Accounting for control of Italian culture in the Fascist Ethical State: the Alla Scala Opera House
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 27 October 2020
Issue publication date: 8 January 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The study focusses on the complex interaction between ideological beliefs, culture and accounting by identifying during Benito Mussolini's time in power the contributions of accounting to the Italian Fascist repertoire of power in the cultural domain. It emphasises the importance of accounting in making the Alla Scala Opera House in Milan a vital institution in the creation of a Fascist national culture and identity which was meant to define the Fascist “Ethical State”.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts the Foucauldian concept of discourse in analysing the accounting practices of the Alla Scala Opera House.
Findings
Financial statements and related commentaries prepared by the Alla Scala Opera House were not primarily for ensuring good management and the minimisation of public funding in contrast to the practices and expectations of accounting in liberal States. Instead, the dominant Fascist discourse shaped the content and use of accounting and ensured that accounting practices could be a means to construct the Opera House as a “moral individual” that was to serve wider national interests consistent with the priorities of the Fascist Ethical State.
Research limitations/implications
The study identifies how accounting can be mobilised for ideological purposes in different ways which are not limited to supporting discourses inspired by logics of efficiency and profit. The paper also draws attention to the contributions of accounting discourses in shaping the identity of an organisation consistent with the priorities of those who hold the supreme authority in a society.
Social implications
The analysis of how the Fascist State sought to reinforce its power by making cultural institutions a critical part of this process provides the means to understand and unmask the taken-for-granted way in which discourses are created to promote power relations and related interests such as in the rise of far-right movements, most especially in weaker and more vulnerable countries at present.
Originality/value
Unlike most of the work on the relationship between culture and accounting which has emphasised liberal States, this study considers a non-liberal State and documents a use of accounting in the cultural domain which was not limited to promoting efficiency consistent with the priorities now recognised more recently of the New Public Management. It presents a micro-perspective on accounting as an ideological discourse by investigating the role of accounting in the exploitation of a cultural institution for political purposes.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions. Although the paper is the result of a joint effort by the authors, their primary individual contributions are reflected in the following sections of the paper; Michele Bigoni: Theoretical Framework: Accounting as Discourse, From Efficiency to Compliance: 1922–1936, From Compliance to Commitment: 1936–1943, Discussion and Conclusion; Warwick Funnell: Introduction, Method; Enrico Deidda Gagliardo: The Fascist Ethical State and the Role of Culture; Mariarita Pierotti: Accounting, Culture and Ideology.
Citation
Bigoni, M., Funnell, W., Deidda Gagliardo, E. and Pierotti, M. (2021), "Accounting for control of Italian culture in the Fascist Ethical State: the Alla Scala Opera House", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 194-222. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-09-2019-4186
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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