Search results

11 – 20 of over 1000
Article
Publication date: 25 January 2023

Randolph Nsor-Ambala

The purpose of this paper is to test if activism by civil society organisations (CSOs hereafter) in successfully mobilising resistance to the Government of Ghana…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to test if activism by civil society organisations (CSOs hereafter) in successfully mobilising resistance to the Government of Ghana “collateralization” of gold resources and other mineral royalties in 2020 (dubbed the “Agyapa deal”) espouse tenets of Foucault’s (2009) “governmentality” and “counter conduct” dispositions.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws on Dean’s (1999) discussion of government analytics to highlight how CSO activism can simultaneously challenge government practice and share in it. This paper uses an evidence-based and interpretive qualitative content analysis approach. This paper relied on secondary data sources from 1 January 2020 to 21 August 2021. Data collection involved an extensive review of secondary materials concerning the Agyapa deal, relying on the author's local knowledge to identify the likely sources of information.

Findings

This paper exposes how the counteractions of CSOs, underpinned by the desire for so-called “good governance”, invariably extend governmentality and other neo-liberal ideals. In this case, CSOs' actions espoused the ideals of marketisation, extended governable spaces, engrained subjectivation and treated citizens as incapable of formulating and advancing their desires without overt help. Secondly, it provides evidence that massive deployment of accountability and other calculable practices, however wilful, complement efforts at shaping public opinion.

Practical implications

CSO counter-conduct is merely symbolic rather than substantive. Substantive counter-conduct requires the citizenry to actively lead the problematisation process, holding CSOs accountable for acting on their behalf. The current trajectory where CSO accountability is primarily to their international financiers, predominantly neo-liberal advocates, raises questions about “in whose interest they seek another form of governance?” Practically, the splinter of interests that may emanate from citizenry directly led counter-conduct can affect garnering the critical mass needed to force a policy change. That said, however, there is a case for citizenry “making themselves” rather than “being made” within the governmentality process.

Originality/value

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first application of the Foucauldian and Dean framework to a data set from Ghana.

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 19 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 December 2021

Tarek Rana, Dessalegn Getie Mihret and Tesfaye T. Lemma

This paper aims to interpret the role and professional issues of public sector performance auditing (PA) as a mechanism of neoliberal governmentality in the New Public Management…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to interpret the role and professional issues of public sector performance auditing (PA) as a mechanism of neoliberal governmentality in the New Public Management (NPM) era by drawing on a Foucauldian conceptual lens to chart directions for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses the Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity to interpret PA against the background of neoliberal imperatives of public sector management.

Findings

As the growing emphasis on PA in recent decades can be understood as driven by the concurrent development of neoliberal and NPM rationalities, the relatively underexploited concepts of visibility and identity allow further inquiry into important PA issues. This paper identifies avenues for future research under the following three themes: the issue of visibility in neoliberal governmentality and potential for auditors-general to expand the domain of influence of National Audit Offices through the PA role; the potential for PA as a unified distinct specialisation; and the neoliberal idea of professional identity as the individual expert and its interplay with the potential emergence of PA as a distinct function within the accounting profession.

Research limitations/implications

This conceptual paper is anticipated to stimulate future PA research. Key areas in this respect include the position and authority afforded to PA and the possibility of transformation in auditors’ conception of their professional worldview.

Originality/value

This paper charts direction for future research by interpreting PA using Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity that remain to be exploited in PA research.

Details

Meditari Accountancy Research, vol. 31 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2049-372X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 June 2010

David Pick and Htwe Htwe Thein

The aim of this paper is to examine development failure in Myanmar and explore alternative ways forward.

2974

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to examine development failure in Myanmar and explore alternative ways forward.

Design/methodology/approach

This research uses a variety of quantitative and qualitative data drawn from sources including newspaper and media accounts from inside and outside Myanmar, reports from NGOs and field observations. The data are analysed using a framework developed by combining the theoretical perspectives of the resource curse and governmentality.

Findings

Evidence of developmental failure in Myanmar is found. The nation is in an economic, social and political mess due to the actions of an incompetent and corrupt robber regime that has misused and misappropriated much of the wealth being produced from the nation's large mineral and energy reserves. Action by the international community has so far proved ineffective in improving the situation.

Research limitations/implications

The main limitation of this paper is the difficulty in obtaining accurate and reliable official economic and social indicators. However, it does illustrate the value of combining the resource curse thesis and governmentality for understanding development failure.

Practical implications

This research has practical implications in that by illustrating the unsustainable nature of the “grabber governmentality” and providing an alternative “producer governmentality” it is clear that even the most authoritarian regimes are susceptible to change.

