This paper sets out an approach to the analysis of political power in terms of problematics of government. It argues against an overvaluation of the 'problem of the State' in political debate and social theory. A number of conceptual tools are suggested for the analysis of the many and varied alliances between political and other authorities that seek to govern economic activity, social life and individual conduct. Modern political rationalities and governmental technologies are shown to be intrinsically linked to developments in knowledge and to the powers of expertise. The characteristics of liberal problematics of government are investigated, and it is argued that they are dependent upon technologies for 'governing at a distance', seeking to create locales, entities and persons able to operate a regulated autonomy. The analysis is exemplified through an investigation of welfarism as a mode of 'social' government. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of neo-liberalism which demonstrates that the analytical language structured by the philosophical opposition of state and civil society is unable to comprehend contemporary transformations in modes of exercise of political power.(1).

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Political power beyond the State: problematics of government

\"What are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people?\" So began Douglas McGregor in this 1960 management classic. It was a seemingly simple question he asked, yet it led to a fundamental revolution in management. Today, with the rise of the global economy, the information revolution, and the growth of knowledge-driven work, McGregor's simple but provocative question continues to resonate-perhaps more powerfully than ever before. Heralded as one of the most important pieces of management literature ever written, a touchstone for scholars and a handbook for practitioners, The Human Side of Enterprise continues to receive the highest accolades nearly half a century after its initial publication. Influencing such major management gurus such as Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, McGregor's revolutionary Theory Y-which contends that individuals are self-motivated and self-directed-and Theory X-in which employees must be commanded and controlled-has been widely taught in business schools, industrial relations schools, psychology departments, and professional development seminars for over four decades. In this special annotated edition of the worldwide management classic, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Senior Research Scientist in MIT's Sloan School of Management and Engineering Systems Division, shows us how today's leaders have successfully incorporated McGregor's methods into modern management styles and practices. The added quotes and commentary bring the content right into today's debates and business models. Now more than ever, the timeless wisdom of Douglas McGregor can light the path towards a management style that nurtures leadership capability, creates effective teams, ensures internal alignment, achieves high performance, and cultivates an authentic, value-driven workplace--lessons we all need to learn as we make our way in this brave new world of the 21st century.

The Human Side of Enterprise.

Accounting systems change over time. However relatively little is known of the preconditions for such change, the process of change or its organisational consequences. Existing perspectives on accounting change are reviewed and evaluated in this article. Thereafter three examples of accounting change are discussed. Based on these cases, a number of theoretical issues relating to the understanding of the process of accounting change are examined. Emphasis is placed on the diversity of factors implicated in accounting change, the constitutive as well as reflective roles of accounting and the ways in which accounting change can shift the preconditions for subsequent organisational changes.

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The archeology of accounting systems

In this paper we argue that theory, method, methodology, and knowledge gains in qualitative field studies are intertwined through the ongoing hypothesis development in the field. We develop our argument through a discussion of specific qualitative field studies in management accounting. We emphasise in particular the distinctive role of theory in qualitative research as relating to expression of a subjective reality more than clarification of an objective one. In considering this subjectivity we discuss the ways in which the doing of qualitative research brings to bear discipline on the researcher allowing us to assess the trustworthiness of their accounts. The intention is to develop a more appropriate basis for judging the plausibility of qualitative field studies than notions borrowed from positivistic methodology.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID868264_code21860.pdf?abstractid=816985&mirid=1&type=2

Doing Qualitative Field Research in Management Accounting: Positioning Data to Contribute to Theory

The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business

Historical elaboration of Foucault’s concept of ‘power-knowledge” can explain both the late-medieval developments in accounting technology and why the near-universal adoption of a discourse of accountancy is delayed until the nineteenth century. It is the disciplinary techniques of elite medieval educational institutions - the new universities and their examinations -that generate new power-knowledge relations. These techniques embody forms of textual rewriting (including the new ‘alphanumeric” system) from which the accounting advances are produced and “control” is formalised. “Double-entry” is an aspect of these rewritings, linked also to the new writing and rewritings of money, especially the bill of exchange. By the eighteenth century accounting technologies are feeding back in a general way into educational practice (e.g. in the deployment of “book-keeping” on pupils) and this culminates in the introduction of the written examination and the mathematical mark. A new regime of “objective” evaluation of total populations, made up of individually “calculable” subjects, is thereby engendered and then extended - apparently tirst in the U.S. railroads - into modern comprehensive management and financial accounting systems (systems of “accountability” embodying Foucault’s “reciprocal hierarchical observation” and “normalising judgement”), while written examinations become used to legitimate the newly autonomous pro. fession of accountancy.

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Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power☆

We focus on the genesis of the new managerialism in US business and factories in the nineteenth century and re-examine the published histories of the US armories and the railroads We trace the influence in both arenas of the engineering/military graduates from the US Military Academy at West Point, who represent and reproduce the meticulous “grammatocentric” and “panoptic” system for human accountability introduced there in the years after 1817 Our overall concern is to re-analyse apparently economic-rational changes in accounting and accountability in a wider frame which explains their development as aspects of a general shift in power-knowledge relations—a shift which Foucault characterised as the development of disciplinary power and which we argue originated in elite educational institutions We propose further examination (or re-examination) of the original accounting and administrative records relating to the armories and the railroads in order to establish the precise process of historical change

The genesis of accountability: The west point connections

This review article sets out the Johnson and Kaplan diagnosis of the ‘problem’ with modern US cost accounting and management control systems (‘MAS’) and challenges both their historical analysis and their proposed remedy. It traces the genesis of the knowledge-based disciplinary power of managerialism from the 1830s in the US and contrasts the development of the US/UK focus of MAS on ‘managing by the numbers’, with the different way that knowledge-power has been used by, and has interacted with, managerialism in Japan. It argues that the problems to be confronted with MAS are inherent in the historical genesis of such systems and that it is the behavioural limitations in the way organisations deploy MAS that most need attention. In addition the interrelationships of control between the accounting measurements that create visibility within and without the organisation require that greater attention be addressed to the technical limitations of financial accounting. In conclusion it is suggested that the differing alignments of knowledge-based expertise and disciplinary practices of management control that have developed in the US/UK and in Japan reflect deeper differences in their cultural history.

Managing It All By numbers: A Review of Johnson & Kaplan's ‘Relevance Lost’

In attempting to understand the genesis and scope of modern cost and management accounting systems, accounting historians adopting what has been labeled a “Foucauldian” approach have been rewriting...

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Knowing more as knowing less? alternative histories of cost and management accounting in the u.s. and the u.k.

In a 1977 publication Alfred Chandler singled out the Springfield Armory as the site where single‐unit management was pioneered in the United States, crediting Superintendent Roswell Lee (1815‐1833) with establishing a first “managerial” approach to work discipline and labour accounting. However, as economic breakthrough came only in 1841/2, it has since been argued that Lee′s role has been overestimated. Re‐examines archival evidence to show that: the changes of 1842 at Springfield were not due to external economic pressures, but to pressure exerted by West Point graduates in the Ordnance Department; Lee, as the dominant arms manufacturer in the 1820s, was not “held back” by economic factors from implementing any changes he desired; and his system of work organization was never even potentially managerial, with his accounting system in particular having been fundamentally misinterpreted. The evidence reinforces the case for viewing the invention of modern business and managerialism as primarily a discipl...

Keith Hoskin

Papers

Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power☆

The genesis of accountability: The west point connections

Managing It All By numbers: A Review of Johnson & Kaplan's ‘Relevance Lost’

Knowing more as knowing less? alternative histories of cost and management accounting in the u.s. and the u.k.

Reappraising the Genesis of Managerialism