide salary cap assurance. According to
Schubert, ‘‘it wasn’t done fairly and equitably [across the league]’’ (Ian
Schubert, Interview #3).
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 81
the ?eld, the emerging salary cap orthodoxy was publicly ac-
cepted by NRL clubs and other key stakeholders. This re-
?ected the greater economic power of the central
administration of NRL relative to other ?elds of football
(such as the English Premier League), as NRL clubs rely on
?nancial grants and competition winnings funded by cen-
trally controlled competition sponsorships and television
rights deals. It also indicated a general recognition of the
fragile state of rugby league’s illusio by all stakeholders of
the code in the face of intense competition from rival ?elds
of football for cultural ascendancy.
10
Coinciding with the introduction of the salary cap in
1999, the NRL appointed Ian Schubert as the competition’s
inaugural salary cap auditor. As part of attempts to restore
prestige and stability to the game, key administrative
appointments in the NRL were rugby league ‘insiders’ –
people already well-established in the ?eld, possessing sig-
ni?cant cultural capital (knowledge of the code and its his-
tory), acculturated to the rugby league habitus (a feel for
the values, orthodoxies and personalities of the game)
and invested in its illusio (the welfare of rugby league com-
petition). As a former, highly decorated player, with expe-
rience in a range of coaching and administrative roles,
Schubert very much ?tted the insider mould. At the time,
Schubert’s appointment was relatively unheralded – there
was no discussion evident in media about the manner of
his appointment, or of other likely candidates.
The Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League (CFL), based on a form of
gridiron football closely related to American Football, is the
major elite form of football competition in Canada. The
?rst documented football game in Canada was held at
the University of Toronto in 1861. A de?ning moment in
?eld of Canadian football came in 1874, when modi?ed
rugby rules developed at the University of McGill were ?rst
used in a series of matches against Harvard University.
After various iterations of governance, the CFL was estab-
lished as a stand-alone professional football competition
in 1958 (Cosentino, 1995).
The league entered an extended period of ?nancial dif-
?culty in the mid-1980s. For some time prior, the CFL faced
intense competition for cultural ascendancy from the high
pro?le and well-resourced US sports leagues (Cosentino,
1995). Criticisms about the quality of play and broadcast-
ing in comparison to the National Football League (NFL)
contributed to a growing perception that the CFL was
‘‘hanging on’’ for survival (Cosentino, 1995, p. 218). Declin-
ing media coverage and television ratings followed, seri-
ously affecting the CFLs capacity to draw in economic
capital (Cosentino, 1995).Re?ecting deep-seated concerns
about the resulting ?nancial instability of the ?eld, the
CFL were compelled to change the ‘rules of the game’ by
instituting a ‘competitive expenditures limit’ (a salary
cap) in 1988.
11
While clubs paid lip service to the emerging
salary cap orthodoxy, assuring compliance was notoriously
dif?cult. CFL clubs felt compelled to spend beyond their
means to compete sustain to compete for playing talent (a
key part of their victorious cycle of capital accumulation)
against well-resourced NFL clubs. Allegedly, salary cap
cheating was ‘‘rampant’’ (Petrie, 2003), with players paid
via ‘‘under the table’’ arrangements or through appoint-
ments to spurious off-?eld roles (Bouw, 1998; Davidson,
1992). For a time, Big-4 auditors were brought in to help
provide assurance of salary cap compliance, but this proved
ineffectual without meaningful investigation or penalties
(Trevor Hardy, Interview #16).
The CFL was reluctant to penalise and/or publicly
identify offending clubs (Anonymous, 2001; Petrie, 2003),
largely because of its fragile symbolic standing at the time.
Consequently, the salary cap lacked legitimacy and
occupied a highly contested position in the ?eld. Media
proclamations of the ‘‘laughable’’ state of the salary cap
(see for example Petrie, 2003) came to a head in 2003,
when the newly appointed CFL Commissioner, Tom
Wright, sought to ‘‘harden the cap and hold teams account-
able for ducking the rules’’ (Petrie, 2003), proposing a new
‘‘salary management system’’ in 2004.
12
Consistent with
the polemic status of the CFL’s salary cap, the rati?cation
vote passed with the smallest possible majority. Two clubs
(the Montreal Alouettes and the British Columbia Lions
13
)
voted against it.
An integral part of the new salary cap regime was the
requirement to appoint a salary cap auditor role to ensure
compliance with its provisions. There was fervent debate
within the CFL administration about who would best ?t
this new role. Consideration was given to the engagement
of a professional accounting ?rm (thus leveraging off their
accounting-based cultural capital). However, as the fol-
lowing quote explains, it was decided that appointing
an ‘in-house’ auditor represented the best way to
proceed:
We had a long debate here about whether or not we
would outsource it to a ?rm or a third party to do the
audit or if we would hire someone internally. . . I was a
proponent of trying to ?nd someone to have on staff
here fulltime just because knowing the personalities
of professional sports and the issues that were going
to take place, I wanted to make sure we had someone
who was consistent visit over visit and club to
club. . . having the same person speaking the same lan-
guage to each and every club I thought was of critical
importance especially at the outset (CFL Central Admin-
istrator 1, Interview #10).
10
Australia has four main ?elds of football, Australian rules football,
rugby league, rugby union, and soccer. Consequently competition for
interest is intense.
11
This limit was initially set at $3 million, and included all player and
support staff expenditure, with a ‘‘marquee player’’ exception (whose
salary would not count against the limit).
12
Initially the cap was set at $3.8 million for up to 42 rostered players at
each club (Fitz-Gerald, 2006). As at the 2012 season, the cap had increased
to $4.35 million, with exclusions for pre- and post-season compensation,
per diems, pension payments and players on the nine-game injured list
(CFL., 2012).
13
It is worth noting that both of these clubs were privately-held and
backed by wealthy benefactors, as opposed the community-owned struc-
ture of several other clubs in the league.
82 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
An ‘in-house’ auditor was believed to offer distinct
advantages, particularly through developing requisite
?eld-speci?c cultural capital (knowledge of the personali-
ties and issues affecting the ?eld, and consistency through
knowledge of past actions) deemed necessary for the role.
After interviewing several applicants, Trevor Hardy, a
forensic auditor by training and experience, was formally
appointed as the Director, Salary Expenditure Reporting
on September 1, 2006. Although an ‘outsider’ with no pre-
vious involvement in the ?eld, CFL respondents empha-
sised the value of Hardy’s cultural capital in forensic
accounting. It was hoped Hardy’s qualities would ?nally
coerce clubs to take the salary cap seriously.
Analysis of capital
By virtue of their positioning as quasi-judicial agents,
both Hardy and Schubert were inserted into their respec-
tive ?elds of football with considerable potential for power
and in?uence. However, ful?lling this potential depended
in part on their deemed ?t to ?eld-speci?c perceptions
about the qualities of desirable appointees. In turn, this
conditioned the relative volume, composition and ?eld-
speci?c value of capital that Hardy and Schubert drewupon
for authority as they sought to inhabit their new roles.
Consistent with his insider status, Schubert possessed a
range of ?eld-speci?c capital that are now recognised as
crucial to the acquittal of his role. Over his many distin-
guished years of involvement as a player,
14
coach and
administrator,
15
being acculturated along the way in the his-
tory, values, and personalities of the ?eld (a rugby league
habitus), Schubert accumulated signi?cant intelligence (a
form of cultural capital) about the manner of inner workings
of the game. This equipped him with a sensitivity to the sub-
versive salary cap games likely to be played, along with a
sensibility for subtle cues that other possible auditors (e.g.
from the accounting profession) may fail to identify:
[T]he strength of our audit process is Schuey’s knowl-
edge of the game. . . Schuey can look at a team list and
just say ‘‘there’s no way that is right.’’ He understands
back-dating contracts and the tricks and when things
just don’t add up. I don’t think you’d get that from an
independent audit ?rm coming in (Jamie L’Oste Brown,
Interview #4).
