Accounting for Public Space

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Accounting for public space

Dean Neu *

Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4

Abstract

How is accounting implicated in the ordering of public space? Starting from the assumption that public space is that

portion of an institutional field where, in part because of the participation of the media, there is relatively more open-

ness in the flow of information and in the ability of field participants to engage in public discussion and debate, the

study examines the relationship between accounting and public space in the context of educational reforms in Alberta,

Canada. Using a variety of archival, conversational, interview and focus group data as well as the theoretical insights of

Bourdieu and Foucault, the analysis highlights how the financial and accountability mechanisms used by the provincial

government as part of its reform initiatives facilitated changes in the types and amounts of capital of certain field par-

ticipants, encouraged the partitioning of generic social groupings such as parents and academic labour into more finely

distinguished social groupings, and introduced new ways of saying and doing into the field. While these accounting and

accountability changes were constraining on certain field participants they were also productive in that the new flows of

accounting information created new opportunities within the field for certain field participants.

Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Accounting for public space

Although not frequently analyzed, the importance

of accountingÕs constitutive role should not be

under-emphasized (Hopwood, 1987, p. 229).

How is accounting implicated in the constitu-

tion of social spaces? In particular, how does

accounting influence where the boundary is drawn

between public spaces and more private spaces,

such as organizations? And what role does

accounting play in organizing and ordering public

spaces? These are some of the questions that moti-

vate the current study. Since HopwoodÕs comment

(1987, p. 229) that accounting is constitutive of

social spaces in that it ‘‘can play a significant rolein the creation of possibilities for other organiza-

tional phenomena to become what they are not’’,

a variety of research studies have examined the

role and functioning of accounting within public

and organizational spaces. Studies examining the

role of budgeting and standard costing in the con-

struction of governable people (Miller & OÕLeary,

0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.aos.2005.03.001

* Tel.: +1 403 220 4836; fax: +1 403 282 0095.

E-mail address: [email protected]

www.elsevier.com/locate/aos

Accounting, Organizations and Society 31 (2006) 391–414

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]





Constituting public space

In the early 1980s, Hopwood and colleagues in

a series of research articles initially proposed theidea that accounting is constitutive of social space.

For example, Burchell et al. (1980) in their now

classic article on the role of accounting in organi-

zations and society proposed that accounting is

intimately intertwined with organizational and

societal processes. Hopwood (1983, p. 288) picks

up on this earlier idea, stating that accounting

can ‘‘shape, mold and even play a role in con-

structing the setting of which it forms a part.’’

These ideas were further elaborated in HopwoodÕs

1987 article that explicitly refers to the salience of

accountingÕs constitutive role, noting that the‘‘importance of accountingÕs constitutive roles

should not be under-emphasized’’ (p. 229). The

article suggests that accounting plays a significant

role in the creation of possibilities and is impli-

cated in ‘‘organizational transformations’’ (p.

207). Furthermore, it is through the intertwining

of accounting discourse and practice that organi-

zational agents and organizational arrangements

can be re-constituted (p. 229).

In this later article, Hopwood also speculated

about the relationship between organizationaland social spaces noting that this intersection has

been less well studied:

The domains of the organizational and the social

also have tended to remain independent ones.

Few attempts have been made to delineate the

both overlapping and interdependent spheres of

the two, to appreciate how accounting might

enable the concerns of the social to pass through

and thereby transform the organization and, in

turn, to create organizational practices which can

be influential in the construction of the world of the social as we know it (p. 214).

In this study I distinguish between organiza-

tional (a semi-private space) and public spaces,

assuming that both of these spaces are social

spaces. In the remainder of this section, I outline

some theoretical concepts and tools that are use-

ful in helping us to analyze the positioning of

accounting within organizational and public

spaces.

Like many of the studies mentioned in the

introduction, my starting point for understand-

ing and theorizing the constitutive nature of

accounting is the literature on governmental-ity. Government, according to Foucault (1991,

p. 102), refers to the general and specific ‘‘ensem-

ble of institutions, calculations and tactics’’ de-

ployed to arrange things in such a way that

certain ends are achieved. Instead of concentrating

on a single mode of control exercised by and

through the state, this notion of government draws

attention ‘‘to the diversity of forces and groups

that have, in heterogeneous ways, sought to regu-

late the lives of individuals’’ (Miller & Rose, 1990,

p. 3). Miller and Rose also introduce the term

‘‘technologies of governance’’ to:

Suggest a particular approach to the analysis of

the activity of ruling, one which pays great atten-

tion to the actual mechanisms through which

authorities of various sorts have sought to shape,

normalize and instrumentalize the conduct,

thought, decisions and aspirations of others in

order to achieve the objectives they consider desir-

able (Miller & Rose, 1990, p. 8).

Technologies refer to ‘‘apparently humble and

mundane mechanisms’’ (p. 8) such as ‘‘techniquesof notation, computation and calculation’’ (p. 8)

as well as the vocabularies implicit within the prac-

tices of accounting, administrative science and law.

The notion that accounting technique be viewed

as a technology of governance provides us with a

way of thinking about the positioning of account-

ing within organizational and public spaces.

Accounting and other numerical techniques are

central to the act of governing in that they allow

knowledge of distant sites to be mobilized and

brought home to centres of calculation (Miller &Rose, 1990, p. 9; Said, 1979). Budgets, cost alloca-

tion mechanisms and other accounting inscriptions

facilitate the coordination of action in distant

locales (Miller & OÕLeary, 1993; Robson, 1992).

