Week 13 Tutorial

Dr. Farzana Tanima

For Assessment task 1, due on 27/10/19, you are required to answer question 2, 3, and 4.

Question 1

Briers and Chua (2001) analyse the role of actor networks and boundary objects in
management accounting change by undertaking a field study of an organisation (Alroll) that
implemented activity based costing (ABC) system.

Required:

Why is ABC system considered superior in comparison to traditional costing system? In your
reflections, refer to the role of actors, heterogeneous machines, boundary objects and
cosmopolitans (stated in the above paper), in bringing technological changes in an
organisation.

Solution

- Traditional costing lumps overheads together, and allocates overheads to jobs

based on one pre-determined overhead rate
- This can be problematic when overheads are a significant part of overall product
costs, particularly for big companies, that have various operations running
together
- ABC costing takes consideration of several factors such as:

o Tremendous change in manufacturing and service industries.

o Decrease in amount of direct labor usage.
o Significant increase in total overhead costs.
o Inappropriate to use plantwide predetermined overhead rates
when a lack of correlation exists.
o Complex manufacturing processes may require multiple allocation
bases; this approach is called activity-based costing (ABC).

- ABC therefore Allocates overhead to multiple activity cost pools; Assigns the
activity cost pools to products or services by means of cost drivers.

Highlighting the story (the problem with plate); introducing the company; talking
about the different actors involved, particularly the ones who thought that the cost of
the plate was not being calculated properly (and the reasons why)

In discussing the above point, students should bring in the roles of factors such as
boundary objects (A boundary object ties together actors with diverse goals because it
is common to multiple groups but is capable of taking on different meanings within
each of them.For example, modularised financial packages OR ABC); heterogenous
 actors (the different people involved in the decision making processes – the slide for
the key actors are given in the next page); machines (the key product under
consideration – the issue of plate); and cosmopolitans (the role of international actors,
the US centric logic being promoted in the case study)

Is ABC superior? Why did the ABC system not last at Alroll?
 - In discussing the above paragraph, the students can reflect on the historical trajectory
of the four different trials involving ABC implementation.

- Furthermore, they could also bring in the roles of heterogenous roles of actors and
actants, role of boundary objects, issues of success and failure and the issues of soft
and hard numbers

(not expected to bring in all these discussions – it is the quality of the discussion that
should be assessed)

Question 2

Refer to Cooper and Lapsley (2019) in answering the following questions –

a. What is the purpose of the article?

• This paper examines one of the most notorious episodes in the history of English
football.
• The death of 96 Liverpool supporters at an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough
stadium in Sheffield in 1989 has been the subject of a resilient opposition to the
attempts by police,legal and footballing authorities and certain media to attribute the
cause of these fatalities to those who died at this event.
• This paper examines the weaknesses in public accountability which gave impetus to a
social movement mobilised to achieve justice for those who died and their families.
This is a story of justice in the face of daunting odds over almost thirty years of
struggle

b. What are the lessons for accountability in this story?

This is a multifaceted question, and has a few layers to it and could be answered keeping the
following points in mind -

Firstly, what is the author’s view on accountability as a concept?

- Accountability is multivalenced. Cooper and Johnston’s (2012), work on

accountability and football, drawing from the work of Bourdieu and Wacquant
(2001), argued that accountability has become a ‘‘vulgate”, commonly used word
which appears to be ‘‘socially progressive” but in practice has taken on multiple
meanings such that it lacks political force.
- In spite of its progressive undertones, the word accountability is commonly used in
management control systems to mean that employees at all levels are ‘‘accountable”
to their superiors, and to shareholders.
- This managerial form of accountability frequently may involve the outputs of
employees, divisions, departments and so on being rendered ‘‘transparent” through
various output metrics. Government accountability has come to take this form.
 - Performance metrics have now become a key form of state accountability and have
further enabled ‘‘public sector reform”. Accounting technologies, as a form of
accountability have become a vital component of a particular type of neo-liberal
governance

Main points made in the case study regarding accountability?

- Refer to the case study (e.g. What happened?; the pressures for showing that crime
statistics are low (part of performance oriented measures; creation of a public
accountability framework, where the public is inundated with a plethora of
information – no space of collective discussions around the performances; Neoliberal
Thatcher culture of vilifying the ‘collective’…promotion of personal interests,
(de)politicisation of collective interests; vilification of the lower/industrial class (gave
police the confidence to highlight their version of ‘truth’ – through victim blaming.
- Thatcher governmental norms of neoliberalism – the issue of self-regulation; the role
of the police in the Thatcher revolution;
- The culture of corruption within the police force
- Reduction in police budget/resources
- Allies in the cover up

Lessons for accountability?