Schubert’s social capital in the ?eld was striking. Schu-
bert had accumulated a wide range of friendships and per-
sonal contacts from his many years of involvement in the
game. Widespread use of the familiar moniker ‘‘Schuey’’
re?ects his social embeddedness in rugby league. Schubert
draws on his social networks to inform himself about likely
salary cap issues. Schubert’s capacity to convert his social
capital into cultural capital (speci?c intelligence about
otherwise unobservable salary cap happenings inside
clubs) highlights the socially transferred and translated
nature of much of Schubert’s initial evidence gathering
(Mizruchi & Fein, 1999). As David Gallop (NRL CEO
(2002–2012)) comments in the following quote, Schubert’s
social embeddedness in rugby league (something a ‘‘dorky
accountant’’ from outside the rugby league ?eld could not
access) is deemed crucial to his role:
That is one of the beauties of having a person like Schu-
ey, who understands footy clubs and has relationships
with people in footy clubs and picks up pieces of infor-
mation. If you had a team of accountants that nobody
knew going into footy clubs you may not get the infor-
mant who is prepared to walk up to the dorky accoun-
tant from the big city ?rm. But he may know Schuey
and he may have had a beer with Schuey at some stage
when he worked at the club and he might think I am
going to tell Schuey what I know. . . there are a lot of
advantages in the fact Schuey has relationships (David
Gallop, quoted in Jackson & Walter, 2010).
His accumulated personal cultural accolades from his
lengthy playing career, along with his extensive social cap-
ital (network of contacts in the game) accorded Schubert
with general standing and respect (symbolic capital) with-
in the rugby league fraternity.
Finally, it is interesting to note that in contrast to his
wealth of rugby-league speci?c capital, Schubert held lit-
tle accounting-related cultural capital. Schubert was not
professionally quali?ed, with only basic knowledge and
credentials from a TAFE course undertaken to obtain a
‘‘philosophical understanding of the accounting side of
administration’’ (Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
16
This was
initially confronting for some in rugby league administra-
tion with an auditing habitus from and experience in the
?eld of ?nancial audit. For them, Schubert’s ‘auditor’ desig-
nation was anathema to professional claims about auditing
roles and status (i.e. only accounting profession quali?ed
and experienced auditors have the right to inhabit auditing
roles). The following quote (from a professionally quali?ed
club CFO with extensive Big-4 experience) is a case in
point:
From my own snob value point of view, I actually
turned around and said, are they even auditors? A snob
like myself would turn around and say, I didn’t get my
professional year and my quali?cations and all the rest
14
Schubert’s playing career spanned 272 ?rst grade games in NSWRL
competition over the 1975-1989 seasons, with the Eastern Suburbs (149),
Western Suburbs (88) and Manly-Warringah clubs (31) (Langmack, 2008).
This was the third highest number of ?rst grade games played by an
individual at that time. Schubert’s playing achievements attracted many
individual cultural accolades, including being retrospectively awarded the
Clive Churchill medal for his ‘man of the match’ performance in the 1975
NSWRL Grand Final, and being selected to tour with the Australia rugby
league team for the 1975 Rugby-League World Cup and the 1978 Kangaroo
Tour (Wikipedia, 2012).
15
Following his playing retirement, Schubert was able to exchange
cultural and symbolic capital accumulated through his playing days for
access to various club administration and coaching roles, including lower
grade coaching roles at Western Suburbs and Canterbury-Bankstown, a
marketing role Eastern Suburbs (and also acted as the club’s CEO for a
time), and a role in Super League as its International Operations Manager
(Langmack, 2008; Wikipedia, 2012).
16
TAFE (Technical and Further Education) is a vocational education and
training provider in the Australian state of NSW, and is run by the NSW
Government. A TAFE quali?cation in accounting is a basic quali?cation,
suited to individuals preparing for bookkeeping roles. In Australia, a TAFE
quali?cation does not satisfy education requirements for entry to accred-
itation programs within the accounting profession.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 83
of it, to have someone else call themselves an auditor
simply because they can carry out an audit. We [the
accounting profession] did the same thing with the
engineers on carbon assurance. Morti?ed. . . horri?ed
that these guys could sign an audit report (NRL Club
Administrator 1, Interview #2).
But in Schubert’s view, and that of others in positions of
power, while some accounting-based cultural capital was
useful, acquiring further accounting knowledge (from
quali?cations and experience) was of limited value and
subordinate in this ?eld to the ‘insider’ qualities that Schu-
bert possessed. Even those from accounting backgrounds
with initial misgivings came to recognise this. Sentiments
expressed by the same CFO respondent exemplify this
acknowledgement:
Having been a player and all the rest of it, he knows all
the rules, he knows all the arguments, he knows exactly
how people get around it. Rugby league is a completely
different world and he’s from that world. People tell
him things, they trust him. In fact they tell him too
much. So, his credibility is both his skill set, his knowl-
edge and his relationship. He doesn’t tick any of the
normal boxes. He’s not a member of the Institute of
Chartered Accountants, he’s a footballer (NRL Club
Administrator 1, Interview #2).
This quote is particularly revealing about the distinc-
tiveness of the ?eld of rugby league, and how this helps
to explain perceptions about Schubert’s ‘?t.’ The rugby lea-
gue fraternity plays by its own logic, where ‘insider’ feel,
knowledge and social networks are paramount.
In contrast to the NRL case, Trevor Hardy’s appoint-
ment as the inaugural CFL salary cap auditor very much
re?ected a ?eld-speci?c desire to confront serious ?nan-
cial troubles in the code, and to redress the lack of pene-
tration of previous salary cap efforts. Hardy brought with
him a wealth of accounting-based cultural capital – he
was professionally quali?ed with the Canadian Institute
of Chartered Accountants (CA), one of only 255 CAs with
a specialist designation in Investigative and Forensic
Accounting, and had several years of forensic accounting
experience at accounting ?rm BDO Dunwoody. Being a
forensic accountant, highly skilled in ?nancial investiga-
tion, it was hoped that Hardy would be able to reveal sal-
ary cap indiscretions and imbue sensitivity to ?nancial
matters, something deemed absent from the CFL to this
point.
Hardy’s personal qualities were leveraged at the time of
his appointment to signal the seriousness of the CFL’s re-
solve to assure salary cap compliance:
[We wanted to appoint someone] speci?cally familiar
with forensic audit principles so that the clubs were
aware of the fact that were taking this extremely seri-
ously and we were going down to the nth degree in
terms of detail (CFL Central Administrator 2, Interview
#11).
Hardy’s cultural capital was unique in the CFL and it im-
bued him with standing and respect in the ?eld on ?nan-
cial matters. He was announced as someone who would
‘‘uncook the books, crunch the numbers and ensure that
all eight teams are paying only the $4.05-million each in
player salaries’’ (Maki, 2007).
17
As the following quote indi-
cates, this message resonated with the CFL clubs:
I think when he [Hardy] was hired, it showed the seri-
ousness of the cap itself. To have a forensic auditor
coming in here two or three times a year to go through
your books. . . whereas in the old days, your books wer-
en’t looked at period. And when Trevor ?rst arrived, it
rankled a few feathers and showed that, oh boy, they
are serious (CFL Club Administrator 2, Interview #17).
As a self-professed fan of the CFL, Hardy did share in the
illusio of the ?eld. Yet, he was an ‘outsider’ who did not
possess any social capital in the ?eld (he was detached
from extant social networks, prevailing orthodoxies and
personalities). Hardy’s ‘outsider’ status, along with his
forensic-based feel for how salary cap matters should be
handled, meant that his initial attempts to impose himself
in this role (described by Hardy as ‘‘a bit too aggressive’’ in
hindsight) were not well received. As the following
comment indicates, this initially caught Hardy by surprise
and he had to moderate his fervour in developing the
habitus of a salary cap auditor (rather than a forensic
auditor):
In 2006 I was gung-ho, I’d just come out of forensic
accounting. And probably scared my employers as well
as the clubs when I went out because it was. . . I was
probably too aggressive. . . Most guys I’m dealing with
on a day to day basis have been around for 30, 35 years
to have some hot-shot pencil-neck accountant come in
and tell them how things are going to be done, I didn’t
appreciate that as much back then as I do now. So I
probably didn’t do a very good job initially. . . especially
with the clubs that didn’t participate in the cap the ?rst
year. I was probably a bit too aggressive towards them
and didn’t focus on building relationships as well as I
should have (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
It was hoped that by being an ‘in-house’ appointment,
Hardy would acquire the football-speci?c cultural and so-
cial capital, a feel for how his position should be best han-
dled in the context of the CFL, and consistently build on
and apply these resources to his role over time.
