Enabling accountability: An analysis of personal budgets for disabled people

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Abstract This paper explores how accountability practices can affect the enablement of (disabled) people. Theoretically, the paper draws on Adler and Borys’ concept of enabling and coercive formalisation as well as Foucault’s work on disciplinary power and neo-liberal governmentality. Empirically, the paper explores how accountability was enacted in budget conferences held by local authorities with disabled persons who received personal budgets from the German state. The case study sketches the enabling and coercive practices of personal communication, assistance, transparency, and flexibility that were enacted to hold disabled people accountable for their personal budgets. To management accounting research, this paper contributes an in-depth case study on how disabled persons can be enabled by accountability processes. The paper suggests that accountability can be enabling if the distinct, and individually unique abilities of accountable subjects are recognized. It argues that the personalized combination of enabling and coercive accountability practices constitutes accountable subjects in vivo and can alter their (dis)abilities. The paper discusses how enabling and coercive practices of accountability relate to disciplinary power and neo-liberal governmentality. It shows how enabling accountability often masks its coercive underbelly.