They also regulate these distant locales through

the introduction of new practices/vocabularies

(Hopwood, 1987, p. 228; Oakes et al., 1998) and

by encouraging self-disciplining activities on the

part of the fieldÕs participants (Hoskin & Macve,

1986, p. 129; Hoskin & Macve, 1988, p. 41). Thus

D. Neu / Accounting, Organizations and Society 31 (2006) 391–414 393



accounting techniques not only ‘‘convey’’ informa-

tion between different sites but also serve to

standardize practices across the sites—standardi-

zation that involves both the standardization of financial practices as well as the standardization

of common vocabularies and common behaviours

(Preston et al., 1997).

Whereas the literature on governmentality

explains why accounting practices are productive

technologies of governance and enumerates the

potential consequences associated with these tech-

niques, the work of Bourdieu and colleagues pro-

vides us with a vocabulary for understanding the

organization and dynamics of institutional fields

in which governance is attempted. In particular,

the notions of field, capital and habitus are usefulin understanding the static and dynamic aspects of

institutional fields.

Institutional fields refer to networks of social

relations, structured systems of social positions

within which struggles or maneuvers take place

over resources, stakes and access (Bourdieu &

Wacquant, 1992). As Bourdieu and Wacquant

comment:

Each field prescribes its particular values and pos-

sesses its own regulative principles. These princi-

ples delimit a socially structured space in which

agents struggle, depending on the position they

occupy in that space, either to change or to pre-

serve its boundaries and form (p. 17).

Fields ‘‘are always relational, dynamic social

microcosms’’ (Everett, 2002, p. 60) with enduring

yet changeable patterns of social relations being

one of the defining characteristics of such fields.

Social relations and patterns of interaction

within institutional fields are a cause and conse-

quence of the field specific configuration and hier-archy of capitals—in particular the distribution of

economic, cultural and symbolic capitals. Eco-

nomic capital in this context refers to ‘‘monetary

and material wealth, commodities and physical

resources’’ (Everett, 2002, p. 62); cultural capital

refers to intangibles like knowledge, information,

skill, taste, and lifestyle as well as tangibles like

cultural objects (i.e., books, paintings etc.) and cre-

dentials (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 119);

finally symbolic capital is a composite form of

capital that occurs when the other forms of capital

are deemed legitimate within a particular field—

‘‘symbolic capital is any property (any form of

capital whether physical, economic, cultural orsocial) when it is perceived by social agents . . .

which cause them to know it and to recognize it,

to give it value’’ (Bourdieu, 1994, p. 8).

The organization of capitals within a field influ-

ences not only the patterns of interaction but also

the flows of information. From this vantage point,

information such as accounting information is

simultaneously a resource and a flow. Accounting

information can be viewed as a type of cultural

capital in that it is both a material resource and

a way of influencing ‘‘ways of thinking and ways

of doing’’ (Bourdieu, 1994, p. 7). Actors strug-gle to establish a monopoly over valid types of

capital—including accounting capitals—and, hence,

the mechanisms of reproduction within the field

(Everett, 2002; Oakes et al., 1998). At the same

time as the subsequent case illustrates, information

flows through the social network creating new

visibilities and new modes of control as well as

new possibilities for changing and disrupting the

order of things.

Habitus is the final concept that I wish to intro-

duce. Habitus refers to the ‘‘durably inculcatedsystem of structured, structuring dispositions’’

(Bourdieu, 1990, p. 52) that are inculcated in the

body and ‘‘exist in the form of mental and corpo-

real schemata’’ which mediate perception, appreci-

ation and action (Everett, 2002, p. 65). Habitus

includes the language that we use to describe and

make sense of activities. It is also the implicit val-

ues and beliefs that are taken-for-granted yet guide

our daily activities (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 61). Thus

habitus represents the idiosyncratic but taken-

for-granted meanings, vocabularies and practicesof a particular institutional field that both ratio-

nalize and reproduce the hierarchy of capitals

within the field (Bourdieu, 1990, pp. 57–58).

Taken together, the literatures on governmen-

tality and institutional fields provide us with a

way of understanding both how accounting facili-

tates the re-constitution of space as well as the

intersections between organizational and public

spaces. More specifically, I propose that the intro-

duction of accounting practices may facilitate

394 D. Neu / Accounting, Organizations and Society 31 (2006) 391–414



changed capitals, visibilities, vocabularies and

practices.

Accounting practices and the generated

accounting information are both a type of capitaland something that circulates. While it is the eco-

nomic capital that often provides the conditions

of possibility for the initial introduction of a set

of accounting techniques in that powerful actors

often have the ability to impose new practices (Ed-

wards et al., 1997; Preston et al., 1997), once these

practices have been introduced the results are less

predictable (Hopwood, 1987, p. 229). Field partic-

ipants that have the ability to ‘‘use’’ the new infor-

mation that is flowing through the network of

social relations can combine this information with

their previous capitals to generate new capitals— often economic capital. These ‘‘new entrepre-

neurs’’ could be individuals such as accountants

who have the ability to prepare the required re-

ports or ‘‘interpret’’ the results of the new informa-

tion for their organizations. Alternatively they

could be individuals who create new informa-

tion products which are then sold in the market

to interested parties. As the subsequent case

illustrates, the introduction of changed account-

ing practices created new opportunities for such

entrepreneurs.The introduction of accounting practices can

also create new visibilities for both self and other.

As Hopwood comments, accounting practice ‘‘cre-

ates a very particular visibility and pattern of orga-

nizational significance’’ (Hopwood, 1987, p. 209).

This visibility can provide the basis for the sorting,

sifting and classifying activities to which Foucault

(1984, p. 195) refers. Such information can be used

by other network participants to ‘‘name’’ and par-

tition the social population however it can also be

used by individuals and groups for self-judgingand self-forming activities. While such classifica-

tion exercises can be constraining, it is also impor-

tant to note that they can be productive (Foucault,

1984, p. 119). As the subsequent case illustrates,

new accounting visibilities encouraged the forma-

tion of social groupings by individuals who were

proximate in social space.