Originality/value

The resource curse thesis and governmentality have so far not been used together in the analysis of development. In this paper these concepts provide a way to critically examine the association between resource richness, poor governance and development failure.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 30 no. 5/6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 March 2017

Dessalegn Getie Mihret and Bligh Grant

The purpose of this paper is to articulate the conceptual foundations of the role of internal auditing in corporate governance by drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of…

6317

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to articulate the conceptual foundations of the role of internal auditing in corporate governance by drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is a literature-based analysis of the role of internal auditing from a Foucauldian perspective.

Findings

It is argued that Foucault’s notion of governmentality provides conceptual tools for researching internal auditing as a disciplinary mechanism in the corporate governance setting of contemporary organizations. The paper develops an initial conceptual formulation of internal auditing as: ex post assurance about the execution of economic activities within management’s preconceived frameworks and ex ante advisory services to enhance the rationality of economic activities and accompanying controls.

Research limitations/implications

The paper is expected to initiate debate on the choice of theory and method in internal auditing research. The propositions and research agenda discussed can be used to address research questions of an interpretive nature that could enrich the current understanding of internal auditing.

Originality/value

This paper extends the Foucauldian analysis of accounting to incorporate internal auditing. It offers original propositions as a research agenda and discusses ontological and epistemic considerations associated with adopting the Foucauldian framework for internal auditing research.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 30 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 May 2021

Abdelmoneim Bahyeldin Mohamed Metwally, Ahmed Diab and Mostafa Kayed Mohamed

This study aims to examine the impact of Covid-19 on transforming accountability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and office operation and control. This paper explains how…

1190

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the impact of Covid-19 on transforming accountability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and office operation and control. This paper explains how unleashing the rationality of health and safety along with internal CSR made the transformation to telework successfully operable in a periphery of a western multinational corporation.

Design/methodology/approach

The study draws upon the theories of governmentality and social accountability. It adopts an interpretative qualitative research approach and uses the case study method. Data were collected from one of the biggest private sector telecommunication companies in Egypt.

Findings

This study finds that Covid-19 and its related health and safety discourse represented a good rationale for the western home office to accelerate the initiation of its office transformation plan to reach full working from home policy in a less developed country peripheral subsidiary. Under the guise of CSR, the company spent a large budget to make this transformation quickly operable, while its Egyptian subsidiary is financially distressed. Moreover, the company achieved its objectives from this new rationality as employees currently prefer the telework mode which reduces the company costs in the long run.

Practical implications

The study provides practitioners with evidence and practicable knowledge regarding the impact of Covid-19 on office reconfiguration and the ways used to achieve this in the Egyptian telecommunication sector.

Originality/value

The current study extends the governmentality literature by illustrating that transformation to telework in emerging markets is an operational manifestation of cost reduction and efficiency rationality under the guise of CSR. Moreover, it extends the office transformation literature by bringing early evidence regarding office transition plans during COVID-19 in an emerging market.

Details

International Journal of Organizational Analysis, vol. 30 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1934-8835

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 2002

Damian Hodgson

This paper aims to illustrate the important role marketing technologies play in contemporary neo‐liberal policies which aim to effect social control over a populace through the…

2693

Abstract

This paper aims to illustrate the important role marketing technologies play in contemporary neo‐liberal policies which aim to effect social control over a populace through the shaping of the desire and freedom of individuals. This argument will be developed through an analysis of the expanded role of marketing technologies in the UK financial services industry in the light of studies of governmentality. Drawing on Foucauldian work, it will be argued that to understand governmentality, power relations must be reconceptualised beyond notions of institutional power and repressive mechanisms of control towards an understanding of their productive and seductive operation. From this perspective, deregulation should be seen not as a liberation of market forces or an empowerment of the “new consumer”, but rather as “government at a distance”. The danger of such neo‐liberalist solutions lies in their rhetoric of liberalisation and empowerment which does much to obscure the governmental operation of power in modern societies.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 40 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 December 2017

Edgar Zavala Pelayo

From a micro-macro perspective, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the welfare-related criteria reported by the heads of political parties’ youth wings in Mexico, the…

Abstract

Purpose

From a micro-macro perspective, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the welfare-related criteria reported by the heads of political parties’ youth wings in Mexico, the implicit and explicit religious beliefs that inform some of those criteria and the (Foucauldian) pastoral genealogy of both the criteria and beliefs.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with a group of 32 heads of three political parties’ youth wings in Mexico. The interpretation of the data builds on a previous genealogical analysis of Foucauldian pastoralism in colonial Mexico.

