National Head of the School of Law & Business

Biography

Prof. David Carter is the National Head of School, Law and Business. He brings a varied professional career, as a practitioner in law and in business and in university education. David was called to the Bar in the High Court of New Zealand, practising initially at Chapman Tripp Sheffield Young with a focus on telecommunications regulation, prior to taking up the opportunity to practise as a Barrister Sole with interests in infrastructure regulation and the law of torts. This work led to an opportunity to write a PhD that looked at how accounting information created (rather than resolved) problems in telecommunications regulation.

With this focus on the interface of law and business, David has been involved in university education for over 20 years now, starting as a Maori and Pasifika tutor in the law of torts. He has worked in New Zealand, Brazil, the UK and Australia and holds a visiting professorship at Universidade de Sao Paulo. David has now published over 50 articles in law, business, geography and other fields.

In addition, Prof. Carter is a Certified Practicising Accounting with CPA Australia and is a member of the Social Impact Measurement Network of Australia and is qualified to conduct Social Return on Investment work. David is a Fellow of Advance Higher Education.

Teaching area

As a research-led teacher, David draws on Freirean dialogics (Freire, 1970; 1997). The focus in each class empahsises the role of professional judgment, writing, and critical thinking within ethics and embedded in lived experiences. He is passionate about encouraging co-learners to "enter imaginatively into opposing points of view to create 'dialogic exchange' between [their] own view and those whose thinking differs substantially from [their] own" (Bean, 2001, p. 3)

David has broad teaching experience across range of accounting, business, ethics, law and research subjects. Recent teaching includes Risk Management (at the MBA level), the Law of Torts (for a Juris Doctor), Research Philosophy (for doctoral students), Research Design (for doctoral students), Auditing and Assurance, Advanced Issues in Accounting, Corporate Accounting, Business Ethics, Ethics for Financial Planners, Corporate Collapse, Contemporary Issues in Accounting and Advanced Accounting Concepts

Research expertise and supervision

David is a transdisciplinary researcher, examining the politics and ethics of information at the interface of accounting, law, politics, capitalism and regulation through a discursive lens. Ethics, ethical relationships and resilience are central concepts to all his work. David's work focuses on three main pillars: the onto-ethical politics of information, especially with respect to technologies of governance and the politics of numbers; the nature of governance and regulation; and discourses of the commons and capital.

Recent work includes studies of the experiences of those in work afflicted by Coeliac disease, concerns with corruption in Indonesian auditing, the role of a facilitator-accountant on the results of social return on investment, and the ethics of the real concerning CSR disclosures where a corporate entity says one thing while doing the complete opposite.

David is passionate about HDR education and supervision, with an excellent track-record, supervising over 20 students to completion across a range of critical and theoretical studies in a variety of contexts such as emerging economies, law, politics, business and accounting.

Book chapters

Carter D.B. (2018) Accounting for the immaterial: The challenge for management accounting, in E. Harris (ed) The Routledge Companion to Performance Management and Control, London: Routledge.

Research outputs

Steinhoff, A., Warren, R., Carter D.B., & Glynos, J. (2025) The challenges of coeliac disease at work: A contestation of the politics of inclusion, Sociology of Health & Illness, 47(1), e13826

Harun, H., Carter, D.B., & Suhab, S. (2024) New development: 'Auditor opinions for sale' - when privatization meets the cultural ecology of corruption, Public Money & Management, 1-5, early cite

Steinhoff, A., Warren, R., & Carter, D.B. (Self-) accountability practices and the invisibilized non-able body: a case study of celiac disease, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 99, 102737, early cite. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102737

Warren, R., Carter, D.B., Glynos, J., & Voutyras, S. (2024) Articulating the ‘How’of Social Return on Investment: Foregrounding the Plural and Pluralizing Character of Its ‘Moments of Judgment’, Financial Accountability & Management, 1–14, Early Cite. https://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12415

dL Voss, B., Carter, D. B., & Warren, R. (2022). A car wash: post-truth politics, Petrobras and ethics of the real. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, accepted for publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2020-4460

Carter, D.B., Warren, R., & Steinhoff, A. (2022). The anatomy of tragedy: Starbucks as a politics of displacement. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, accepted for publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2015-2169

Carter, D.B. & Warren, R. (2021) Economic Re-colonisation: Financialisation, Indigeneity and the Epistemic Violence of Resolution. Political Geography, 84, 102284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102284

Warren, R., Carter, D. B., & Napier, C. J. (2019). Opening up the politics of standard setting through discourse theory: the case of IFRS for SMEs. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 33(1), 124-151. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-04-2018-3464

Carter D.B. & Warren, R. (2019) Metonyms and metaphor: The rhetorical redescription of public interest for the International Accounting Standards Board, Critical Policy Studies, 13(3), 280-305. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2018.1437460

Harun, H., Mir, M., Carter, D.B., & Yi, A. (2019). Examining the Unintended Outcomes of Public Sector Reforms in Indonesia, Public Money & Management, 39(2), 86-94. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2019.1580892

Carter D.B. & Warren, R. (2018) Accounting for indebtedness: geopolitics, technocracy and advanced financial capital Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 31(1) 83-104. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2017.1415804

Carter D.B. (2018) Accounting for the immaterial: The challenge for management accounting, in E. Harris (ed) The Routledge Companion to Performance Management and Control, London: Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317429937/chapters/10.4324/9781315691374-13

Professional affliliations

Enrolled Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand
Certified Practising Accountant with CPA Australia
Social Return on Investment practitioner with SIMNA
Fellow, Advance Higher Education Academy

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