Changed accounting practices can also re-

constitute social space by introducing new ways

of thinking about and talking about the social

world. As Oakes et al. (1998) illustrate in their

study of museums, the language of business plan-

ning, accounting and accountability changed how

participants thought about, talked about and (en)-acted organizational activities. As a consequence,

accounting vocabularies can encourage shifts in

ways of thinking, speaking and doing (cf. Hop-

wood, 1987, p. 229). Likewise the introduction of

accounting practices such as budgeting, planning,

variance analysis and reporting change the habitus

of the field by changing both what is done and

what is valued within the field (cf. Everett, 2001;

Oakes et al., 1998).

In addition to providing a way of understand-

ing accountingÕs role in the re-constitution of

social space, the aforementioned literatures helpus to think about the intersection between organi-

zational and public spaces. In particular, an insti-

tutional field perspective concentrates on the

organization of social relations within an institu-

tional field rather than on the notion of an organi-

zation per se. From this vantage point, what I call

an organization is really a network of social rela-

tions embedded in a larger network of social rela-

tions. The type and frequency of interactions may

differ for certain sub-groups because of their pro-

ximity in social space, but the boundaries betweensub-groups (i.e. an organization) and the broader

field are always permeable and in a state of flux.

This relational view has implications for our

understanding of the organizational and the public

as well as the role of accounting. For example, a

relational view suggests that a binary opposition

between the organizational and the public is not

that useful because it obscures both the arbitrary

nature of organizational boundaries and the con-

nectedness of organizations to the broader field

(Drummond, 1998; Everett & Jamal, 2004). Indeedit is the flow of things such as accounting informa-

tion that circulates through the network and acts

as a form of glue that binds together network par-

ticipants. This is not to say that the distinction

between the public and the private is superfluous.

Rather it is to acknowledge that within institu-

tional fields there are differing degrees of participa-

tion and interaction amongst participants. At one

extreme are those situations where the interactions

do not extend beyond and are not transmitted




beyond a small group of participants. At the other

extreme are those interactions that involve many

of the field participants and where the interactions

are publicized and re-produced via the media. Asthe case study illustrates, public dialogues (a form

of interaction) are not necessarily public in that,

because of the distribution of capitals within the

field, not all participants are willing/able to

participate.

The idea that the public portion of an institu-

tional field refers to that subset of the institutional

field where information circulates more or less

freely and where a portion of field participants

can participate in some manner in the conversa-

tion owes much to BourdieuÕs (1985, 1994) concep-

tion of institutional fields and public spaces.However given that Habermas (1991) also talks

about the public sphere, it is useful to briefly alert

the reader to the similarities and differences

between these two conceptions. Like Habermas,

the provided conception emphasizes the discursive

character of public spaces, a concern to identify

not only who is assumed to be part of the public

(p. 39) but also who actually participates in public

conversations (p. 34) as well as the role of the media

(p. 22). However instead of adopting the norma-

tive ideal that the public sphere is a subset of civilsociety (p. 49) that ‘‘compels public authority to

legitimate itself before public opinion’’ (p. 25),

the current study adopts an empirically grounded

‘‘field specific’’ approach and does not define a pri-

ori what portions of an institutional field will be

public nor which actors will participate in the

resulting conversations. Instead the intent is to

use the notion of public space to orient the analysis

of the dynamics of a concrete empirical setting—

that is to explore how the types and amounts of

capital of field participants influence and are influ-enced by the dynamics of interaction and conver-

sation within an institutional field as well as the

boundaries between the public and organizational

portions of the field.

Method

My objective in the case study that follows is to

understand the positioning and functioning of

accounting within the field of educational reform

in Alberta, Canada. The educational reforms that

I investigate began in January 1994 when the Edu-

cation Minister introduced sweeping changes to thepublic education system including the centraliza-

tion of funding, a new block funding mechanism,

new planning and reporting mechanisms along

with a 12.4% reduction in education funding over

a four year period (Peters, 1999). Although the

majority of reforms occurred between 1994 and

1998, government reform initiatives are on-going.

The data-collection strategies and mode of

analysis follow a social praxeology approach

(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 104–105; Ever-

ett, 2002). Given my interest in the positioning of

accounting within this particular social space, mystarting point was to attempt to map the social

field in both the pre- and post-reform periods in

terms of financial, accountability and interactional

flows among field participants. Multiple data

sources were used to initially develop the social

maps and then to subsequently analyze field pro-

cesses (cf. Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 29;

Oakes et al., 1998). The sources used include:

archival policy and other documents, archival

financial records, interviews and conversations,

and focus groups. The following briefly summa-rizes these sources of information.

Archival policy documents consisted of Alberta

Learning Business Plans for the 1994–2003 period,

Alberta Learning Annual Reports (Alberta Learn-

ing, 1996) the Review of the Calgary Board of

Education (Alberta Learning, 1998) and Jurisdic-

tion profiles for the 1995–2003 period. Archival

financial documents consisted of individual school

district financial reports for the population of 60

school districts for the 1995–2002 period as well

as Government of Alberta and Statistics Canadadocuments containing overall education spending

numbers for the 1981–2003 period. Archival news-

paper documents for one of AlbertaÕs two major

newspapers were reviewed for the 1994–1998 peri-

od. An electronic data search using a variety of

keywords generated a list of 450 articles. These

documents were supplemented by newspaper doc-

uments obtained from an education parent-group

listserv that circulated relevant articles and other

documents.




