http://hdl.handle.net/10092/161 2013-06-10T09:12:21Z 2013-06-10T09:12:21Z Dixon, K. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7747 2013-05-24T02:54:15Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: A retrospective analysis of the publication of accounting research about New Zealand consequent on distant performance measurement of the academic person Authors: Dixon, K. Abstract: Purpose – University academics are important to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge about accounting practice and accounting learning. This paper explores the consequences for the Pacific society of New Zealand of performance of these discovery and dissemination activities being measured at the individual level using criteria directly linked to lists of periodicals compiled in Australia and that are decidedly Atlantocentric. Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal approach is taken to how knowledge about accounting practice and accounting learning in New Zealand has been disseminated, and whether trends in this dissemination are suited to New Zealand audiences, including New Zealand students, New Zealand accountants, New Zealand policymakers, Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous people and its diverse recent-settler populations, and Pacific New Zealand Society. Over 100 accounting journals, magazines and similar periodicals are analysed, over the past quarter century and more, for articles based on empirical data from New Zealand. The findings relate to not only the topics of articles and which journals they have been published in, and what trends are arising. They also are interpreted in the broader context of university development and activities, and tertiary education policy and funding. Findings –Of the three activities associated with accounting in New Zealand universities, research has been the last to develop, starting with occasional articles from a small band of professors in the Chartered Accountants’ Journal (CAJ). Now, it is often accorded the highest priority, as reflected in formal individual academic performance management systems, and related incentives and penalties (exemplified by Performance Based Research Fund 2012). Publication patterns are changing. The CAJ has been deserted in favour of academic journals, virtually all published outside New Zealand. Academics have modified the way they report to suit the foreign editors and readerships. To publish about New Zealand in these journals, there is some advantage in studying areas in which New Zealand is seen as a “world leader” (e.g., Structural Adjustment, New Public Management, environmental accounting) but not in areas about which the outside world is oblivious (e.g., New Zealand’s multicultural array of people and organisations, including the Maori people) or in areas in which New Zealand lacks differences of “world” interest (e.g., financial collapses and director impropriety, what can be learnt by utilising stock exchange data). There do seem to be strong incentives for New Zealand-based academics to set their research in jurisdictions of more interest to journal publishers, if they want to score highly in individual performance management systems. How fit does that then make them to teach students about practices, concepts and issues in New Zealand? Research limitations/implications – The research is still in progress. Originality/value – Most studies of this ilk attempt to rank journals or are about researcher productivity and author placement. This study is concerned with whether knowledge about accounting practice and accounting learning in New Zealand is being disseminated in a way that suits those likely to be most interested and affected.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Dixon, K. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7740 2013-05-21T02:47:07Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: A genealogy of knowledge as an accountable commodity Authors: Dixon, K. Abstract: This study is about how and why knowledge in the form of higher education learning has come to be accounted for using calculative practices. These practices are evident in public funding of higher education based on equivalent full-time students, student fee charging methods, credit accumulation and transfer systems, qualification frameworks, graduate profiles, levels of learning, learning outcomes, specifications of qualifications and courses/modules in credit points, assessment scores and grades, students’ academic records, diploma supplements, and things of that ilk. Using a genealogical approach, the antecedents of these various paraphernalia are analysed and exemplified, mainly in a former British settler-colony/dominion setting that is now a parliamentary democracy but in which managerialistic ideas are ascendant. There, the antecedents were influenced significantly by practices of the ancient universities in the colonising country. This was in an effort to attain equivalence in standards to these institutions, but at the same time being cognisant of the colony’s needs for but shortage of secondary school teachers; and later, the dominion’s needs for various professionals, including academics. Consequent to political, economic and social change in the post-WWII years, increased demands for educated labour, restructuring of higher education as a public policy system, broadening of the higher education curriculum, wider access to higher education, and mechanised forms of accounting also became influential. The third major twist was the imposition on and adoption by higher education institutions of various ideas associated with neo-liberalism and managerialism. These have included giving students the status of consumers, managing academics and academic innovation, standardising qualifications, and formalising quality assurance, including using audit and accreditation methods. Incidental to these histories, the study raises the basic issue of whether the practices and paraphernalia analysed comprise an as yet unrecognised form of accounting.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Dixon, K. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7739 2013-05-21T02:36:47Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Functions of accounting, types of rulership (-archies) and forms of rule (-[o]cracies) Authors: Dixon, K. Abstract: This critical history is concerned with accountings as technologies of domination and of legitimation. Widespread studies of accounting usages and their contexts have illuminated these socio-political functions of accounting. Many of these studies are set in governmental contexts, where budgets, budgetary accounting and budgetary reporting have attained special significance in matters of imposing and appropriating taxes. The present study is set in this context but is distinguishable in several respects. The author genealogizes the accounting presently associated with a sovereign state described variously as a parliamentary democracy, constitutional (or limited) monarchy and commonwealth realm; and which has led a recent worldwide neo-liberal trend away from bureaucracy towards managocracy. Furthermore, the direct ancestors of this accounting are discernible over at least one millennium – so making the study truly longitudinal – and were used under several other -archies and -[o]cracies. Indeed, mostly, these ancestors were used in a distant geographical context, and some were a technology of the colonialism that precipitated the present sovereign state. That colonialism gave way to neo-imperialism, perpetrated by a settler élite in conjunction with external parties able to exercise significant power from a distance, assisted by accounting. There are still elements of neo-imperialism today, some of it reinforced by accounting as a technology of globalisation. The study is predicated on the inadequacies of history being relevant to understanding the present and contemplating the future, which will include the choice between the accession of the next hereditary monarch or the establishment of a republic.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Rangga Bawono, I. Halim, A. Lord, B. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7485 2013-03-11T11:30:09Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Public sector performance measurement and budget allocation: An Indonesian experiment Authors: Rangga Bawono, I.; Halim, A.; Lord, B. Abstract: This experiment examines how decision makers, such as members of the House of Representatives in Indonesia, use performance measures of public sector organizations in making budget allocation plans. Similar experiments in the private sector have conflicting findings in regard to decision makers' focus on either common or unique measures. Using both types of measures could raise accountability of decision makers such as members of the House especially in public sector organizations (Ndlovu, 2010). Such accountability improvement has not been seen as important in the Indonesia public sector (Sopanah, 2003).

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z