http://hdl.handle.net/10092/161 2013-05-22T07:29:14Z http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7740 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 http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7739 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 http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7485 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 http://hdl.handle.net/10092/7483 Title: Functionings of accounting in the rulership and rule transplanted from the Atlantic to the Pacific Authors: Dixon, K. Abstract: This critical retrospective analysis 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 taxes, duties and similar non-reciprocal revenues and appropriating those revenues and expending them. The present study is set in this context but is distinguishable for being predicated on the inadequacies of history being relevant to understanding the present and contemplating the future. Accountings presently associated with two sovereign states are genealogized according to precursors, and to circumstances of persistency and of change. The two states comprise islands in the Pacific, with one described variously as a parliamentary democracy, constitutional (or limited) monarchy and commonwealth realm; and the other as a republic. Both their governmental structures and processes have been caught up in a recent worldwide neo-liberal trend away from bureau-ocracy towards manag-ocracy. Although both states are relatively new creations, the accountings genealogized in the study are discernible over at least a millennium – so making the study truly longitudinal. The direct ancestors of these accountings were used under several other -archies and -ocracies, in a distant geographical context comprised of islands in the Atlantic. Some were a technology of the colonialism that precipitated the two Pacific sovereign states under examination; and some have figured in the neo-imperialism that succeeded the colonialism. In one case, the neo-imperialism in question has been perpetrated by a settler élite in conjunction with external parties able to exercise significant power from a distance; and, in the other case, it has been perpetrated by similar external parties, assisted by a native élite. Elements of neo-imperialism continue today, some of it reinforced by accounting as a technology of global governance in which multilateral organisations and their prominent member governments are ascendant. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z