- The role of social movements example – Hope for Hillsborough for Justice
- The need for political allies (section 7.1)
- The need for an effective legal framework (section 7.2)
- Police accountability since – what are the problems? (section 8.1)
- Managerial accountability – the potential impact on policing (section 8.2)

- The Hillsborough case demonstrates that accountability as a socially progressive term

has some force. For the less powerful to achieve accountability from those with more
power, in the case of Hillsborough, has taken many years and outstanding levels of
determination. In short, accountability needs to be ‘‘active”, and we would argue,
collective. Accountability needs active knowledgeable citizens; it is not simply being
‘‘given an account” – although that may be part of it – Duckenfield and the South
Yorkshire Police should have told the truth. Furthermore, accountability requires
institutions through which people can be held to account. Accountability is imperfect
-- some of the key players will never be held to account because they have died, or
because they can hide behind what might be described as ‘‘system failures”. For
example, the UK football authorities, as set out earlier in the paper, did not seem to
have robust systems in place to ensure fan safety. And the Conservative
administration appeared to be culpable for the culture of the South Yorkshire Police.

Slides from lecture:

Question 3

Refer to Alawattage, Graham and Wickramasinghe (2019) in answering the following

questions

a. What is the purpose of the article

Based on a micro-level study of microfinance, this paper explores how basic accounting
technologies and interpersonal accountability are used to make lending to poor village
women profitable and low risk. The authours argue that “microaccountability,” the system of
structuring and formalization of convivial relationships into a capillary system of
accountability, must be recognized as a central tool of social governance under neoliberalism.
The field research in Sri Lanka allows analysing how microaccountability is employed by
for-profit banks to create from poor villagers a legion of bankable individual entrepreneurs,
trained to invigilate each other's savings and credit behaviours. Using the theoretical lens of
biopolitics, it is demonstrated that microaccountability enables the extension of the finance
industry into untapped sectors of the global population.

b. What is neoliberalism as defined in the paper?

neoliberalism represents an extension of economic rationalism into areas of life that have not
previously been considered in economic terms (p. 219). The fundamental break in
neoliberalism compared to prior economic thinking is its reconceptualization of labour,
whereby the labourer who had been considered an object or cost is now considered a subject
who makes rational choices (p. 223). The individual worker, regarded as an enterprise, an
entrepreneur of himself, is posited as the source of his own earnings. The labourer becomes
oriented towards competition as an individual
in the market. This reconceptualization of labour under neoliberalism is what allows the
extension of market thinking into formerly non-market policy areas), such as poverty
reduction. This way of thinking ignores structural causes of poverty and recasts the problem
in individual terms

c. What are the issues with microaccountability?

- The construction of the ‘bankable’ person – the one who demonstrates financial
discipline and self governance; specifically the ability to save and borrow
- The issue of peer pressure
- Self help group as a disciplinary space
- The notion of bankability
- The corporatisation of the village
- Microfinance, as an individualising neoliberal tool of governance, depends deeply and
paradoxically, on the social connectedness of one villager to the other
 - As with the individual and group savings accounts, the individual loan account is used
to monitor and display to the group the continued financial discipline of the borrower
- The heart of microaccountability, in this context, is that one’s savings and borrowing
behaviours are made visible within the group
- Thus, the immaterial labour of the individual borrowers at the level of the small
group, in monitoring and encouraging each other, is assembled into hierarchical form
to enable the biopolitical governance of the village
- The women are subject to scrutiny by her friends, relatives and neighbours
- So microfinance has disciplinary power
- Microfinance in the society of control

Summary

Microfinance uses accounting technologies to foster the self examination

at the heart of disciplinary power. Individual savings records must be maintained by the
would-be microborrower. These become the mirror of the self for each village woman,
while her group's cashbook puts her individual's savings behaviours into the context of
group behaviours. Group meetings, where savings and credit behaviours are recited,
provide the ritualized setting for the individual's self-disclosure and self-narration. In her
accounting ecords, the woman must “decipher” herself. In the public disclosure of these
records, the woman must reconcile herself with the expectations and obligations of her
peers, who must see her develop into a bankable person or face the prospect of repaying
her debts for her.

Question 4

How will learnings from journals introduced in ACCY312 change your practice as
management accountants?

- The studies introduced in ACCY312 contributes to the accounting education and

broader social and environmental accounting (SEA) literatures, and ultimately
towards the development and reform of higher accounting education and practice
- The studies answer calls by critical accounting scholars for accounting curricula
reform by demonstrating the realised and potential benefits of incorporation SEA
knowledge in accounting education, specifically in: developing higher levels of
learning (including critical and creative thinking and analytical skills); explicitly
challenging the neoliberal and neoclassical economic assumptions of mainstream
accounting; and exposing students to multiple perspectives on accounting and
accountability (informed by different socio-political lenses and understanding of
business-society relationships) – that is, operationalise a dialogic approach to
education.
- The studies demonstrate how SEA’s democratic and radical potential is not only
realised in practice – as tools and systems of accountability and accounting that
challenge the mainstream accounting status-quo.
- SEA can also act as a powerful pedagogic tool that challenges students – and future
accountants – to think critically and broadly about the role and impact of business on
society and, thus, engender thoughtful and mindful citizens that engage with the
societies and communities they work and live; and think creatively about how to
address pertinent societal issues like global climate change and social inequality.