Management accounting as disciplinary practice: the case of ITT under Harold Geneen

Abstract

The work of Michel Foucault has been influential in social science research generally and recetn scholarship on management accounting history more specifically. This paper evaluates a key section of his seminal text, Discipline and Punishment by applying it to recent corporate events. The principles of disciplinary control based on the analogy of the 'panoptical gaze' are elaborated and used to analyse the management of ITT, especially during the tenure of Harold Geneen as its Chief Executive Officer. The paper argues that Geneen's method, hailed as exemplary managerial practice, bear correspondence to Foucault's model. By applying management accounting principles, Geneen constituted managers as subjects and amenable, docile, obedient bodies, and established ITT as a large international conglomerate. However, Foucault's approach did not fully capture all of the important factors germane to this period and its aftermath. The paper concludes that political economy approaches to these events are not necessarily incommensurate or discordant with a Foucauldian approach and that both may be used in a complementary fashion to critique and reform managerial practices.