Interviews and conversations occurred with the

following groups of individuals: government repre-

sentatives, representatives of the teacherÕs union,

representatives of the support staff union, repre-sentatives of the school boardÕs association, school

district trustees, school district administrators,

school principals and vice principals, teachers

and support staff. In some cases, these were formal

in the sense that they followed a semi-structured

interview process, the interviews were taped and

transcripts prepared.1 In other cases they were less

formal in the sense that they were ‘‘unstructured’’

and were not tape-recorded. In these cases, the

researchers maintained notes that were subse-

quently used as research traces. I refer to these as

‘‘conversations’’ in that they provide a ‘‘way of accessing various stories and narratives through

which people describe their worlds’’ (Silverman,

2000, p. 823). The advantage of conversations is

that they permit a form of interaction that is less

constrained by the bounds of formal interview

procedures and therefore which allows for the

exploration of viewpoints unconstrained by the

presence of a tape recorder cf. (Oakes et al.,

1998, p. 264; Madriz, 2000, p. 835). The disadvan-

tage, of course, is that these conversations do not

provide us with the same level of detail that anaudio record would (Silverman, 2000, p. 829).

Given my reliance on multiple data sources, I

decided to use a combination of interviews and

conversations.

Focus groups were used to complement the

aforementioned interview/conversational data

and to provide both a collective form of testimony

(Beverley, 2000) and multi-vocal testimony (Ma-

driz, 2000, p. 836) regarding the effects of changed

financial mechanisms. In November 2002, a series

of focus groups involving approximately 50 schoolboard trustees and school board administrators

were undertaken as part of the Alberta Public

School Boards Annual Conference. Participants

were provided with a historical overview of the

financial reforms and were then asked in groups

of 5–8 participants to reflect on their experiences

of the financial changes. These experiences werethen shared with the larger group and provided

the starting point for a more general discussion

of the consequences of the financial reforms. The

focus groups maintained written notes of their dis-

cussions and the larger group discussion was taped

and transcribed.

After the social maps and initial analysis were

completed, I circulated this information to selected

participants from the aforementioned groups to

solicit their comments regarding the appropriate-

ness of the maps and the analysis.2 Written com-

ments were received from six ‘‘readers’’—thesecomments were incorporated into the analysis

where appropriate.3

Given that the ability to undertake this research

was clearly related to my position within this social

field, it is important to acknowledge this social

positioning (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 33).

In Alberta, Canada the field of public policy, and

particularly educational/financial policy, is a rela-

tively confined public space in that there is but a

small group of ‘‘financial experts/academics’’

working and researching in this area. As a conse-quence, these academics not only have access to

the participants but also are called upon to offer

advice, give presentations, write reports and teach

courses in the area of public finance. For example,

Oakes et al. (1998, p. 264) comment how their

positioning within this type of public policy field

provided them with access to a variety of govern-

ment bureaucrats and sites that might otherwise

have been difficult to access. In the current study,

I acted as advisor to the teacher Õs union and sup-

port staff union, presented at the public school

1 The semi-structured interviews started with general ques-

tions regarding the personÕs position, how long they had been in

the position etc and then moved on to more specific questions

regarding how the changes impacted on day-to-day practices

with an emphasis on the accounting and accountability

changes.

2 Originally I generated three maps for both the pre-reform

and post-reform periods—one for each of the funding, account-

ability and interactional flows. For expositional purposes, these

maps have been condensed to one each for the pre- and post-

reform periods.3 In total, my colleagues and I conducted 10 formal

interviews, over 40 informal conversations, a focus group with

50 participants and received six written responses to our social

maps and analysis resulting in approximately 110 respondents/

participants.






through spending cuts rather than an increase in

taxation. The plan was embedded in the Deficit

Elimination Act of 1993. Starting in September

1993, the government began the process of

re-organization by privatizing registry services and

liquor sales, announcing a ‘‘voluntary’’ 5% public

sector wage cut and striking a tax reform commis-

sion (Bruce et al., 1997, pp. 8–9). These changes

foreshadowed the changes to education and

healthcare that were announced in January 1994.

The pre-reform period

In the pre-reform institutional field, school

board Trustees occupied a central position. Trust-

ees are elected during municipal elections for a

term of 3 years. During this time period, school

board trustees were responsible not only for set-

ting educational policy but also for deciding on a

local education tax mil rate for both individualproperty owners (what are referred to as Parents

and Other Taxpayers in the figures) and also for

businesses operating in the region (Business).

These funds accounted on average for 36% of the

total funds received by the school district (Neu

et al., 2002). Approximately 60% of the funds

received by the school districts came in the form

of grants from Alberta Learning . In turn, provincial

Politicians decided the level of funding available to

Alberta Learning. Thus for an urban school dis-

trict like Calgary with approximately 95,000 stu-

dents and a total budget of $489M, municipal

taxes (the portion under the control of the trustees)

provided approximately $176M whereas the por-

tion provided by government was $293M.4

Fig. 2 illustrates that trustees acted as a ‘‘fund-

ing hub’’ deciding on both how much monies

would be raised through taxation and how the

monies received from taxation would be spent.

Because of their ability to determine resourceinflows as well as the flexibility they possessed

regarding spending priorities (i.e. in terms of the

type of programs to be offered by the school dis-

trict), trustees occupied a central position within

the pre-reform institutional field.

While trustees occupied a central position, this

is not to say that their influence was uncon-

strained. Rather it is to suggest that they possessed

relatively more influence and autonomy within the

social network in this pre-reform period than in

the post reform period. At the same time, therewere constraints on their ability to act unilaterally.

For example, some government regulations existed

regarding both the use of the monies and the types

of financial reports that individual school districts

Alberta Per Student Constant $ Funding (grades 1-12)

$3,500

$3,700

$3,900

$4,100

$4,300

$4,500

$4,700

$4,900

$5,100

$5,300

$5,500

1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

year ending

C o n s t a n t $ ( 1 9 8 6 - 1 9 8 7 )

Fig. 1. Historical funding patterns. Source: Statistics Canada and Alberta Learning documents.

