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This paper draws on the concepts of biopolitics and neoliberal governmentality to provide a sociological analysis of the strategic turn in management accounting.

This conceptual and review paper addresses four interrelated questions: How can the early history of management accounting be revisited from a biopolitical angle? How has strategising been linked to the neoliberal evolution of capitalism? How has this neoliberal connection transformed management accounting into its new form of strategising? What are the implications of this transformation for future research and pedagogical practices in management accounting?

Management accounting is strategised in four interrelated directions: by absorbing the jurisdictional and veridictional roles of the market into the calculative practices of management accounting; by transforming management accounting's centripetal hierarchical order of calculations to a centrifugal order the neoliberal governmentality demanded; by re-calculating the point of production as a site in which labour now takes the form of entrepreneurs of the self, performing not only material but also immaterial elements of managerial labour; and by rescoping management accounting to address issues the “fourth or the global age of security” brought, including the social and the environmental ones.

The research expands the existing frames of reference for exploring contemporary calculative practices in neoliberal governmentality.

Strategic turn in management accounting implicates in issues of security, governance and ethics and offers “new opportunities” for expanding management accounting's relevance beyond economic enterprises to various civil society and political constituencies.

This paper makes a theoretical contribution to management accounting's contemporary developments by demonstrating how it moves into biopolitical circulation.

This paper aims to engage with the concept of resilience as theorized by David Chandler in his book Resilience: The Governance of Complexity by drawing from the theory of governmentality presented by Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph.

Evolving from classical liberalism to neoliberalism and from natural sciences to social sciences, the term “resilience” raises many questions about its sustainability in terms of its meaning and complexity. While most scholars tend to underscore the significance and practicality of the term, a few scholars argue that it is a failed dogma with neoliberal characteristics. As this is a theory-based study, its methodology involves close readings of academic texts produced mainly by David Chandler, Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph.

The central argument in this paper is though Chandler convincingly explains the paradigm shift of the term resilience from classical to neoliberal, his theorizing lacks the understanding that the type of power and governmentality involved in individual freedom, autonomy and complexity are actually parts of the neoliberal state. Hence, the buzzword resilience today is actually an extension of the same neoliberal thought.

First, the author attempts to critically engage with the term resilience from a sociological point of view using purposively selected academic literature. Second, the paper attempts to bring Chandler’s conceptualization on resilience into the disaster context and evaluates its practicality within the tenets of neoliberalism by drawing on Joseph’s and Foucault’s theorizations.

This paper aims to investigate algorithmic governmentality – as proposed by Antoinette Rouvroy – specifically in relation to law. It seeks to show how algorithmic profiling can be particularly attractive for those in legal practice, given restraints on time and resources. It deviates from Rouvroy in two ways. First, it argues that algorithmic governmentality does not contrast with neoliberal modes of government in that it allows indirect rule through economic calculations. Second, it argues that critique of such systems is possible, especially if the creative nature of law can be harnessed effectively.

This is a conceptual paper, with a theory-based approach, that is intended to explore relevant issues related to algorithmic governmentality as a basis for future empirical research. It builds on governmentality and socio-legal studies, as well as research on algorithmic practices and some documentary analysis of reports and public-facing marketing of relevant technologies.

This paper provides insights on how algorithmic knowledge is collected, constructed and applied in different situations. It provides examples of how algorithms are currently used and how trends are developing. It demonstrates how such uses can be informed by socio-political and economic rationalities.

Further empirical research is required to test the theoretical findings.

This paper takes up Rouvroy’s question of whether we are at the end(s) of critique and seeks to identify where such critique can be made possible. It also highlights the importance of acknowledging the role of political rationalities in informing the activity of algorithmic assemblages.

This chapter offers an alternative to mainstream policy studies analysis of educational policy in postcommunist Ukraine. Taking its many insights from Foucault-inspired studies of education policy (Besley and Peters, 2007; Doherty, 2006, 2007; Fejes and Nicoll, 2007; Fimyar, 2008a, 2008b; Lindblad and Popkewitz, 2004; Marshall, 1998; Masschelein, Simons, Bröckling, and Pongratz, 2007; Peters, 2001, 2004, 2006; Peters and Besley, 2007; Popkewitz, 2007; Tikly, 2003), this chapter identifies and examines a new domain of analysis, termed in this chapter policy rationalities or policy why(s). Policy rationalities are conceptualized in this chapter as structures distinct from policy discourses that enable the emergence of some discourses and constrain the emergence or reception of others. “Conditions of possibility,” “background practices,” or “epistemes” are some other ways of thinking about the abstract – yet important for the study of policy – term of “policy rationalities.” Fourteen policy documents and 17 years of policy-making (1991–2008) represent textual and temporal borders of analysis. The official authorship of the documents is limited to the three state actors, namely, the President, Parliament, and the Cabinet of Ministers. The rationale for not including the ministerial documents in the analysis is explained in the chapter. The main methods employed by the study are deconstruction and discourse analysis. The chapter discusses three sets of policy rationalities: the rationalities of nation- and state-building, the rationalities of comparison and critique, and, what I will call, the rationalities of “catching-up” Europeanization. The study also traces the textual constructions of the models of individual, society, and the state as well as the definitions of education, upbringing, and educational governance in the documents under analysis. The chapter makes an important contribution to the current debates in policy sociology and governmentality studies by mapping out a new terrain of inquiry, i.e., policy rationalities, as an important starting point for the analysis of educational reform and change.

