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The paper aims to investigate how accounting techniques, when embedded within data-driven public-sector management systems, mask and intensify the neoliberal ideological commitments of powerful state and corporate actors. The authors explore the role of accounting in the operationalisation of “instrumentarian power” (Zuboff, 2019) – a new form of power that mobilises ubiquitous digital instrumentation to ensure that algorithmic architectures can tune, herd and modify behaviour.

The authors employ a qualitative archival analysis of publicly available data related to the automation of welfare-policing systems to explore the role of accounting in advancing instrumentarian power.

In exploring the automation of Australia's welfare debt recovery system (Robodebt), this paper examines a new algorithmic accountability that has emerged at the interface of government, technology and accounting. The authors show that accounting supports both the rise of instrumentarian power and the intensification of neoliberal ideals when buried within algorithms. In focusing on Robodebt, the authors show how the algorithmic reconfiguration of accountability within the welfare system intensified the inequalities that welfare recipients experienced. Furthermore, the authors show that, despite its apparent failure, it worked to modify welfare recipients' behaviour to align with the neoliberal ideals of “self-management” and “individual responsibility”.

This paper addresses Agostino, Saliterer and Steccolini's (2021) call to investigate the relationship between accounting, digital innovations and the lived experience of vulnerable people. To anchor this, the authors show how algorithms work to mask the accounting assumptions that underpin them and assert that this, in turn, recasts accountability relationships. When accounting is embedded in algorithms, the ideological potency of calculations can be obscured, and when applied within technologies that affect vulnerable people, they can intensify already substantial inequalities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the job search probability in welfare receipt over time for men and women in different household constellations, because it is a major concern in welfare states that long-term receipt is driven by recipients’ low job search activity.

The paper analyses the likelihood to search for a job for a sample of unemployed recipients of means-tested welfare benefits in Germany. Data basis is the panel study “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS), and growth curve models are applied in this study.

Job search probability differs by household constellation and gender directly after the onset of welfare receipt; differences are less distinct for changes in job search probability over time. Only welfare recipients without children show a pronounced decline in search probability.

There is no evidence that welfare recipients’ overall cease to search for a job by and by. Financial incentives alone cannot stimulate the job search of welfare recipients, when the diverse motives of male and female recipients in various household constellations are not considered as well.

This paper is the first to study the long-term development in the job search probability and gender differences by household constellations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights onto the level of financial literacy in Brunei, notably focussing on the findings of welfare recipient’s vis-à-vis non-welfare recipients.

Findings are based on structured interviews with 431 heads of households (215 welfare recipients and 216 non-welfare recipients), within the realm of money management, emergency planning and investing for goals. To analyze the data, Pearson’s χ2 test and logistic regressions are undertaken.

The findings underline the importance of enhancing the level of financial literacy, notably for low-income households and those in poverty, as the analysis highlighted their level of financial literacy was significantly lower than non-welfare recipients.

Future researches may want to consider a random sampling approach and/or using other districts in the country, to ascertain a representative set of findings.

The implication of the findzings highlights the need for welfare programs to consider incorporating financial literacy programs, designed specifically for welfare recipients, distinct from non-welfare recipients.

There is currently no known research on financial literacy related to Brunei. Further, the paper also focusses on financial literacy, as a means to assist those in welfare or poverty, in order to enhance their financial well-being.

E‐Government programs often address problems such as institutional ineffectiveness, lack of transparency, or social exclusion. Financial exclusion and people's reliance on ineffective payment methods appear to be a well‐known problem world‐wide. Yet, despite the large number of related case studies and academic reports on the topic, little is understood about the impact governmental payment practices have on the financial behaviour of citizens. Few investigations address how governmental use of payment methods and related policies may impact citizen/consumer behaviour. Through investigating the move to E‐Payment based methods to replace the dominant use of cash and cheques in social welfare in Ireland, the purpose of this paper is to explore the recipient's view of this government project.

The research is organized as an intrinsic case study where the unit of analysis is one large project. It aims at a rich description of one particular case by analysing data collected from two main sources of evidence: preliminary investigation is done by reviewing relevant documents, while primary data collection involved face‐to‐face surveys of social welfare recipients (using a short, structured questionnaire augmented with a few open‐ended questions).

The planning and execution of E‐Government programs often face barriers of mostly social and historical nature. As the results of this research indicate, these barriers might be hard to overcome as they are the result of certain behaviours and attitudes rooted in people's daily experience, such as their daily financial reality. Results also imply that the choice of an adequate E‐Payment method and migration scenario by governmental agencies will be crucial to the outcome. Implementation and education will also be critical.

This study reports on the influence governmental decisions related to social welfare payment methods may have on recipients' financial habits regarding the choice of payment options. It also shows how recipients' everyday experience and financial reality determine the way they relate to payment options.

The dramatic decline in the number of welfare recipients in the USA is examined. The unique features of this article include the use of time series data, the consideration of different welfare benefits and socioeconomic variables, and the application of the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model. Finds that less benefits including cash, food stamps, and Medicaid, lower percentage of births to unmarried mothers, lower dropout rates, lower unemployment rates, more budgets for administrative expense, and welfare reform are expected to reduce welfare caseloads. If the recent unemployment rate of 6.1 percent persists for one year, welfare caseloads would rise by 525,300 from the year 2000 level, holding other factors constant.