4 These numbers are calculated at the average contribution

rates of 36% and 60% using enrollment and budget data for the

1992 school year.




were required to provide. The School Grants Man-

ual indicated that districts would receive funding

through a school program fund and a school juris-

diction fund for 22 different activities including

instruction (on a per student basis), for building

quality restoration (on the basis of specific pro-

jects), and for debt retirement (Alberta-Education,

1990). Likewise, the trustees were also responsible

to the electorate. The annual budgeting processwas public in that the trustees in conjunction with

Board Administrators prepared a preliminary bud-

get that contained the recommended taxation mil

rates and a detailed plan on how the financial re-

sources would be used. These preliminary budgets

were public documents that were then subject to

scrutiny and public debate before being approved.

One participant stated that within Alberta taxa-

tion mil rates have always been a contentious issue

and thus ‘‘accountability’’ was often enforced

through the electoral process in that one ‘‘cannot

run for a trustee on increasing taxes for education

or anything else and get elected’’.

Despite these constraints, the centrality of trust-

ees in the pre-reform social space provided them

with economic and symbolic capital. Trustees did

not necessarily possess the education-specific

expertise and cultural capital in the form of educa-

tional qualifications of administrators, principals

and teachers. Rather it was the symbolic capital

associated with the electoral process as well as

their control over the sources and uses of fund-

ing—especially the use of funds generated by

municipal taxation—that provided the trustees

with significant influence.

At the same time, given the distribution of sym-

bolic, economic and informational capitals within

the field, one could also envision different configu-

rations of space. As Bourdieu comments, ‘‘the state

is the culmination of a process of concentration of different species of capital . . . which constitutes

the state as the holder of a sort of meta-capital

(Bourdieu, 1994, p. 4). This meta-capital provides

provincial politicians with the ability to augment

or liquidate the symbolic, economic and informa-

tional capitals of other field participants.

In both pre- and post-reform periods, Alberta

Learning was a significant social actor. Alberta

Learning is responsible for both kindergarten to

grade 12 education and post-secondary education

in the province. Employing around 1000 profes-

sional staff, many with graduate degrees in educa-

tion and related disciplines, it possesses significant

cultural capital. Alberta Learning is run by a Dep-

uty Minister that is directly responsible to the

Minister of Learning: the Minister of Learning

being a cabinet minister in the provincial govern-

ment. While Alberta Learning has some autonomy

from the provincial government—partly because

of its educational expertise—there is a close link-

age between the two. The retirement of the long-

Fig. 2. Financial and accountability flows (pre-reform). Note: the arrows show the direction of the financial flows (the accountability

flows go in the opposite direction). The distance between participants denotes social distance in terms of influence and accountability.

In pre-reform social space, parents and Alberta Learning had more influence than did business and other taxpayers.




standing Deputy Minister in the post-reform peri-

od along with the desire of politicians to exert

greater control over the activities of Alberta

Learning, increased the tightness of this coupling(Taylor, 2001). In the analysis that follows, I use

the term Alberta Learning as a short-form descrip-

tor for this complex of politicians and bureaucrats.

In the pre-reform period, Alberta Learning pos-

sessed significant unused economic and informa-

tional capital that could have been deployed to

facilitate governance at a distance. For example,

Alberta Learning provided 60% percent of the

funding received by school districts. Likewise,

Alberta Learning also possessed unused informa-

tional capital. Alberta Learning did function as a

centre of calculation, receiving and aggregatingknowledge of distant locales (Miller & Rose,

1990, p. 9). District level annual reports acted as

carriers of information, linking together distant

sites and inscribing these sites in certain relations

of power. However Alberta Learning did not use

this information in a systematic, public way to

influence the activities of individual school dis-

tricts. As Rose (1991) notes, it is often the deploy-

ment of these statistics in the public sphere that

facilitates government from a distance in that the

statistics come to construct a discursive spacewhich both defines and constrains the conditions

of possibility within the field. As we will observe

in the post-reform period, these informational

technologies were used to both organize public

space and to encourage a panoptic form of disci-

pline (Foucault, 1984) amongst field participants.

The preceding has hinted at the ways in which

financial flows and accountability flows help to

organize public space, especially with respect to

the positioning of trustees. However the construc-

tion and social positioning of groups such as par-ents, students and school staff was also mediated

by these flows. More specifically, the analysis sug-

gests that the presence of local autonomy along

with the absence of the financial scarcity that

occurred in the post-reform period (see Fig. 1)

encouraged the construction of generic categories

such as students, parents and school staff. These

discursive place markers were possible because

the individuals that were subsumed under these

categories perceived themselves to be occupying

similar social spaces within the social network

(Bourdieu, 1990, p. 113).5

In interviews with principals, teachers and sup-

port staff, participants often referred to the notionof an ‘‘educational team’’ where different team

members performed different tasks (and had differ-

ent levels of status) but where team members had a

common goal. For example, one interview partici-

pant refers to the collegial and team atmosphere

that existed in this pre-reform period:

In the old days the principal would be able to say

to staff ‘‘LetÕs go’’. In other words, letÕs d o it

together and now the principals just say ‘‘go’’. In

other words, you do it. ItÕs not as collegial a rela-

tionship and thatÕs very noticeable. And that

Õs with

all staff – support staff and professional staff.

Because of the financial organization of the

field, salary and staffing decisions for each of these

groups was only partially coupled to the other

groups. Thus it was possible to efface the differ-

ences across groups.

Likewise discourses concerning the student did

not distinguish between disabled students, English

as a second language students (ESL) and other stu-

dents. For example, an electronic database search

of Alberta newspapers contained in the CanadianBusiness Corporate Affairs database for the

1982–2000 period indicated that the first article

specifically referring to ESL students appeared in

1992. While the interviews indicated that perceived

hierarchies and stratification did exist within the

school system, the absence of financial scarcity

along with the funding autonomy available to

trustees allowed system participants to universalize

both the student and the parent. As the discussion

of the post-reform system highlights, funding

mechanism and accounting mechanism changesshattered these convenient social groupings of

school staff, parents and students.