This introductory chapter introduces standards and standardisation as concepts of outmost relevance to current educational practice and policy across the world, and frames them historically, empirically, as well as theoretically. Furthermore, it gives an overview of how the book is structured and how it can be seen to contribute to the wider field of research in education. The chapter starts by introducing the concepts before it provides the reader with a background description of the broad discursive landscape of policy developments, as painted by educational policy research. Subsequently it describes how standards and standardisation have been theorised within educational research, and concludes with a presentation of the different contributions.

In this chapter, the authors take a close look at the current discourse of food system relocalization. From the perspective of theories of justice and theories of neoliberalism, food relocalization is wrapped up in a problematic, and largely unexamined, communitarian discourse on social justice. The example for California's localized governance of pesticide drift demonstrates that localization can effectively make social justice problems invisible. The authors also look at the EU context, where a different form of localization discourse emphasizes the local capture of rents in the value chain as a neoliberal strategy of territorial valorization. Examining Marsden et al.'s case study of one of these localization projects in the UK, the authors argue that this strategy does not necessarily lead to more equitable forms of rural development. In fact, US and EU discourses are basically two sides of the same coin. Specifically, in neoliberal biopolitical form, they both obscure politics, behind either the discourse of “value” in the EU or “values” in the US. Rather than rejecting localism, however, the authors conclude by arguing for a more “reflexive” localism that harnesses the power of this strategy while consciously struggling against inequality in local arenas.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how, and under what conditions, professionals involve relatives in clinical practice.

Two cases were constructed from two studies in Denmark, theoretically inspired by Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa and position and analyzed with focus on the involvement of relatives from the perspective of professionals.

Support to relatives in practice is rarely included in the way that treatment and care are organized in healthcare. Professionals’ views of the involvement of relatives were characterized by the values of neoliberal ideology and medical-professional rationality, in which relatives are not regarded as a subject of care and support in clinical practice. The involvement of relatives aimed to ensure patients’ participation in randomized clinical trial and to help professionals to care for patients when the professionals were not absolutely needed. Professionals were relatively higher positioned in the clinic than relatives were, which allowed professionals to in – and exclude relatives. Neoliberal ideology and medical-professional rationality go hand in hand when it comes to patient treatment, care and the involvement of relatives; it is all about efficiency, treatment optimization and increased social control of the diagnosed patient. These neoliberal, organizational values consolidate doxa of the medical field and the positions that govern the meeting with patients’ relatives – if it takes place at all.

The results put into perspective how the combination of neoliberalism and medical logic work as an organizing principle in contemporary healthcare systems, and challenge a normative, humanistic view on involving patients’ relatives in the medical clinic.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The authors study how communication agencies became important sites for the rise of measurement expertise in the government of consumer conduct following the development of online consumption. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the processes by which digital measurement developed (within the agencies) as a new legitimate form of expertise, able to produce relevant and detailed knowledge about the government of web users.

The authors carried out a field examination in France, predicated on 100 interviews with actors involved in communication consultancy. Drawing on the concepts of governmentality and inter-jurisdictional experimentation, the authors examine how digital measurement expertise acquired legitimacy within agencies. The authors also analyze how contemporary technologies of measurement and surveillance, as operated by in-house digital experts, provide advertising specialists and advertisers with increasingly precise data on consumer conduct and thought.

The constitution and legitimization of digital measurement expertise was characterized by experimentation, culminating in the production of persuasive claims of tangibility concerning communication impact, and in relative agreement on the relevance of digital expertise in operating increasingly powerful technologies of measurement and surveillance.

While the role of experts in promoting and implementing neoliberal governmentality is emphasized in the literature, the study indicates that considerable work is needed to develop and legitimize expertise consequent with neoliberalism. Also, the analysis highlights that the spread of digital measurement expertise and knowledge production in the government of web users constitutes a noteworthy step in the neoliberalization of society. Behind the front of “free” conduct lies an increasingly powerful network of technologies and expertise aimed at rendering consumer conduct knowable and predictable.