Strategies pursuing symbolic capital
While favourable receptivity in the ?eld depended
importantly on the ?eld speci?c ?t and value of personal
capital, the NRL and CFL case studies also highlight the
in?uence of legitimating strategies (incorporating re?exive
action and dispositions) mobilised by Schubert and Hardy
to build and sustain their authority and status in their
audit roles. This section outlines the nature of the legiti-
mating strategies pursued by Schubert in the NRL and
Hardy in the CFL.
17
$4.05 million was the salary cap limit set for the 2007 CFL season, the
?rst season where breaches of the CFL salary cap would be sanctioned
(Zurkowsky, 2007b).
84 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
In the context of the NRL, certain visible attitudes and
dispositions were actively employed by Schubert to bolster
his legitimacy in his salary cap auditing role. One particular
element was a marked attempt to appear consistent and
discreet in the handling of salary cap matters. In part, this
strategy was an outgrowth of the operation of the salary
cap prior to the Super League war, where there were
doubts, at least in Schubert’s mind, about the closeness
and fairness with which this previous incarnation of the
salary cap had been audited.
[When the previous salary cap operated,] I was a part of
the governing body audit of the clubs at Wests, Bulldogs
and the Roosters over a period of about ?ve years, and I
was quite aware that there was three different audits
done – depending on how good lunch was. I thought
that was an injustice (Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
Schubert also seemed very aware that while his social
capital assisted him greatly as part of his processes of
informing, it would also expose him to accusations of bias
and favourable treatment. Thus, Schubert deemed it neces-
sary to demonstrate his capacity to rise above his social
embeddedness (his wide network of allegiances and
friendships), and project through his conduct an unerring
image of fairness and consistency.
The cornerstone of the rules are that we [now] treat each
club on its merits but most certainly consistently and
fairly without fear or favour, passion or ill will. And
that’s been somewhat of a philosophical success in rela-
tion to the credibility of what we do. . . there was always
going to be someone that would point the ?nger and say
oh, he gave Wests or the Roosters a good run because he
played there and he’s still friends with those blokes. That
was never going to wash with me so it was imperative
that we treated every club exactly the same as every
other club (Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
One particular demonstration of this has been Schu-
bert’s uncompromising stance to enforcing the NRL salary
cap. All evidence of breaching has been taken seriously,
irrespective of the scale or excuses offered. In this regard,
the public reporting of what appears to be relatively minor
anomalies have helped generate an aura of hard-nosed sal-
ary cap assurance. For example:
Is nothing is sacred – not even marriage – when it comes
to the National Rugby League’s probe into alleged salary
cap breaches. Unsubstantiated claims that the wedding
of Canberra Raiders skipper Simon Woolford was paid
for as part of a salary cap deal have seen his quaint coun-
try ceremony put under the microscopic gaze of NRL
auditor Ian Schubert. . . The probe has drawn a blank,
but the issue will be addressed again when the Raiders’
books are checked later this year. The Woolford inquiry
demonstrates the lengths the NRL is prepared to go to
enforce cap rules. . . (Frilingos, 2002).
Schubert’s fervour for strict salary cap compliance in the
?eld has not always been well received, and Schubert con-
ceded that others may see a need at times for more liberal
approaches in the interests of protecting the broader inter-
ests and stakes of the code. Schubert saw such ‘behind the
scenes’ considerations as a job for others in the NRL admin-
istration responsible for the broader interests and stakes
(economic and cultural) of the game, such as NRL CEO Da-
vid Gallop. Schubert was adamant that his legitimacy could
only endure if he remained detached from such matters,
and faithful to his fairness and consistency priorities:
David has to manage my penchant for black and white,
and rule adherence at all cost, with the broader image
of the game in relation to the ?nes. We sometimes have
our clubs in breach but not ?ned. Not often I might add
but he most certainly has a greater responsibility to the
game than I do. . . My responsibility is to treat every club
fairly and evenly and consistently and to the rules and I
take that responsibility very seriously (Ian Schubert,
Interview #3).
Further, and especially in a ?eld where ‘‘people leak
information like a sieve’’, Schubert also saw a need to act
with strict con?dentiality as important in building percep-
tions about the integrity of salary cap auditing. One partic-
ular manifestation of this strategy is Schubert’s avoidance
of the media (Weidler, 2010), despite wide press interest
in his work.
I’m never quoted ‘cause I never give quotes. My job is
primarily con?dential. . . 90% of what I do is of a con?-
dential nature and the only reason the media want to
talk to me is to ?nd out something that someone else
doesn’t know. My job is about doing what I do under
the radar and that’s how I want it to be. . . (Ian Schubert,
Interview #3).
Schubert readily acknowledged the role that his exten-
sive acculturation to the ?eld of rugby league has played in
discharging his responsibilities. It is evident that Schubert
embodies a rugby league habitus, cultivated from his many
years of involvement in the code. Rugby league is one of
the most ferocious codes in the ?eld of professional sport.
Elite players are conditioned to be tough, aggressive, and
uncompromising in imposing their physicality on the foot-
ball ground. Schubert found his assertive personality and
physical presence, a signi?cant product of his rugby league
conditioning, to be helpful in imposing his will on recalci-
trant club administrators and dealing with critics. Indeed
the following quote, corroborated by club interviewees,
emphasises Schubert’s perception of the importance of
these aspects of his bodily hexis.
[T]he con?ict [in the role] is very dif?cult to manage.
We deal with some bullies and I can be one too if I need
to be. But if I’m bullied, I most certainly don’t lose many
of those. . . As a general rule, I probably have a gruff per-
sonality and most certainly a black and white [attitude]
(Ian Schubert, Interview #3).
This uncompromising and brusque posture has not al-
ways been welcomed. Early on, one Club Chairman (ironi-
cally from the club charged with the ?rst major breach of
the cap system) publicly lambasted Schubert for being
‘‘Gestapo-like’’ and ‘‘selective’’ (Pritchard, 1999). He has
also drawn the ire of many key stakeholders in the ?eld
(including club administrators and player managers) for
what they consider to be unnecessary attention to petty
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 85
concerns and dispassionate treatment of player welfare is-
sues (such as the failure to exempt the cost of family ?ights
to Australia for certain international players (Massoud,
2009)).
Notwithstanding this, behind the scenes Schubert has
actively cultivated close engagement between many club
of?cials and his of?ce. Such engagement has fostered what
has become a valuable exchange of salary-related informa-
tion as the emerging rules of the game allowed for a certain
degree of informal dialogue. Schubert encourages clubs to
proactively consult with his of?ce on all salary cap matters,
thus aiding salary cap compliance. In return, Schubert has
promoted his of?ce as an informal ‘‘help-desk’’ to clubs,
offering benchmarking information on player remunera-
tion, along with general advice on matters such as player
contracting provisions, and recruitment/retention policies.
Club representatives consistently opined how they now
value these regular exchanges:
They [Schubert and his team] will answer their phone
and help you out. . . If I get a scenario that comes up that
I haven’t had before, I’ll ring them ‘cause at the end of
the day they do have the authority to make a decision
which might be different to mine. Their interpretation
has got to be for the game (NRL Club Administrator 4,
Interview #8).
So while he is very much seen as the salary cap ‘cop’,
Schubert also has endeavoured to show that his value to
the ?eld is rooted as much in assisting clubs with their
struggles in accumulating playing talent, as it is in regulat-
ing those struggles. As a consequence, Schubert has gone
some way to ingratiate himself with many club adminis-
trators. He is seen as a keeper of accumulated intelligence
and a mentor to club administrators on many aspects of
player remuneration and contract negotiations.
Schubert’s lack of formal training in accounting did not
preclude him from developing a formalised program of
work, borrowing from basic ?nancial audit principles,
rules and processes. The broad ?ow of this program of
audit work (as it presently stands) appears in Table 4.
As indicated in this table, embedded in this program
was a range of audit styled procedures – a schedule of
interactions with clubs, site visits, testing work (with
associated working papers and templates), and reporting.
As is the case with ?nancial audits, these procedures
aimed to identify key risks, test for evidence of transac-
tion compliance to recognised standards, document and
seek resolution of matters arising with clubs, and gener-
ate ?nal reports. As the Assistant Salary Cap Auditor
explained:
Anywhere between November and the end of February
the clubs are invited to make an appointment with us.
[This is when] we get in there and we’re just doing pure
audit work. . . we go through and do a typical audit pro-
cess on that. . . tick and bash. . . [looking at] bank state-
ments, invoices, cash payments, fringe bene?ts, the
tax return. . . Over time we’ve modi?ed it [the audit pro-
gram] to better suit what we do. But it was originally
based on a typical audit process (Jamie L’Oste Brown,
Interview #4).
