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The aim of this study is to examine how the use of indirect government control mechanisms is used as a means of holding government agencies such as job network providers and recipients of social security benefits accountable. The mechanisms of indirect government will be examined using Michel Foucault's discourses on disciplinary power, surveillance and normalisation.

The mechanisms of indirect government are investigated through a survey questionnaire and focus group interviews. The questionnaire is assessed and analysed using descriptive statistics and principal component analysis with varimax rotation.

It is found that the rationing and disciplinary mechanisms of the breaching regime, through a process of disciplinary power, surveillance and normalisation, combine to help hold government agencies and recipients of social security benefits accountable, which in turn helps control the level of social security expenditure.

The current study extends our understanding of the functions of indirect government by providing an applied example of how the process of government works indirectly through government agencies and the abundant rules and regulations that underpin such bureaucracies.

Marketing “from the intra‐organizational perspective” has been comparatively untouched by the critical turn in organization studies. The objective of the present paper is to contribute to a critical examination of marketing as a change discourse by focusing on service management scholarship. In particular, the paper focuses upon the gap‐model.

Foucault's disciplinary power concept is used to analyze how the gap‐model tends to objectify, subjectify and normalize.

Focusing on service management contributes to the scarce critical examination of marketing in general and the almost non‐existent critical examination of service management in particular. Further, the paper contributes to the investigation of the potential production of subjectivity and normalization as an effect of marketing technologies.

This paper suggests empirical exploration of subjective responses to marketing discourse and associated technologies.

Critical examinations of marketing discourse in general, and service management in particular, are very scarce. Specifically, the paper contributes to the understanding of how service management intends to fixate the subject.

Postmodernist ideas – most particularly those of Foucault but also those of Latour, Derrida and Barthes – have had a much longer presence in accounting research than in other business disciplines. However, in large part, the debates in accounting history and management history, have moved in parallel but separate universes. The purpose of this study is therefore one of exploring not only critical accounting understandings that are significant for management history but also one of highlighting conceptual flaws that are common to the postmodernist literature in both accounting and management history.

Foucault has been seminal to the critical traditions that have emerged in both accounting research and management history. In exploring the usage of Foucault’s ideas, this paper argues that an over-reliance on a set of Foucauldian concepts – governmentality, “disciplinary society,” neo-liberalism – that were never conceived with an eye to the problems of accounting and management has resulted in not only in the drawing of some very longbows from Foucault’s formulations but also misrepresentations of the French philosophers’ ideas.

Many, if not most, of the intellectual positions associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History – that knowledge is inherently subjective, that management involves exercising power at distance, that history is a social construct that is used to legitimate capitalism and management – were argued in the critical accounting literature long before Clark and Rowlinson’s (2004) oft cited call. Indeed, the “call” for a “New Accounting History” issued by Miller et al. (1991) played a remarkably similar role to that made by Clark and Rowlinson in management and organizational studies more than a decade later.

This is the first study to explore the marked similarities between the critical accounting literature, most particularly that related to the “New Accounting History” and that associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History in management and organizational studies.

This paper aims to expose the gap between rationalist banking theory and actual practice within the Agricultural Lending Division of the Fiji Development Bank (FDB) by focusing on the inter‐relationship between power and knowledge.

Data for this qualitative research project were gathered from archived documents, interviews, observation and reflection. A Foucauldian theoretical framework was used, which acknowledged the impact of social, economic and political factors within the bank's historical context.

In practice non‐rationalist factors play a vital role in decision making and the development of mechanisms of accountability within the FDB. The bank's policies and procedures have ultimately had to strike a delicate balance between the Fijian government's development goals, profitability requirements and the formal rationalities of new public management, and the cultural realities of agricultural lending in Fiji's traditional community‐oriented society.

This study refutes a merely technocratic approach to banking research, opening up possibilities for further studies which focus on power within a socio‐historic context.

The findings of this study challenge banks to acknowledge the subjectivity of their lending processes and to improve the accountability of lending officers.

This paper demonstrates the credibility and usefulness of a theoretically driven qualitative research study in making visible issues that would otherwise be hidden.

The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (the Act) establishes extensive investigative powers and disciplinary powers that may be exercised by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in certain circumstances. The Act further empowers the FSA to take disciplinary action against approved persons, as well as authorised firms. This paper examines the circumstances in which senior managers may find themselves personally culpable for regulatory breaches and become the subject of disciplinary proceedings.

This conceptual paper aims to elucidate and explore the implications for critical accounting and management of some of the ethical dimensions of Foucault's thought, hitherto comparatively neglected by critical scholars.

Foucault's late works are read as offering a view of the cultivation of ethical agency through the work of the self on the self, through care of the self, which at least implicitly gives priority to care for the other. This notion of moral agency is situated in the context of the broad spectrum of Foucault's influence on critical accounting and management thought, and its significance for professional responsibility in the workplace is explored.

It was found that the accounting and management scholarship that has drawn on Foucault's work on care of the self tends to marginalize its ethical dimension, in particular by neglecting the role of openness to, and responsibility for, the other, in the processes of ethical self‐creation.