5 As we will observe in the post-reform period, the introduc-

tion of financial scarcity encouraged individuals who previously

perceived themselves to be occupying a similar social space to

more finely partition themselves into distinct social groupings.






information within the field. For example, the

volume of information flowing to the centre (Al-

berta Learning) increased in the post-reform peri-

od. Business plans, audited financial reports andstandardized test results for individual schools

and districts all flowed to Alberta Learning. This

information formed the basis for the sorting, sift-

ing and classifying activities that are inherent in

the act of governing. As Miller and Rose (1990,

p. 9) comment, this type of informational capital

facilitates the exercise of ‘‘domination’’ and

‘‘involves the exercise of a form of intellectual

mastery made possible by those at a centre hav-

ing information about persons and events distant

from them.’’ These flows of information, in turn,

created the conditions of possibility for a ‘‘normal-izing gaze’’ (Foucault, 1984, p. 193) whereby

government representatives and Alberta Learn-

ing bureaucrats could differentiate between

school districts on the basis of ‘‘financial

responsibility’’.

However, the information did not stop at

Alberta Learning as it had in previous periods.

Information was now re-circulated and publicized

in a manner that defined the domain of govern-

ment within the field of education and re-inscribed

field participants in certain relations of power.Central to this re-circulation of information was

the decision of Alberta Learning to publish the

financial results and provincial education test re-

sults on the Alberta Learning website. The annual

report, consisting of statements of financial posi-

tion, financial performance, cash flows, notes to

the financial statements and detailed financial

schedules pertaining to different expense catego-

ries, are provided for all school districts. Provincial

test results are provided for each subject tested on

both a school district and individual school level.As the website pertaining to provincial testing

states, this ‘‘information about achievement is pro-

vided to schools and school authorities, parents,

and the public, so that they may know how well

students in their schools are meeting local targets

and provincial expectations’’ (Alberta Learning,

2003). As I suggest in later sections, these changes

were ‘‘productive’’ in that the information created

new visibilities that, in turn, created new opportu-

nities for field participants.

Circuits of influence

The aforementioned funding, accounting and

accountability changes re-constituted the fieldby changing the capitals within the field. The re-

direction of taxation powers to the provincial gov-

ernment liquidated the economic capital and

significantly reduced the symbolic capital of the

trustees. In contrast to the previous period, the

provincial government was now the funding hub,

receiving monies from businesses, parents and

other taxpayers. Politicians decided on aggregate

funding levels; these monies were then directed to

Alberta Learning; Alberta Learning then divided

these monies amongst the various school jurisdic-

tions based on the aforementioned funding for-mula. Thus while the funds technically still

flowed through the trustees, the discretion that

they previously possessed in terms of funding lev-

els and funding uses was mostly circumscribed

(see Fig. 4).

Changes in the distribution of economic and

symbolic capital were not lost on field participants.

A school district superintendent comments that

the province has ‘‘taken a huge controlling interest

(in education). They have become the controller—

the expression I like is the Golden Rule—he whohas the gold rules.’’ In the conversations, I often

heard a comment that, with the funding and

accountability changes, the role of trustees had

been significantly downsized. During the focus

groups with trustees, trustees themselves mused

whether the province would sometime in the future

‘‘abolish’’ trustees since the funding changes

etcetera had shifted control to the provincial gov-

ernment. These comments highlight that the sym-

bolic capital of trustees in the pre-reform period

was partially predicated on the economic capitalthat they possessed—as Bourdieu (1994) notes

economic capital is often generative of symbolic

capital. Thus the liquidation of the trusteeÕs

economic capital along with the decision to

circumscribe trustee discretion via changed fund-

ing, accounting and accountability mechanisms

decreased their symbolic capital.

Administrators and parents felt frustrated

by the changing circuits of influence. Whereas

these groups had ready access to trustees in the




pre-reform period, they did not have the same

access to government politicians. Administrators

commented that the government treated them as

a ‘‘special interest’’ group and largely ignored their

concerns:

The options are very limited. You can send in your

pretty little letters. You can go to meetings with

the minister. But. . . the board also realizes that

they donÕt have a lot of power.

Interestingly, this participant suggested that

parents had more influence with the government

in that school districts ‘‘know that their strongest

means of getting change is through a group of par-

ents . . . School boards are writing letters left, right

and centre and they were getting nothing’’. How-

ever parents disagreed. They also felt that while

the government was theoretically ‘‘accountable’’

to parents, the distance between government rep-

resentatives and parents was such that parents

were unheard. For example, one reader com-

mented ‘‘the greater centralized control exerted

by Alberta Learning since 1994 has not been

accompanied by any replacement of the feedback

link parents had to their trustees concerning fund-

ing. Now they need to take these concerns to the

Minister of Learning and he apparently does not

reply to their letters.’’ Thus both administrators

and parents felt disadvantaged by the new circuits

of influence.

Because of the close ties between business lead-

ers and the provincial government (Lisac, 1995),

the changed circuits of influence benefited busi-

ness. In the pre-reform period, the concerns of

business often got lost because education was a

local issue and it was individuals that elected trust-

ees. In the post-reform public space, provincial

politicians were both more receptive and account-

able to business. Indeed one interview participant

comments that it was the concerns of business that

encouraged the centralization of education fund-

ing. The concern was that municipal education

taxes were based upon the value of machinery

and equipment that resulted in a significant tax

burden for certain types of industries:

The government removed the power from the local

municipalities to tax. . . The machinery and equip-

ment tax in this area was phenomenal because of

places like P&G and the gas plants, right, because

you could tax a business on the machinery and

equipment that they had on the land. Well, places

where thereÕs more farming, there wasnÕt that

much machine equipment . . . not compared to a

gas plant, right. So, a number of the gas plants

and places like Weyerhaeuser, they lobbied hard

for that, and as part of this transfer, I think the

transfer of educational taxes had more to do with

getting rid of that tax because once it went over to

the province . . .they canceled the Machinery and

Equipment tax.