In developing this program, Schubert brought in
accounting expertise through the employment of a salary
cap assistant with accounting credentials to assist him in
re?ning and executing the formal audit program.
18
While certain audit-styled practices were observed, so
too were signi?cant departures. Indeed, much of Schu-
bert’s intelligence gathering is through wider processes of
informing taking place beyond the boundaries of the for-
mal salary cap audit program. In addition to Schubert’s so-
cial networks, media monitoring of matters relating to
player signings and payments, along with ‘whistleblowers’
offering unsolicited allegations of possible salary cap
breaches also played important roles. According to Schu-
bert, a lot of the intelligence gathered from these channels
‘‘must be taken with a grain of salt.’’ This draws attention
to the importance Schubert’s rugby league habitus – an
intuitive feel for ?ltering mere rumour and innuendo from
potential leads for further inquiry.
Up to the end of the 2011 season, The NRL had publicly
reported some 79 separate salary cap infringements, rang-
ing from the relatively minor infringements to three major,
multi-million dollar breaches. A summary of these re-
ported breaches and the associated ?nancial penalties are
provided in Table 5.
This breach and sanction based reporting is intended to
threaten clubs into compliance, by placing the ‘victorious
cycle’ of cultural, economic, social and symbolic capital
accumulation at risk for offending clubs. L’Oste-Brown re-
?ects on this intention in the following comment:
I mean nobody wants to have their club talked about as
having cheated, whether it’s an administrative breach
or a Melbourne Storm scandal. That is our biggest stick
– the public shame if you like – to name and shame. It’s
personal pride. . . it all adds to the commercial viability
of the clubs (Jamie L’Oste Brown, Interview #4).
In an environment where detecting salary cap can be
notoriously dif?cult, this public reporting of breaches and
sanctions also seemed directed at building con?dence in
salary cap auditing and the NRL administration more gen-
erally. Regular public exposure of salary cap indiscretions
found, together with the penalties imposed, is meant to
be an ongoing public reminder that salary cap regime
works.
Just as Schubert has done in the football ?eld of the NRL,
Hardy has attempted to mobilise his own distinctive
assemblage of strategies, postures, and adaptations to raise
his symbolic capital in his salary cap role. Being accultur-
ated to an accounting-based habitus (from his professional
quali?cation, and experience in forensic accounting roles),
Hardy was quick to develop a program of audit procedures
and protocols following his appointment. These proce-
dures and protocols were designed in consultation with
18
At ?rst, Shane Mattiske (now General Manager of NRL Strategic
Projects) acted in this assistant capacity, aiding Schubert in designing his
salary cap audit program. Later, Jamie L’Oste Brown (the current Assistant
Salary Cap Auditor) took on this role. Both Mattiske and L’Oste Brown
possess requisite accounting-based cultural capital (both are quali?ed
accountants, and have accumulated accounting experience in a range of
commercial roles). L’Oste Brown is the only person assisting Schubert in his
work on a full-time basis.
86 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
other CFL administrators (primarily the Vice President, Fi-
nance and Business Operations, who was also a Chartered
Accountant) and were heavily in?uenced by audit pro-
grams Hardy had come across in his professional career.
But again, in?uenced by the conditions and audit-based
expectations of his ?eld, Hardy’s emerging audit program
was also pragmatically derived, re?ecting what seemed
appropriate to the ?eld of the CFL.
The resulting CFL salary cap audit programincorporated
many of the formal accoutrements of a ?nancial audit
(which, similar to the NRL’s program, included team
disclosures, ?eld visits, analytics, substantive testing,
documenting information, and reporting). There was also
a familiar rhythm to the timing and sequencing of this
work, which cycled through over the course of each CFL
season. Table 6 provides detailed information about the
sequencing and timing of the audit program that was
designed.
Hardy’s audit program also accommodated certain
adaptations and deviations from conventional audit work.
One example was his use of regression modelling, based
on selected on-?eld performance indicators, to help him
predict player salary levels. In part, Hardy found this mod-
elling to be useful for analytically directing the focus of his
assurance work at each of the clubs, particularly in an
environment where clues to salary cap indiscretions were
not easy to ?nd. Just as importantly, his demonstrated
mastery of statistics was also a means for Hardy to play
out what he described as the ‘‘theatrics’’ of his role –
combating the cavalier culture of his ?eld by projecting a
certain professional diligence and intellectual pre-
eminence:
19
The culture [of the CFL] is cavalier. . . old boys’ network.
So my introduction of statistics was really a conscious
attempt to make it more professional and formal. . . I’ve
developed some regression models and they’re quite
strong, they’re quite predictive ... I use them to give
Table 4
Overview of the NRL salary cap audit program.
Approximate timing Event
Pre-season February Pre-season statutory declarations must be submitted by each club to the NRL salary cap audit of?ce
Estimates of variable income (bonuses, match payments) based on prior year performance (e.g. number of
games played in the prior season)
Pre-season March Club declarations of all estimated player payments for the forthcoming year, based on the provisions of each
player contract in force at the time
Preliminary check of statutory declarations relating to the top 25 players for each club checked against NRL
records (registered contracts) for consistency. Identi?ed differences are raised with the clubs for explanation
During the
season
March–
September
Newly signed players must have their contract registered with the NRL at least three working days before their
?rst scheduled game
Clubs can seek compliance advice from the salary cap audit team to avoid falling foul of the rules
During the
season
March–April Detailed examination of statutory declarations for all player payments against NRL registered contracts. Incon-
sistencies are raised with the clubs for explanation
During the
season
July Mid-year review and ?eld visit to clubs (optional for clubs)
Discussion of club’s progressive salary cap position
Discussion of any pertinent salary cap issues arising in the club
Opportunity for clubs to raise grievances
Opportunity for intelligence gathering for the salary cap audit team through conversations with the clubs
Some preliminary veri?cation of player payments
Post season October 31 Salary cap year end
Post season November–
January
Clubs complete year end salary cap audit templates/schedules supplied by the NRL
Third party agreement payments
Current year bonus payments for representative honours
Player traineeships
Sponsors report
Living away from home allowance schedule
Tertiary education allowance
Apprenticeships allowance
Agents fees
Desk reviews of pre-?lled schedules performed by the NRL salary cap audit team
Clubs prepare relevant documentation and make an appointment for salary cap audit visits, as advised by the
NRL salary cap audit team
Clubs provide the following information at least 5 working days prior to the on-site audit:
Information about actual payments, games played and at what level. Injury allowances and stand-down
allowance requests
Report of all cash payments for the year to October 31
Copy of trial balance as at audit date
Scanned copies of living away from home allowance fringe bene?ts
Salary cap audit team completes on-site audit work, including audit testing of various player payment-related
accounts and transactions
Post season November–
January
Audit report issued – letter to each club highlighting issues identi?ed from the audit
19
An interesting example Hardy’s demonstration of statistical mastery
was his publication of regression model used to predict season scores in the
last 28 games of the 2011 season (Hardy, 2011), which reported an
astonishing 96.4% accuracy. This was followed up with a similar model in
2012 with a ‘‘perfect’’ prediction of correct winners in each game analysed
from that season (Hardy, 2012) .
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 87
me an expectation as to how much a player is actually
worth. And if my calculation of what that player is
worth is much higher than what the club has reported,
then that gives me an area to concentrate on when I’m
out doing my audit ?eld work. Another thing that the
analytics gives me is. . . to me it’s theatrical. If you show
them that you’re doing all this stuff then they might get
scared that it’s actually giving you more information
than it really is (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
Hardy’s forensic approach to the role was further rein-
forced by innovative methods he would employ to unearth
information and investigate leads about possible salary cap
indiscretions. The following comments from Hardy provide
an interesting case in point.
We heard that a club might have provided a car to a
player and then another example that a different club
might have provided housing to a player. So we went
and we spent the money to hire a private investigator
to go out and look at the housing records. . . the vehicle’s
license number, went to the motor registryauthority and
triedto see who ownedthe car. It all seemed like overkill,
but we did it to express to those teams that we do that
type of thing. . . so we will catch you, and if we don’t, on
the next one we will (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
These examples highlight Hardy’s attempts to publicly
project a self-image of professional diligence, intellectual
pre-eminence and resourcefulness in his acquittal of the
salary cap auditing role. Successfully projecting such an
image was seen to be important in communicating Hardy’s
effectiveness in the face of widespread doubts about the
workability of salary cap auditing in the CFL, along with
the limited resources he had at his disposal to achieve
his aims. As one CFL administrator re?ected, it was about
overtly demonstrating to the CFL clubs, in the face of these
challenges, that ‘‘we’re going to be smarter than you, we’re
going to work harder than you, we’re going to be more
thorough then you and we’re going to work later than
you’’ (CFL Central Administrator 2, Interview #11).
