Management by Accounting: An Ethnography of Agencification

Abstract

This study outlines the role of accounting in an agencification context. It explores the everyday accounting in semi-autonomous agencies by observing micro-processes of agencification, i.e. the use of semi-autonomous agencies to deliver public services.To fully grasp how the practice unfolded in real time, ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in five agencies and one supervisory ministry in Indonesia. Participant observation was used by witnessing the ongoing processes, events, situated moments, and routines either at the collective or individual level. Data collection was supplemented by semi-structured interviews, documentary analysis, and a survey.Using practice-based views, the study unveils how everyday accountings are consequential in structuring the contours of agencification. Accounting practices constitute agencification by shaping organisational patterns and relations characterised by a high circulation of numbers and performance metrics. They contribute to the production and reproduction of agencification by actively developing its concepts, adoption, and implementation using numbers and calculative devices. Meanwhile, agencification emerges through and is constituted by the aggregation of interrelated accounting practices. It gives way to accounting-led agencies by providing more space for calculative initiatives performed by agency managers and staff to conduct and conceive their everyday tasks with reference to accounting, and use accounting to shape and pursue agencification objectives.The study suggests that practice theory enhances scholarly understanding on agencification by providing a rich analytical framework to uncover why and how accounting practices are organised. This view provides a way of understanding the various activities involved in agencification in relation to each other as several bundles of accounting activity. This further demonstrates how accounting can be studied and viewed as a social practice.