Accounting as a Normalising Disciplinary Technology: Changing Truth/Power Relations in Tertiary Education in the Name of Efficiency

Abstract

The key objective of this thesis is to explore what is meant by "cultural change" in the public sector and in particular the tertiary education sector. The thesis explores why bringing about "cultural change" has been considered so important, how accounting is implicated, and the ways in which, and the reasons why, the change generated brings about resistance. An analytical framework has been developed, using an interdisciplinary, critical theory approach, drawing on the work of Foucault, as well as organisation theory, critical accounting literature and (de)colonisation literature. This enabled a substantive framework to be developed for looking at how accounting is implicated as a normalising, disciplinary technology in the sociopolitical process of "colonisation" of "academic" culture by "economic" culture, and the resistance engendered. The predominant culture or interpretive scheme affects the goals, power structure, decision making processes, reward systems, and control processes in organisations and society. Public sector reform (PSR) in New Zealand has introduced a neoclassical economic framework, a "market economy" in place of a social framework, "the Welfare State". The dominant assumptions, concepts and norms of the PSR framework for tertiary education, its means and ends, the sociopolitical calculative and organisational practices these legitimate, and their moral consequences have been examined. The power/resistance tactics used in the three phases of displacement, colonisation, and legitimation have been explored. Power tactics attempt to shift tertiary education along a track towards a "pure" economic model, whereas resistance tactics (of varying effectiveness at the different stages) attempt to dampen or divert intended change. Various options to colonialism - along with their difficulties - have been explored, including a "politics of difference". The related ideas of cultures as "fuzzy sets" and the "liminal figure" (Said 1993), who by living at the margin and migrating between boundaries, facilitates intercultural discussion and blurring of boundaries, has been discussed.