Hardy also recognised the need to build social capital
within the ?eld. Given his ‘outsider’ status, Hardy began
to actively to recruit support from other key ?gures within
the CFL’s administration, who possessed the requisite so-
cial capital he could leverage:
I didn’t initially focus on building relationships as well
as I should have. . . We have certain people here at the
of?ce in high level positions that have a football back-
ground. So since that time, what I’ve attempted to do
consciously is just try to align myself with them. Even
things as simple as taking our Vice-President of Football
Operations who’s a former player [to site visits]. He’s a
football guy and he’s in my corner and I think that gives
me credibility (Trevor Hardy, Interview #8).
This formed part of a wider strategy to ingratiate him-
self with the CFL clubs. To this end, part of the routine of
CFL salary cap audit program instituted by Hardy was reg-
ular reporting by clubs (communicated by 4 pm each day)
of player transfers and roster changes. What resulted from
this over time for Hardy was an unprecedented accumula-
tion of intelligence about player salaries across the CFL.
Hardy came to realise that this cultural capital would be
Table 5
Summary of reported NRL and CFL salary cap breaches.
Season National Rugby League Canadian Football League
Number of salary cap
infringements
a
Range of ?nes
issued
Total amount of ?nes
issued
Number of salary cap
breaches
a
Range of ?nes
issued
Total amount of ?nes
issued
2000 9 $6,890–
$100,000
$473,690 – – –
2001 3 $84,157–
$100,000
$274,061 – – –
2002 6 $57,533–
$500,000
$916,888 – – –
2003 11 $5,252–
$130,956
$301,208 – – –
2004 7 $5,000–
$120,000
$289,581 – – –
2005 6 $1,339–
$430,000
$476,023 – – –
2006 8 $5,000–
$173,203
$402,979 – – –
2007 7 $0–$70,135 $191,665 2 $76,552–
$116,570
$193,122
2008 5 $3,625–
$15,200
$41,438 1 $87,147 $87,147
2009 7 $2,500–
$15,000
$33,750 1 $44,687 $44,687
2010 6 $2,500–
$187,140
$358,359 1 $26,677 $26,677
2011 4 $5,000–
$80,000
$165,000 0 $0 $0
a
Note that there is a difference in reporting of breaches between the CFL and NRL. In the CFL case, only serious cap breaches are reported. In contrast, the
NRL publicly reports all salary cap related infringements, including minor things like failing to register a player contract.
88 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
helpful in fostering acceptance for his work amongst the
clubs. As much as Hardy’s salary cap work was meant to
economically constrain clubs in their competition for play-
ing talent, Hardy was also keen to show that there was also
a bene?cial ‘‘by-product’’ from this work for the clubs:
A positive by-product of all this is. . . a club can call me
up or write me an email and say Trevor, how much is
this player worth? And I can give them a range of values
for what that player is worth based on my regression
models. . . I’m not a football guy. But I’m increasingly
getting buy-in from. . . the old boys’ network (Trevor
Hardy, Interview #8).
That is, in the absence of CFL habitus Hardy developed
his own means of testing the appropriateness of player sal-
aries. In turn, this technology became embedded within
the cultural capital of the league and helped consecrate
Hardy as a player beyond his formal role.
Hardy periodically produces and publishes interpreta-
tion bulletins to educate clubs on particular compliance is-
sues. He also seeks to proactively engage with clubs about
their salary cap compliance concerns. Club administrators
interviewed stressed the accessibility of Hardy and his
audit infrastructure. For example:
If there is a grey area the easiest thing for us to do is just
pick up the phone and call Trevor and be proactive as
opposed to rolling the dice. Trevor’s easy to get a hold
of in the league (CFL Club Administrator 1, Interview
#14).
Through these initiatives, Hardy attempted to strike a
delicate balance between ‘hard-nosed’ analysis/investiga-
tion, and a more approachable style to his work. As one
interviewee re?ected, striking this balance was a challeng-
ing exercise, but vital to building his legitimacy in the role:
It’s a delicate balance Hardy’s got to strike between a
high level of respect, a little bit of fear and this strange
camaraderie you’ve got to develop where there’s a cer-
tain element of trust. You’ve got to have relationships so
that these guys [CFL club administrators] are bringing
issues such as structuring deals to you in the front
end instead of simply trying to conceal it. . . The real
challenge is that you want that sort of trust and respect
but at the same time you are going to be a pain in the
arse and there’s no way around it. . . It’s a really chal-
lenging dance that I don’t think many people on the
outside appreciate (CFL Central Administrator 1, Inter-
view #10).
Hardy also found himself caught in a delicate balancing
act in relation to sanctioning and public reporting of salary
cap indiscretions. From the outset, meaningful penalties
(including economic and cultural sanctions) were held
out as an important contributor to imbuing the revitalised
salary cap regime with ‘‘some ?rm teeth’’:
We decided the only way we could have some ?rm
teeth in it is to give an auditor, or somebody in the
CFL really, the ability to come in and get right in the
detail and if required to do forensic auditing. So give
Table 6
Overview of the CFL salary cap audit program.
Approximate timing Event
Pre-season June Receive all player contracts (continuing throughout the year)
Summarise Club’s projected position with respect to the salary cap
Statistical analysis of player salaries
6th Game August 6-game Salary Expenditure Cap (SEC) Game Report due from each club
For unexpected variances between reported and expected amounts, clubs consulted to deter-
mine reason
Should SEC Game Report not be received on time, a Notice of Non-Compliance under Sec-
tion 15.11 of Constitution is issued
During season Mid August Interim ?eld visits to some of clubs
Some interim audit work performed
12th Game Late September 12-game SEC Game Report due from each club
For unexpected variances between reported and expected amounts, clubs consulted to deter-
mine reason
Should SEC Game Report not be received on time, a Notice of Non-Compliance under Sec-
tion 15.11 of Constitution issued
During season Late September/Early October Interim ?eld visits to remaining clubs
Remaining interim audit work performed
18-Game Report January 18-Game SEC Game Report due from each club comprehensively covering 9-game injured
and disabled list, guaranteed veteran payments, sign-on payments, practice roster, other
bonuses, incentive bonuses, and non-cash bene?ts
Request reconciliation between General Ledger and 18-game SEC Game Report
Should SEC Game Report not be received on time, a Notice of Non-Compliance under Sec-
tion 15.11 of Constitution issued
Post-Season January–February Final ?eld visits and audit work performed
Post-Season Late March Club audit reports written and distributed
Club statistical supplement reports written and distributed
Post-Season April–May Relevant articles written for publication on the CFL website
Salary cap interpretation bulletins written and disseminated to clubs
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 89
them the audit and then put some ?nancial bur-
dens. . . But more importantly it’s the draft choice. And
this hits the football guys (CFL Club Administrator 3,
Interview #18).
Accordingly, penalties for teams found to have breached
salary cap thresholds were set in the form of: (i) ?nes of
the amount involved for the ?rst $100,000; (ii) ?nes of
double the amount involved and forfeiture of the ?rst-
round draft pick for the next $200,000; and (iii) ?nes of tri-
ple the amount involved and forfeiture of the ?rst and sec-
ond-round draft picks for any amount in excess of
$300,000. However, it was also seen as important that
clubs be given time to ease themselves into compliance.
Consequently, the initial impact of these newly-introduced
these penalties was softened by a decision to make cap
compliance voluntary and not subject to penalty in the ?rst
year (2006).
