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Governmentality and counter-conduct: A field study of accounting amidst concurrent and competing rationales and programmes

Ahrens, T.; Ferry, L.; Khalifa, R.

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Authors

T. Ahrens

R. Khalifa



Abstract

This paper contributes to the diverse and growing stream of accounting research on Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct, which is broadly concerned with the uses of accounting in the development of alternative ways of governing. Its key problematic lies in the roles that accounting can play in the intertwining of particular practices of governing, for instance, by underpinning practices that facilitate political campaigning, making specific policy choices, and creating new administrative arrangements. We illustrate our argument with some of the ways in which Newcastle City Council (NCC) used accounting to manoeuvre between the programmes of localism, centralism, devolution, austerity, and marketisation to develop novel forms of counter-conduct in response to austerity funding cuts. We show how accounting was used to underpin a multi-facetted counter-conduct that sought to profile itself locally and nationally against austerity as a highly visible and controversial programme of government. However, accounting also served to undermine NCC’s own counter-conduct, for example, through its engagement with longer established programmes, such as marketisation, and by rationalising the council’s administrative responses of austerity cuts.

Citation

Ahrens, T., Ferry, L., & Khalifa, R. (2020). Governmentality and counter-conduct: A field study of accounting amidst concurrent and competing rationales and programmes. Management Accounting Research, 48, Article 100686. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2020.100686

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 27, 2020
Online Publication Date Feb 11, 2020
Publication Date 2020-09
Deposit Date Feb 2, 2020
Publicly Available Date Feb 11, 2022
Journal Management Accounting Research
Print ISSN 1044-5005
Electronic ISSN 1096-1224
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 48
Article Number 100686
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2020.100686
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1272314

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