Digitalization as a form of marketization: The performativity of calculative practices in framing and overflowing NGO performance and accountability

Abstract

This study examines a disability services funding reform which produced calculative (accounting) practices to frame non-governmental organizations' (NGOs') performance and accountability, and the role of digitalization, as a form of marketization, in reframing that performance and accountability. Drawing on insights from Callon's (1998) concepts of framing and overflowing, this study analyses one NGO's pursuit of performance and accountability via calculative and digitalized forms. Through a qualitative interpretive case study approach, the study traces how new calculative practices inspired by a disability services funding reform and an online service platform act to (re)frame the NGO's accounts of performance. Analysis of this (re)framing work finds that NGO accountability is reduced by a performance object – cost management – which is supported by digitalization. Further, we find that the performativity of calculative practices constructed new forms of marketization for NGO realities, thoughts and actions, reducing the NGO services for disabled persons to economic exchanges. Our study offers insights into the counter-productive dangers of calculative practices when they generate digitalization for cost management performance objectives. In addition to marketization reframing NGO performance and accountability, concepts of framing and overflowing enable us to better understand the impact of calculations and digitalization on NGOs' service performance.