Once penalties came into place, attempts were made to
soften sanctioning for clubs. First, the language promoted
by the CFL around salary cap indiscretions was intended
to be less hostile to clubs. For example, the salary cap is re-
ferred to in the CFL as the Salary Management System. Tre-
vor’s of?cial title (Director, Salary Expenditure reporting)
obfuscates his audit, compliance and quasi-judicial respon-
sibilities. Sanctioning was talked about by Hardy and other
CFL administrators as a ‘luxury tax’ for excessive expendi-
ture, rather than a penalty for salary cap ‘cheating.’ Sec-
ondly, a measure of leniency was informally applied
where salary cap indiscretions were deemed ‘administra-
tive’ in nature. This was all meant to ‘‘make sure that peo-
ple stay on board’’ with the salary cap:
We’re a league with only eight teams [and] the view of a
relative few can kind of change the whole nature of
what you’re doing here so we have to make sure that
people stay on board. So initially we provided a Com-
missioner’s expectation or interpretation where we
could say, listen, if this [a salary cap breach] is adminis-
trative in nature and we know that you weren’t trying
to kind of pull one over on the league. . . we can ?ne
you a lesser amount or we can waive the ?ne and not
throw the book at you (CFL Central Administrator 2,
Interview #11).
Notwithstanding these strategies to soften the impact
of the salary cap, the two initially objecting clubs – the
Montreal Alouettes and British Colombia Lions – both con-
tinued to rail against the salary cap regime. They both re-
fused to participate in the season of voluntary
compliance (in 2006) and initially refused to submit to
compulsory audits in the following season (Serkes, 2007).
In response, the CFL was compelled to adopt a harder line.
To this end, the new CFL Commissioner (Mark Cohon) re-
leased a statement outlining that failing to submit to the
CFL’s audit ‘‘be met with swift and meaningful discipline
as outlined in the CFL constitution’’ (Serkes, 2007). Eventu-
ally, the Alouettes and Lions relented (Zurkowsky, 2007a).
Public reporting of indiscretions also proved to be a dif-
?cult strategic issue for Hardy and the CFL. Initially, the CFL
declared that salary cap indiscretions would not be pub-
licly reported. In addition, Hardy made a point of not
engaging directly with the media, and refraining from pub-
lic comment on salary cap matters. In the main, salary cap
matters within the CFL have been a relatively private affair,
with reporting limited to a select audience (CFL adminis-
tration and the clubs themselves). However, this stance
has been selectively set aside for serious breaches, particu-
larly where it was believed that a club was attempting to
‘‘pull one over on the league’’ (CFL Central Administrator
2, Interview #11). A total of 6 breaches have been publicly
reported by the CFL (see Table 5). The ?rst public trial of
strength for the new system occurred in 2008 with the ?rst
major breach reported to the public. This related to an
audit ?nding that the Montreal Alouettes (one of the two
resistant clubs) were found to have exceeded the $4.05
million cap by $108,285 in the 2007 season. CFL adminis-
trators considered this to be the ?rst true test of their re-
solve, and so decided not just to impose unprecedented
economic and cultural sanctions (the Alouettes were ?ned
$116,570 and stripped of a ?rst-round draft pick in the
2008 draft), but to publicly report the episode in the media
(see for example Ralph, 2008). The Alouettes publicly de-
fended their position, arguing they had to exceed the salary
cap to maintain medical bene?ts for injured lineman Steve
Charbonneau.
20
Ultimately, formal arbitration settled the
case, where the Alouettes’ arguments were dismissed and
the CFL sanctions upheld. This outcome was publicly pro-
claimed as a ‘‘victory’’ for CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon
(see for example MacKinnon, 2008), who reiterated ‘‘I think
it shows there’s a rigorous process is in place.’’ (TSN., 2008).
Another CFL executive commented on the episode as
follows:
[This] very clearly communicated to all the other teams
that, listen, we’ll be fair to you, but when it comes down
to something we believe in, we’re going to go to the
wall on it, which we did on this case and we were right.
I think it sent a very clear message to everybody that we
meant business and since then when we have had a
team that’s exceeded it, it has readily admitted it and
it’s been a relatively minor amount (CFL Central Admin-
istrator 2, Interview #11).
To summarise, this section highlights the importance of
practical strategies deployed as part of efforts by Schubert
and Hardy to legitimate their appointments and impose
the authority of their auditing positions. Due in part to
these gambits, Schubert has emerged as a senior and in?u-
ential member of the leadership of the NRL with wide pub-
lic support. While not all stakeholders happily accept his
status in the ?eld, few deny the level of scope and in?u-
ence Schubert now has within the game; a view recently
reinforced by a newspaper article listing Schubert in 5th
position in ‘‘the top 50 movers and shakers who walk in
league’s corridors of power’’ (Anonymous, 2010). Hardy
has also achieved a similar status, emerging as a highly re-
spected appointee within the CFL. Although different to
those employed by Schubert, Hardy’s own tactics and dis-
positions were no less effective in bolstering the impor-
20
Charbonneau, a 10-year CFL veteran, didn’t play any game in the season
because of a gastrointestinal illness. The Alouettes contended that had they
released him, Charbonneau would have lost his medical bene?ts.
90 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
tance and integrity of the CFL salary cap in the minds of CFL
and club administrators. Hardy was credited with making
his salary cap ‘‘the ?rst one to really stick’’, bringing ‘‘a
complete cultural shift in the mindset of how people
should work and behave within the cap structure’’ (CFL
Central Administrator 1, Interview #10). Hardy’s strategies
also found favour amongst club of?cials. As one CFL Club
Administrator commented, Hardy is now ‘‘in a good spot’’
(CFL Club Administrator 2, Interview #17), having won re-
spect through actively complementing his forensic exper-
tise with a growing knowledge of CFL, building rapport
with key players amongst the clubs. As they accumulated
symbolic capital in their roles, and were seen to be legiti-
mate ‘auditors’, both Hardy and Schubert earned power
not just to export legitimacy through their audit work,
but the power to consecrate – to write the ‘rules of the
game’,
21
interpret these rules and evaluate what counts as
legitimate, de?ne what is fair in relation to player salaries,
and to have heavy in?uence over the legitimate use of a
wide ranging sanctions (symbolic violence in Bourdieu’s
terms). In turn, this legitimacy also reinforces the cultural
and symbolic capital of the NRL and CFL more generally.
Discussion
We investigate ‘auditors’ competing for legitimacy in
their newly-appointed positions, both of which are each
considered crucial to the effective administration of the
NRL and CFL. While the structural positioning of these
auditors in their ?elds bestowed potential for power and
in?uence, imposing this potential necessitated ‘plays’ for
legitimacy through the deployment of speci?c resources,
tactics, and dispositions, which were framed importantly
by each appointee’s ‘feel for the game’ as well as the con-
ditions of the respective ?elds. In our cases, we see how
the two audit appointees, while competing for similar
stakes in similar ?elds (the legitimacy of newly created sal-
ary cap auditor positions in ?elds of football) played the
game differently.
An important element in these plays for legitimacy was
the ?eld-speci?c value of the composition of resources
(capital in Bourdieusian terms) the two salary cap auditors
possessed. In the NRL case, the selection and positioning of
the auditor was importantly in?uenced by a drawn out
ownership battle (the so-called ‘Super League war’) that
led to deep antagonism and mistrust between factions of
the game’s administration. As such, several interviewees
talked about the premium placed on the social capital
and commitment of an ‘insider’ who was widely known
and respected within rugby league circles. In the CFL case,
the salary cap auditor appointment was made amid ongo-
ing concerns about the ?nancial viability of the league. This
conferred signi?cant value on cultural capital relating to
?nancial management, particularly in the skills attached
to forensic accounting expertise. While there is no recipe
for success, the cases demonstrate that the value of capital
in a given ?eld is importantly conditioned by historical and
contextual contingencies resulting in two different audit
styles within similar roles.
Schubert’s strong social capital meant his networks of
support were largely in place, drawn from contacts devel-
oped during his playing career and extended service to the
game. Consequently, Schubert placed heightened reliance
on his social capital in carrying out his responsibilities,
and in sustaining legitimacy as the salary cap auditor in
his ?eld. To complement his con?guration of capital, Schu-
bert recruited supporting individuals (initially Shane Matt-
iske, and later Jamie L’Oste Brown) with professional
accounting credentials and experience. The consecration
of Hardy took a decidedly different path. As an outsider
with particular credentials and expertise derived from
the ?eld of accounting, Hardy’s con?guration of capital
was inverted when confronted with the conditions of the
CFL ?eld. Notwithstanding this, Hardy was able to draw
upon his particular capital to call attention to his profes-
sional capacity and resourcefulness in catching out salary
cap breaches. These capital translated into Canadian foot-
ball by dint of his active leveraging of social capital from,
key stakeholders in the CFL who were consecrated for dif-
ferent reasons.