Fig. 4. Financial and accountability flows (post-reform). Note: the arrows show the direction of the financial flows (the accountability

flows go in the opposite direction). The Basic, ESL and Disabled circles refer to groupings of parents/students that emerged in the post-reform period (in contrast to the previous generic parent grouping).




This observation is consistent with conclusions

of other commentators who noted that business

concerns and business spokespeople occupied a

significant place within the policy-making arenain Alberta during this juncture (cf. Laxer & Harri-

son, 1995; Lisac, 1995; Taylor, 2001, p. 77).

The proceeding comments highlight how the

changed funding, accounting and accountability

mechanisms changed the circuits of influence.

Influence was centred less around the trustees

and those individuals proximate to the trustees

such as school board administrators and more

around the provincial government and its tradi-

tional allies such as business. Thus by re-organizing

economic and symbolic capitals via the afore-

mentioned changes, the government was able tore-constitute public space. The comments also

highlight that field participants themselves have

a tacit understanding of the sources of capital

within the field and how changes to such capital

re-organizes social hierarchies (Bourdieu, 1990).

Re-organizing social groupings

The announced educational reforms facilitated

the re-organization of social groupings. Embeddedwithin the funding mechanism itself was a parti-

tioning of students in that different funding

amounts were ‘‘attached’’ to different categories

of students—basic students were funded at a differ-

ent rate than ESL and severely disabled students.

The funding received by individual school districts

was based on these calculations; in turn the trust-

ees had discretion over how the monies would be

allocated within the school district. These funding

calculations along with the announcement of

decreased funding created the appearance of azero-sum game in terms of programming decisions

at the school district and school levels.

Following the announced changes, proposals to

‘‘balance the booksÕ were forthcoming from a vari-

ety of sources and were promoted and debated

within the media—the solutions included laying

off teachers aides, decreasing support for English

as a Second Language (ESL) students and severely

disabled students, contracting out custodial ser-

vices, increasing class sizes and laying off teachers.

One of the interview participants succinctly cap-

tures the sense of unease that pervaded this period

stating that: ‘‘one of the popular sayings in Africa

is when itÕs a drought, at the water hole theanimals start looking at each other a little differ-

ently.’’ Thus one of the consequences of the fund-

ing mechanism changes was to re-construct and

re-position social network participants into dis-

crete ‘‘interest’’ groups such as ESL students, spe-

cial needs students, gifted students and

francophone students.

These events encouraged the formation of par-

ent groups defined by these emergent social posi-

tions. For example, the web site for the Coalition

for Equal Access to Education states:

In February 1992, community groups and individ-

uals vigorously protested Calgary Board of Educa-

tion cutbacks which targeted English as a Second

Language services. Shortly thereafter, the Coali-

tion for Equal Access to Education was formed.

Since then, many individuals, community groups

and organizations have contributed their expertise

and support, and the Coalition has established

itself as a strong, unified community voice (Coali-

tion for Equal Access to Education, 2004).

Similar groups focussing on special needs stu-dents (i.e. the Parent Support Association) and

French immersion students (i.e. the Alberta chap-

ters of the Canadian Parents for French) emerged

or became more active during this period.

If the proposals to balance the books encour-

aged the formation of parent groups defined by

particular subject positions, these subject positions

were subsequently re-produced in public discourse.

Newspaper articles at this juncture continually

positioned the different parent/student groupings

vis-a-vis each other, often through the use of quotes from the representatives of the different

groups. For example, the spokesperson for the

Coalition of Equal Access to Education is quoted

in response to a proposal by one of the school dis-

tricts to ‘‘re-invest’’ in ESL education after cutting

positions in previous years:

The three-year proposal called for the hiring of 10

new ESL teachers at a cost of $600,000, an ESL

psychologist for $60,000, and $90,000 to be spent




on staff development. Two Calgary citizensÕ

groups agreed with trustees that the plan is sketchy

and doesnÕt take fully into account the cultural

needs of ESL students. Pearl Yip, co-ordinatorof the Coalition for Equal Access to Education,

said the plan ‘‘cannot resolve the crisis situation

at hand and amounts to little more than window

dressing.’’ She added the hiring of 10 teachers is

inadequate to address the ESL needs (Dawson,

1997, p. B2).

While the aforementioned quote does not refer

to other groups of parents/students, the comments

of other participants often positioned particular

parent/student groups vis-a-vis each other, com-

ments that re-enforced the notion of a zero-sumgame amongst the different groups of students:

Some class sizes are bound to increase under a Cal-

gary Board of Education proposal to ‘‘pool’’ up to

600 teachers and re-deploy them to needy schools,

says a local education official. The board intends

to pump more of its 5500 teachers into high-needs

schools for things such as English as a second lan-

guage (ESL) and gifted instruction, but ‘‘it would

definitely be at the expense of class size in other

schools’’, Lynn Nishimura, president of the

Alberta TeachersÕ Association public local, saidMonday. The head of a local parents group said

such a move ‘‘would be unacceptable under any

circumstances’’. Parents are already frustrated by

the number of classes topping 30 students, and

theyÕre not going to tolerate classes getting even

bigger, said Sharon Hester, president of the Cal-

gary Council of Home and School Associations

(Dawson, 1997, p. B1).