Findings

The respondents’ criteria on a state that should aim at procuring “material-spiritual” and “material-transcendental” types of well-being and politics as “help,” are partly informed by religious values. Such criteria and religious values have been partly constructed out of a pastoralism which was deployed during the Spanish colonial regime and included “temporal” and “spiritual” teleologies of government and the practice of charity as (self-)governmental technique.

Originality/value

The literature on welfare/social policies of Latin American countries like Mexico tends not to problematize issues of secularity other than the religions’ undesirable intrusions in the political field. Governmentality studies also tend to bypass Foucault’s discussion of pastoralism. An empirical study of the pastoral genealogy of contemporary political rationalities in a constitutionally secular country such as Mexico can prompt further research on the gaps above and comparative analyses of pastoral and welfare governmentalities across Latin American and other world regions.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 37 no. 13/14
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 10 July 2019

Peter Hurley, Jeffrey S. Brooks and Jane Wilkinson

This chapter will use the lens of Foucault’s governmentality to critique the use of foreign qualification recognition (FQR) in Australia’s skilled migration programme. Foucault…

Abstract

This chapter will use the lens of Foucault’s governmentality to critique the use of foreign qualification recognition (FQR) in Australia’s skilled migration programme. Foucault suggests that an imperative for governments is to find ways to manage its population to ensure its security and well-being. Foucault notes the explosion of measures designed to facilitate this imperative. We argue that FQR’s use in Australia’s skilled migration programme is another such measure. It is a process designed to ascertain the relative value of one person against another using educational attainment as the meter. We examine the literature on the subject and find there are three key themes: scale, barriers and the persistence of the problem. We explore the concept of value in FQR and find arguments are divisible according to two camps. The first finds that an education qualification represents some objective and meritocratic value that a migrant possesses and that the barriers and persistence of problems are traceable to an inability to find the right way to realize this value. The second supposes that qualifications essentially represent a claim that need not have any basis in a form of essential value. Using Foucault’s governmentality, we suggest that FQR’s primary source of value in Australia’s skilled migration process is its utility as a part of a regime that identifies and classifies migrants and establishes a regime with which to assure governments of the acquisition of a population it believes are most likely to contribute to its security and future prosperity.

Details

Education, Immigration and Migration
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-044-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 November 2017

A number of incidents and community movements in the post-economic growth era have come to shape understandings of the Republic of Ireland’s marginalized groupings. These groups…

Abstract

A number of incidents and community movements in the post-economic growth era have come to shape understandings of the Republic of Ireland’s marginalized groupings. These groups exist in both urban streetscapes and rural communities; all have come to represent a new culture of transgressive resistance in a state that has never completely dealt with issues of political legitimacy or extensive poverty, creating a deviant form of ‘liquid modernity’ which provides the space for such groupings to exist. This chapter demonstrates that the prevailing ideology in contemporary, post-downturn Ireland have created the conditions for incidents of ‘cultural criminology’ that at times erupt into episodes of counter-hegemonic street level governmentality.

The chapter further argues that these groups which have emerged may represent the type of transgressive Foucaultian governmentality envisaged by Kevin Stenson, while they are indicative of subcultures of discontent and nascent racism, which belie the contented findings of various affluence and contentment surveys conducted during the years of rapid growth. The chapter develops this theme of counter-hegemonic ‘governmentality’, or the regional attempts to challenge authorities by local groups of transgressors. The chapter finally argues that, in many ways, the emergence of a culture of criminality in the Irish case, and media depictions of the same can be said to stem from the corruption of that country’s elites as much as from any agenda for resistance from its beleaguered subcultures.

Book part
Publication date: 9 October 2012

Deborah A. Potter

Purpose – Using Foucault's concepts of biopolitics and governmentality along with sociological constructions of risk, this chapter asks, “What definitions and procedures have…

Abstract

Purpose – Using Foucault's concepts of biopolitics and governmentality along with sociological constructions of risk, this chapter asks, “What definitions and procedures have states used in their legislation about FAS to justify state intervention? What are the social and policy implications?”

Methodology/approach – Qualitative content analysis of state legislation enacted into law.

Findings – Against a backdrop of child abuse which justifies intervention, states use different techniques of biopolitics to secure governance over pregnant women and their developing fetuses, including (a) a social history of prenatal alcohol consumption; (b) a diagnosis of FAS in the child; and/or (c) a visible or measurable physiological characteristic of the newborn/child associated with FAS.

Social implications – This chapter extends the analysis of alcohol consumption by pregnant women to a policy level and examines central questions about the government's role in the biopolitical framing of prenatal alcohol use and the differential assignment of risk and responsibility.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter contributes to work on maternal–fetal conflict, risk, and governmentality in women's reproductive health.

Details

Critical Perspectives on Addiction
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-930-1

Keywords

11 – 20 of over 1000