While a number of authors have criticised Bourdieu’s
notion of habitus for his apparent denial of conscious deci-
sion making in the determination of human behaviour
(Crossley, 2001; Jenkins, 2002), Bourdieu explicitly allows
for ‘the possibility of re?exive self-awareness’ in shifting
between unevenly aligned, semi-autonomous ?elds. Habi-
tus re?ects socially learned predispositions for thinking
and acting derived from a particular ?eld. As such, when
one encounters a new ?eld, the possibility of a lack of ?t
is always apparent (Adams, 2006), problematising one’s
feel for his/her altered ?eld conditions. This opens up pos-
sibilities for more re?exive awareness and practical action
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 131).
22
In our cases, at the intersection of the ?elds of account-
ing and football, we identify a number of legitimating
strategies employed in order to build symbolic capital for
the respective auditors. These strategies take the form of
practical coping mechanisms – purposive, pragmatic ac-
tion aimed at resolving an immediate impediment at hand
rather than some grand, overall purposeful scheme. This is
in keeping with Bourdieu’s (2000, pp. 63–64)preference for
practical sense-making rather than pure rational calcula-
tion. Three important practical gambits used in both cases,
although differently pursued, were (i) conscious ingratia-
tion; (ii) sanctioning; and (iii) appeals to fairness, a key
doxic notion in both ?elds.
In both cases, the salary cap auditors were keen to ingra-
tiate themselves (e.g. project a stance of approachability
and availability on compliance ‘grey areas’) and facilitate an
exchange of bene?ts that often went beyond their formal
auditing remit (e.g. providing advice on matters like player
21
To this end, Schubert importantly drafted the quali?cations for future
appointments of Salary Cap Auditor in the NRL Playing Contract and
Remuneration Rules as follows: 13. The Salary Cap Auditor shall be a person
who is in the opinion of the Chief Executive Of?cer: (1) Experienced in
business affairs; and (2) Possessed of a broad base of knowledge regarding
the administration of Rugby League.
22
McNay (1999a) argues that contemporary society is in fact much more
routinely marked by ‘crises’ emanating from movement between ?elds
than Bourdieu allows.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 91
valuationand contract provisions). Froma Bourdieusian per-
spective, relative stability and certainty in the salary cap re-
gime emerges from the relational interactions, or collusion,
of dominant players (clubs, players) which maintains the
sports administration illusion of legitimacy to control and
regulate spending on playing talent. Given that club acqui-
escence was necessary for the effective operation of the sal-
ary cap infrastructure, such tactics were central to attempts
to placate club resistance relating to salary cap restrictions.
In this sense, even though most clubs remained publicly
hostile to efforts to control their spending, there was consid-
erable inter-play and exchange away from the public view.
The desire to build rapport was also evident in the CFL’s rel-
atively gentle introduction of their salary cap and recruit-
ment of high-pro?le administrators with football-speci?c
capital to accompany Hardy on his ?eld visits.
Sanctioning of salary cap indiscretions was also an
important tactic across both leagues. For the NRL, the
importance of sanctions was observed from the outset.
While the CFL initially exercised some leniency as part of
attempts to ingratiate clubs to their revamped salary cap
regime, this was only temporary and public penalties came
to the fore in the face of serious salary cap breaches. Con-
sequently, in both leagues, sanctions became an accepted
backstop to the audit regimes, adhering to Bourdieu’s no-
tion of symbolic violence. The ‘corporeal inculcation’ of
symbolic violence is, as McNay argues, ‘exercised with
the complicity’ of the individual.
The third strategy related to appeals to fairness.
23
The
stakes of the ?eld and the quasi-judicial nature of the role
(departing importantly from attest auditing) placed an
emphasis on the notion of fairness. In effectively regulating
player recruitment, the salary cap auditor has the capacity to
dramatically alter the competitive dynamics of the ?eld in a
way that directly impacts the winners and losers in the ?eld;
any club deemed to have been advantaged by a salary cap
ruling effectively means that others are disadvantaged. This
juridical element to the role elevates the importance of per-
ceived fairness and the need for rigorous deduction from a
body of internally coherent rules. While it is almost a truism
that an important part of a credible audit is a formal audit
routine, both Schubert and Hardy were at pains to commu-
nicate the uniform application of procedures to all clubs and
deny any sense of bias or favouritism in the application of
the salary cap procedures.
To this end, it is clear that club representatives from
both ?elds were in?uenced by the scope and depth of the
audit programs created and audit procedures produced
by both the NRL and CFL auditors. From the perspectives
of auditees in the ?eld, these programs impressed the re-
solve, professionalism and comprehensiveness of the ap-
proach. In the same way that audit ?rms generally have
invested heavily in publicly promoting in audit planning
and risk assessment models, training, and other means of
projecting legitimacy (Humphrey & Owen, 2000), the cases
presented in this paper demonstrate how impression man-
agement was used in the presentation of audit program-
ming to in?uence the main players in the ?eld. Positive
interactions with the assurance providers were found to
aid perceptions of a shared moral purpose with the clubs:
to protect and promote the code and its participants.
Concern with fairness also in?uenced the practices of
the auditors. Schubert was re?exively conscious of the
need to project a black-and-white, by-the-rules approach
to enforcement, no matter how minor the breach. For
Hardy, this concern found expression in his extensive use
of ‘objective’ statistical approaches to uncovering deviant
outcomes. Either way, both Schubert and Hardy sought
to project the role of lector, or interpreter, taking refuge be-
hind the appearance of a simple application of the rules.
This paper prompts important re?ections on the posi-
tioning of accounting professionals as demands for assur-
ance services continue to expand into new domains. The
continued success of professional accounting ?rms has
had much to do with their ability to expand into new areas
of advice from their traditional base (Suddaby & Green-
wood, 2001). The conventional argument emanating from
within the profession is that accounting professionals pro-
vide higher quality assurance, irrespective of the ?eld, ow-
ing to their professional organisation, reputation and
global standing, as well as their wealth of assurance-ori-
ented expertise. For example:
[W]e classify members of the auditing profession as the
higher quality assurance providers (DeAngelo, 1981;
Watts & Zimmerman, 1986). This classi?cation is sup-
ported by the fact that the auditing profession has in
place a well-developed ‘‘global’’ standards, indepen-
dence and ethical requirements, and quality control
mechanisms to help ensure the quality of any assurance
reports that are issued by their members. The argument
is further supported by the fact that ?rms (especially
the major ?rms) within the profession also bring a high
level of reputation capital to their engagements (Sim-
nett et al., 2009, p. 943).
But despite these claims, professional accounting forays
into a range of new assurance spaces have met with mixed
success. One of the more recent and notable examples of
the contested presence of accounting professionals in new
spaces is in sustainability reporting, where emerging re-
search has highlighted signi?cant participation by both
accounting and non-accounting assurance providers (Green
& Zhou, 2011; Mock et al., 2007; Simnett et al., 2009),
24
and
some ambivalence over who provides such assurance
23
The term fairness refers to an egalitarian division of resources, and to
that which ‘‘follows the rules’’ (akin to the notion of procedural justice). It
should be noted that for many stakeholders, and most certainly for the
private owners of teams like the Montreal Alouettes and the BC Lions,
salary caps are unfair as they distort price signals and thus undermine
market ef?ciency and, consequently, player welfare (the economic utili-
tarian position). Salary caps also undermine personal freedoms and liberty
(the libertarian position).
24
Mock et al. (2007) reported from a worldwide sample of 130 entities
which issued assured their sustainability reports between 2002 and 2004
that 65% of the assured reports were audited by a non-Big 4 provider.
Simnett et al. (2009) found from their archival study of 2,113 sustainability
reports released from various countries for the years 2002–-2004 that 43%
of reports assured were veri?ed by members of the accounting profession.
Green and Zhou (2011) showed from their international study of 3,008
companies issuing greenhouse gas statements for the years 2006–-2008
that 56% of those statements assured were audited by non-accounting
providers.
92 P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96
(Simnett et al., 2009). Consistent with these experiences, our
?ndings contest the ubiquity of claims by the accounting pro-
fession to assuming high status in new auditing spaces.
Professionally quali?ed auditors are ‘‘?sh in water’’
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 127) to the practice and
logic of assurance services conventional to the professional
accounting world of which they are a product. However,
when audit ideals are transported to different ?elds, the
value of ingrained and taken-for-granted qualities of pro-
fessionally quali?ed auditors may not travel well. Conse-
quently, refashioning audit logics and practices to better
?t their ?eld-speci?c environs played a signi?cant part in
Hardy’s and Schubert’s endeavours to establish their
legitimacy.