It is emphasised that in his later works Foucault puts responsiveness to difference and responsibility for the other at the centre of his ethical project of the self, and it is argued that this opening up of the moral dimension in his work has the potential to enrich the ways in which critical scholarship addresses issues such as professional agency and responsibility, identity politics, and governance in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to use Foucault’s genealogical analysis to problematise the influence of political agreements and resolutions on Cypriots’ social life and to examine spatial practices. At the same time, this paper deals with the implications of the UN’s vision for Pyla in Cyprus as a prototype of integrity and bi-communality. Furthermore, it analyses and problematises the UN mandate system in order to challenge “peace-keeping” strategies.

This investigation has been achieved through the author’s experience of situating and being in the site as well as through conducting site-specific interventions, performances, walking, observations, writing and interviews. Adding to these analytical methods, the involvement of the feminist theories in different ways allowed author to be more critical, reflexive and personal. In addition, the author critically analyses legal documents such as the Cyprus Constitution and the UN’s reports, documents and resolutions in order to understand the connection between politics and accordingly the creation of space.

This embedded critical spatial research into the in-between village Pyla establishes a new methodological understanding for design interventions that do not target a solution but, by implementing a reflexive practice, they create resistance practices. Focusing on these practices should allow a critical reflection on the previously applied urban development programs and their impact on Pyla and other cities and villages in Cyprus. The findings and outcomes that are presented through this research can be used by different powers for a critical reflection on the role of design in conflict situations.

One of the limitations of this research has been the lack of direct contact with the Greek Cypriot inhabitants of the village in order to understand their specific views on the conflict and their participation in the everyday life of the village. One of the reasons for this has been the differences in language which has made it difficult to approach the citizens and discuss their struggles as they would not necessarily confine in an outsider. Nonetheless, the author has tried to capture Greek Cypriot views in the circumstances of the UN and authorities meeting and, where possible has relied on literature to guide the understanding of the village life and Greek Cypriot role in it.

The author’s critical reflection on the unification-focused resolution strategies for the divided Cyprus (created by the UN, academics and architects) established the unique strength of this research paper. This research does not perceive the Cyprus conflict and its division as a problem, instead, it recognises the conflict and works within its division in order to understand the hidden political transformations, powers, appreciations and practices which become subordinate to the conflict. Different practices challenge the idea behind the normalisation processes that the UN aimed to achieve and reacts to those who came up with unification strategies; nonetheless, this should open new visions in the negotiations between the different powers.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a critical analysis of the policy of moral and civic education in the non-tertiary education system in Macao and to examine the kinds of citizens it prepares.

It is a qualitative research design informed by the Foucauldian concepts of “governmentality” and “technology of the self” to analyze the moral and civic education policy in Macao.

The governmentality or art of government of the moral and civic education policy in Macao is made possible by three strategies, namely “governmentalisation of the state,” construction of “moral and civic education as a field of actions” and creation of “social harmony as a new form of civic virtue.” Based on the disclosed governmentalities, three approaches adopted by the government are identified, “normalising the school system,” “educating the students” and “disciplining the scapegoats.” Through these approaches, two technologies of the self are identified, namely disciplinary power and bio-politics, which are used to prepare citizens. In Macao, it seems that there is a tension between the discourses of active democratic citizenship and patriotic education.

The type of policy and theoretical analysis the author has adopted in investigating moral and civic education policy illuminates the local and national policy and, in so doing, creates opportunities for building comparative research on similar issues and their implications for education.

This paper can contribute to the local discussion of the possibility of rewriting the meanings of citizenship.

This paper is comprehensive and can therefore provide a ground for further and future research.

Service marketing research has developed practices for managing and controlling the human resources. However, the role of these control practices in organizations has neither been empirically studied in a systematic way nor been analyzed in relation to control theory. This paper seeks to address these gaps in previous research.

Single case study of a Swedish financial service firm referred to as the Financial Institute which has drawn on service marketing practices to manage the organization and control the employees.

The empirical findings suggest that control practices are associated with service marketing discourse controls for the customer orientation of the human resources.

In order to analyze the empirical findings the paper draws on the control theory of organization studies. More particularly labor process theory and Foucauldian organization theory (FOT) are invoked. The analysis suggests that mainly FOT explains how service marketing practices control the customer orientation of the human resources.

This paper aims to clarify the apparent confusion on the work impacts of business process re‐engineering (BPR), specifically, the level of empowerment and work monitoring, through the conceptual lens of Panopticon.

An intensive case study at the Singapore Internal Revenue Services was conducted. Ninety‐nine employees were also surveyed on their perceived empowerment and work‐monitoring pre‐ and post‐BPR.

The findings revealed intense work monitoring in the post‐BPR environment. For the redesign of routine processes, tighter work monitoring is coupled with continuous efforts to formalize behaviors, leaving little need or scope for real empowerment. Greater empowerment is evident only in the redesign of non‐routine processes, through a Panopticon‐like combination of greater empowerment and higher work monitoring.

The research suggests the applicability of Panopticon as a conceptual lens in understanding and reconciling the apparent contradictions greater empowerment and heightened work monitoring in reengineered workplace. It suggests the need for future research to begin bridging the disparate empowerment and control literature.

The study shows practitioners how they can leverage the discipline of visibility to orchestrate control creatively in a reengineered environment. The glimpses of post‐BPR workplace also help managers to better anticipate change management issues.

The paper addresses an important issue of BPR work impacts. Its suggestion of Panopticon as a conceptual lens also provides a refreshing look at the traditional issues in BPR.