Long-term welfare recipients in the Netherlands are either long-term unemployed or part-time employed in jobs that generate incomes below the subsistence level. The question is whether reintegration policies aiming at their return to – a fulltime – job should consider individual social network factors besides psychological and human capital factors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate welfare recipients’ job search behaviour, in particular how individual social capital is distributed, and whether it is related to job search activities.

Standardised and structured interviews were conducted with 189 long-term unemployed welfare recipients. An adapted version of the Resource Generator instrument was used to measure individual access to social capital.

Social capital scales measuring domestic social resources, status-related social resources, expert advice on regulations and financial matters, and advice on finding a job were developed and psychometrically tested. Status-related social resources were more easily accessible to men and higher educated persons. Advice on finding a job was more easily accessible to recently unemployed individuals. Domestic social resources were less accessible to ethnic minorities. Persons with more social capital, specifically status-related social resources and advice in finding a job, showed more active job search behaviour.

The differences in job search activities between respondents with more social capital and those with less social capital were present but to a small degree, and therefore there is no argument for reintegration activities to focus on enlarging social capital.

This study addresses the instrumental functions of the social network by multidimensionally scrutinising the resources that social relationships provide access to.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight, challenge and explain the inequitable treatment of tax and welfare fraudsters in the criminal justice systems of Australia and New Zealand. The authors offer prejudice by way of explanation and suggest that it is also prejudice that restricts the implementation of more equitable processes. A second objective of the study is to highlight the importance of critical tax research as an instrument to agitate for social change.

A survey captures 3,000 respondents’ perceptions of the likelihood that different “types” of people will commit welfare or tax fraud. Using social dominance theory, the authors investigate the extent to which prejudice impacts on attitudes towards those engaged in these fraudulent activities.

The authors find the presence of traditional stereotypes, such as the perception that businessmen are more likely to commit tax fraud and people receiving welfare assistance are more likely to commit fraud. The authors also find strong preferences towards respondents’ own in-group, whereby businessmen, Maori and people receiving welfare assistance believed that their own group was less likely to commit either crime.

Where in-group preference exists among those who construct and enforce the rules relating to investigations, prosecutions and sentencing of tax and welfare fraud, it is perhaps unsurprising that welfare recipients attract less societal support than other groups who have support from their own in-groups that have greater power, resources and influence.

The study highlights the difficulty of social change in the presence of strong in-group preference and prejudice. Cognisance of in-group preference is relevant to the accounting profession where elements of self-regulation remain. In-group preferences may impact on services provided, as well as professional development and education.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how zakat institutions in Brunei can facilitate financial inclusion into their practices and assist to fulfil the saving motives of zakat recipients, notably upon creating financial products/solutions for the poor and destitute.

Using mixed methods approach, structured interviews were conducted with 431 individuals (215 welfare recipients and 216 non-welfare recipients) and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 welfare recipients.

This paper highlights the need for bank accounts and credit facilities that meet the needs of welfare recipients, to fulfil their daily needs, as well as saving for children/grandchildren’s education, and for welfare recipients who save.

Limitation includes non-random sampling.

The implications of these findings point out how zakat and other social institutions in Islam can adapt to contemporary challenges in personal finance, notably in facilitating financial inclusion and understanding saving motives of recipients.

This paper provides a perspective and contention for zakat institutions to adapt to contemporary aspects of personal finance, through facilitating financial inclusion and the saving motives of zakat recipients.

With the events leading up to the election of the Harris Conservative government in Canada's province of Ontario in June of 1995, the debate over “workfare vs. welfare” began to heat up. Ontario traditionally has been Canada's wealthiest province and has developed generous social programmes for her own citizens. As well, over the years, the nation has counted on Ontario's wealth to provide considerable funding for the transfer payments which have supported Canada's poorer provinces. However, in recent years, Ontario has been experiencing a serious economic recession. The effects have been to dramatically increase the provincial government's debt load and to place a burden of taxation on businesses and consumers to pay the interest on this debt, while sustaining the costly social safety net. Many citizens of Ontario have come to regard this debt load as a major obstacle to economic recovery and have targeted social programmes as the focus for serious budget cuts.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an unexploited conceptual pragmatic sociological framework for analyses of action strategies among social assistance recipients, who are affected by contemporary politics of retrenchment.

Noting that existing literature on resistance and coping is mostly concerned with either collective public resistance or sub-public individualised coping strategies, the paper turns to theoretical insights from newer French pragmatic sociologist Laurent Thévenot, enabling the researcher to dissolve the stark boundaries between private/public and coping/resistance. The use of the concepts is demonstrated through a case study analysis of the various actions of Danish social assistance recipients, who were recently affected by a harsh workfare initiative.

The empirical demonstration points to a plurality of individualised strategies of action, taken on by the affected social assistance recipients. Thereby it points to some advantages of the proposed framework, as it makes visible the versatility of the contemporary “welfare client”, as he or she dynamically changes the scope of action and moves between the private and the public and between coping and resistance.

The paper applies hitherto unexploited concepts from French pragmatic sociology to strategies of action among welfare recipients in times of welfare retrenchment.