The practice of accountability, accounting and everyday resistance

Abstract

My aim in this thesis is to investigate the practice of accountability and accounting in Australian Indigenous corporations. Furthermore, I investigate resistance to control, an issue that is inseparable from accountability and accounting practices. My focus on practice is primarily motivated by one of the most important arguments in some of the essays compiled by Ahrens et al. (2009) in honor of Anthony Hopwood. In a nutshell, the argument is that there is much to unearth about accountability and accounting if efforts are given to reinvigorate current conceptualization of the social context within which accountability and accounting operates. Accordingly, my focus on practice bolsters the current notion of social context and thereby revealing novel insights into accountability, accounting and resistance. The social context is often conceptualized in the literature as specific organizational locales. To enhance that conceptualization, I consider the social context as multifaceted spaces that include the organization but are also beyond the organization. What this means is that accountability and accounting is not only practiced within organizations, they are also simultaneously practiced in the various spaces where the organization is nested. Furthermore, these various other spaces have spatial norms which are expected to influence how accountability and accounting are practiced. Individuals who are involved in accountability and accounting practice are an integral component of the social context and the literature oversimplifies the nature of these individuals by predominantly considering them as organizational members. To enrich the current notion of individuals, I conceptualize them as not only organizational members but as individuals who have memberships in other spaces and who embody the spatial norms of these other spaces. By enriching the social context, I found out how accountability and accounting practice are not only influenced by organizational norms but also by the norms of the society within which the organization is nested. That finding sheds light on accountability issues such as the question of "To whom is one accountable to?", the processes involved in managing multiple accountability relationships and the practical means by which accountability is achieved through accountability mechanisms. By conceptualizing individuals as beings who have memberships in spaces beyond the organization, I found that an individual's accounting work is colored by the norms of these extra-organizational spaces that he/she embodies. The reinvigorating of the social context also enhances understanding of resistance to control. Specifically, the realization that the social context is made up of various spaces gives individuals the means with which to enact resistance in a manner that is not seen as resistance but nevertheless effective. I mobilize Bourdieu's (1977; 1990b) theory of practice, especially his concepts of field, habitus and capital to make sense of the practice of accountability, accounting and enactment of resistance. I also implemented a qualitative field study design. I collected data mostly from Fairwind an Indigenous corporation in a very remote Australian community. To collect data, I did interviews, participant observations, conversations and document reviews. Show more