One such deviation was the unconventional manner in
which both salary cap auditors mobilised a range of per-
sonal resources – forms of social (networks of supporting
and informing contacts), symbolic (e.g. reputation and sta-
tus in the respective leagues), and non-technical forms of
cultural capital (e.g. deep contextual knowledge) – both
Hardy and Schubert used to credibly instantiate and pur-
sue their respective audit remits. Interchanges of capital
that took place to augment the two auditors’ composition
of personal resources highlight the exchangeability of
auditing-based cultural capital. This was particularly ob-
served in the NRL case, where the audit programwas direc-
ted by an individual without professional accounting
credentials or experience, and who simply acquired
accounting expertise when needed through using appro-
priately quali?ed assistants. It appears that in the same
way that auditors can acquire subject matter expertise to
overcome knowledge barriers when entering new audit
spaces (Simnett et al., 2009), others with different skill sets
seem able to acquire auditing expertise for similar ends.
Another marked departure from conventional audit lo-
gic and practice is re?ected in the expectations and opera-
tion of the new audit positions. The audit profession has
been eager to publicly acknowledge its limitations with re-
spect to collusion in recent years
25
and circumscribe its
responsibilities over fraud (see Humphrey, Moizer, & Turley,
1992). This has been an important element of the so-called
‘‘expectations gap’’ between what the public and users of
?nancial statements perceive the role of an audit to be (Free,
1999; Hassink, Bollen, Meuwissen, & Vries, 2009; Sikka,
Puxty, Willmott, & Cooper, 1998). It is clear that the very rai-
sin d’être of the salary cap auditors relates to uncovering at-
tempts at fraudulently manipulating the salary cap
regulations. In this way, their emphasis is squarely on detec-
tive skills rather than the production of trust and comfort for
players in the capital markets. As the function of audit and
assurance spreads to other societal domains, it may be that
they draw more heavily on this detective-style role than the
production of comfort role of the traditional ?nancial audit.
The marked departures of our cases also provide in-
sights on key dispositions conventionally associated with
auditor legitimacy, such as independence. For many years,
researchers, regulators and the profession have viewed
auditor independence as a crucial legitimating element
(Sucher & Kosmala-MacLullich, 2004). However, it must
be remembered that the symbolic value of independence
is historically and contextually contingent (Everett, Green,
& Neu, 2005), and deeply ingrained in an accounting habi-
tus reproduced by socialising rituals within the profession
(Carter & Spence, 2013; Hamilton & Ó hÓgartaigh, 2009).
As our cases indicate, when audit ideals travel to new
spaces, independence may not always be as prized as one
might think. In our cases, the cap is an endogenously gen-
erated limit on the amount of economic capital that can be
spent by clubs in order to ensure that the league is charac-
terised by meaningful competition. Consequently, there is
perhaps not the same requirement for an auditor to be
independent as is desired in other audit situations. This
is consistent with, and helps to explain, ?ndings about
independence in research on the attributes of assurance
providers in new audit spaces generally (Knechel, Wallage,
Eilifsen, & van Praag, 2006), as well as speci?c assurance-
based studies of TripAdvisor (Jeacle & Carter, 2011) and
the online baseball card market (Jamal & Sunder, 2011).
26
Taken together, these papers led Power (2011) to conclude
that ‘‘the very meaning of independence as a presumed
[legitimating] attribute of assurors is much more ?uid than
we might realise’’ (p. 325). As one interview respondent
commented:
I think that the way independence is taught is getting
further and further away from what independence is.
It’s because what we look at is technical independence,
not independence of mind, not the ability to act freely
in your capacity to do that job. (NRL Club Administrator
1, Interview #4).
Conclusion
Bourdieu uses the metaphor of ‘game’ to evoke an expe-
rience of passionate participation in competitive sport. For
Bourdieu, social life is like a game, only the stakes are high-
er. In Bourdieusian terms, auditors are cultural intermedi-
aries seeking to attach symbolic capital to reported data
and, by extension, entities and ?elds. Within the tradi-
tional con?nes of ?nancial auditing, the audit profession
has managed to position itself such that it importantly reg-
ulates the game, delineating the limits of audit work and
responsibility and de?ne credible agents in the ?eld. Re-
cent decades have seen the word ‘audit’ being attached
to activities that bear only passing resemblance to the
work of a ?nancial auditor and which may be performed
by non-credentialed practitioners. Referred to as ‘‘folk
audits’’ by Cooper and Morgan (2013), these audits often
have a more broad-ranging evaluative and investigative
25
See SAS No. 99 in the United States, ASA 240 in Australia and the
international audit standard ISA 240.
26
Knechel et al. (2006) ?nd from their study of desirable attributes of
assurance services providers (via a survey of a sample of senior accounting
and ?nancial of?cers from 350 companies in the Netherlands) that
independence was not an important consideration. Jeacle and Carter
(2011) demonstrate via their TripAdvisor case that assurance programmes
can sustain legitimacy in the absence of demonstrated independence when
the assurance provision is highly democratised. Jamal and Sunder (2011)
demonstrate that baseball certi?ers who are ‘‘deeply immersed’’ in the
market (i.e. they also provide other services) are seen to be more credible
than their ‘independent’ contemporaries.
P. Andon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 39 (2014) 75–96 93
character, and require different assemblages of capitals
and practical action (moving beyond the remit of ‘‘timid’’
?nancial auditor ‘‘watchdogs who never bark’’ (Power,
2003, p. 195)). While the habitus and symbolic capital of
auditing resonate beyond its traditional con?nes, in new
audit spaces the audit profession enjoys no automatic
ascendancy and most compete with others for
consecration.
The central concern of this paper is the struggle by new-
ly appointed auditors for legitimacy in a discretionary
assurance space. In these domains, auditors are unable to
rely on their traditional state-backed monopoly of ?nancial
audit. While a number of studies have examined the pro-
fession’s attempts to enter new ?elds (Barrett & Gendron,
2006; Gendron & Barrett, 2004; O’Dwyer et al., 2011), our
paper examines efforts to establish jurisdiction by parties
positioned in new assurance roles. This involved negotiat-
ing a complex and challenging terrain comprising clubs
seeking to push their own interests and mistrust about
the proprietary of rival club’s practices and bona ?des.
Rather than focusing on technical skills and knowledge,
we focus on the way that speci?c capital from different
?elds (the ?elds of professional auditing and professional
football) combined to create symbolic capital for the newly
created positions. In so doing, we highlight practical coping
mechanisms employed to boost the legitimacy of the new
audit functions. Our analysis of the gambits used reveals
three primary mechanisms: ingratiation; symbolic vio-
lence; and appeals to fairness.
This paper augments a small but growing stream of re-
search contemplating the ways in which the perceptions
and practices of assurance and certi?cation practices can
be transmogri?ed when imported into new realms (Andon
& Free, 2012; Free et al., 2009; Gendron & Barrett, 2004; Ja-
mal & Sunder, 2011; Jeacle & Carter, 2011; O’Dwyer et al.,
2011; Power, 1994, 2005). It is subject to the conventional
limitations attendant with ?eld work, and caution is war-
ranted in generalising conclusions from a very limited set
of cases. Nonetheless, we believe that this paper opens
up several interesting lines of future inquiry. We concur
with recent calls for greater ?eld-based work in auditing
which deal directly with the actual practices of auditors.
The continuing advance of auditing into other societal do-
mains has deep implications for the practice, expectations
and norms of the craft. It seems likely that assurance ser-
vices emerging outside of ?nancial audit look quite differ-
ent and are subject to different historical contingencies,
rules and dispositions. The hopes of the accounting profes-
sion that these new assurance spaces will unproblemati-
cally open up all manner of applied opportunities for the
profession may require revisiting.
Acknowledgements
This research has been assisted by The Institute of Char-
tered Accountants in Australia through its Academic Re-
search Grant Scheme. Paul Andon acknowledges the
support of the Australian School of Business Research
Grants Scheme. Clinton Free acknowledges the support of
an ARC Future Fellowship (FT110100272). The authors also
gratefully acknowledge the comments of the two anony-
mous reviewers and the editor. Last, but not least, we
thank all our interviewees for supporting this study.
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