In these quotations and others, I observe how

the changes encouraged the re-positioning of par-

ent/students into discrete groups. Not surprisingly,

these types of changes were not limited to parents/

students. Similar changes occurred amongst aca-

demic labour. Whereas in the previous period the

discourses around schooling often referred to the

academic team, in this period resource scarcity as

well as the ways in which school administrators

chose to deal with this scarcity encouraged the par-

titioning of academic labour into a series of

distinct groupings. These groupings included

teachers, aides, custodial staff and professional

support staff. Again in many of the school districts

the notion of protecting the ‘‘educational core’’

encouraged administrators to initially focus theircost-cutting activities on ‘‘peripheral’’ groups such

as aides (via lay-offs), custodial staff (via contract-

ing out) and professional support staff (via lay-offs

or re-deployment):

Slashing the number of school psychologists

ignores studentsÔ needs and will provoke violence

in schools, says the president of the Alberta Asso-

ciation of School Psychologists. Currently, there

are only eight full-time school psychologists work-

ing for the Calgary Board of Education, down

from the 25 on staff over a year ago. To savemoney the school board redeployed 17 psycholo-

gists who now work ‘‘in a variety of capacities’’

in assigned schools, president Kathy Baehr said

in an interview (Collins, 1993, p. B7).

Although leaders of the various associations

and unions as well as the members tried to main-

tain solidarity across the groups, the interviews

and conversations suggested that the changes and

the solutions introduced by school districts to deal

with the changes had the effect of dividing aca-

demic labour into discrete groups and positioningthem vis-a-vis the other groups. For example one

participant comments ‘‘the principal says, okay,

IÕve only got this much money, so IÕll get rid of

counselors because we want teachers in front of

students so thatÕs who we get rid of so we can

make our budget balance’’.

The preceding hints at how the introduction of

financial scarcity in conjunction with the other

educational reforms encouraged the emergence of

particular social identities via labelling processes.

As the water hole quote illustrated, the changesencouraged participants to engage in ‘‘other’’

and ‘‘self’’ labelling activities as a way of justifying

how financial resources should be distributed. For

example, the changes encouraged parent/students

who were proximate in social space to self-label

and self-organize themselves as a group in order

to protect perceived common interests (cf. Bour-

dieu, 1990, p. 50). And whereas academic labour

was already organized into unions based upon

occupational activities, the reforms motivated a




change away from the notion of an educational

team to an emphasis on these occupation divi-

sions. Bourdieu (1998, pp. 5–10) comments that

it is often such external events that encourage indi-viduals who are proximate to explicitly name

what, until that moment in time, had only been

loosely recognized and articulated similarities. In

this case, the labelling activities had the effect of

more finely partitioning public space into a series

of distinct and partially competing social groups.

Thus instead of having generic groupings of stu-

dents and school personnel, the result was groups

of specific types of students and specific types of

school personnel.6

Ways of saying and doing

In Alberta as in most jurisdictions, education

has always been a subject of public discourse.

The reforms, however, reconstituted public space

by encouraging particular ways of saying and

doing. These patterns of saying consisted of very

public dialogues involving some field participants

via the media. The reforms also facilitated changed

patterns of saying and doing within the schools

themselves.The period immediately preceding the election

of Premier Klein and the announcement of re-

forms (1990–1993) witnessed the emergence of

the ‘‘financial’’ within public discourse (Lisac,

1995). Originally, this discourse centred on debt

and deficit (Neu et al., 2001). ‘‘We have a spending

problem not a revenue problem’’, ‘‘interest on the

debt is bankrupting us’’ and ‘‘spending on social

services is out-of-control’’ were some of the more

popular themes contained in the media. Over the

1990–1993 period, the number of articles pertain-ing to debt and deficit contained in the two major

Alberta newspapers (Calgary Herald and Edmon-

ton Journal) increased by over 300% (from 50 to

over 150 articles). Arguably this insertion of the

financial into general public discourse created the

rhetorical space for similar conversations within

the domain of education. Like the case of debt

and deficit, newspaper articles on education

focussed on the topics of finance and funding. Of the 450 newspaper articles on education that I

examined, the majority contained some reference

to the financial aspects of the reforms.

On one level, newspaper articles concentrated

on the financial consequences associated with pro-

gramming choices:

The board has come under fire from immigrant

groups since announcing its proposed 1993–1994

budget to cut $5.4 million in programs earlier this

month (Lunman, 1993, p. B1).

Much like the debt and deficit articles, these

articles re-produced financial numbers that had

been calculated in other sites (i.e. by the school dis-

tricts or by the government) to either demonstrate

the magnitude of the changes or to provide a par-

ticular interpretation of events:

The administration of the Calgary Board of Edu-

cation is lean compared with other school jurisdic-

tions of similar size in Canada, claim public

trustees. The Calgary board—the largest in the

country with 96,000 students—ranks 110 of 141operating boards in Alberta in total per pupil

spending at $5,494, based on 1993–94 budget

details. The average spent per pupil for all Alberta

boards is $6,364. The Calgary public board ranks

129 of 141 in administration costs per pupil at

$220 with the average cost at $439 for all other

Alberta boards (Collins, 1994, p. B4).

Thus the reporting of financial numbers in the

media served to both re-circulate previously calcu-

lated information and to provide a particular

shape and form to democratic deliberation regard-ing the changes (Rose, 1991).

On another level, the articles sometimes went

beyond the numbers to talk about the accounting

assumptions and calculations implicit within the

numbers:

It leads us to wonder if the parents of French

immersion students are being used as a source of

extra revenue. As Martin pointed out, the board

has already admitted that their calculation of the

6 Similar partitioning and identification processes occurred in

other arenas such as healthcare between doctors, nurses, nurse

practitioners and other support staff (cf. Laxer & Harrison,

1995).




‘‘extra costs’’ associated with the French immer-

sion program includes basic costs such as building

and maintenance costs that would still exist if the

students were in the English program (Gage,1993, p. A6).

In these ways, financial re-presentations and

accounting technique came to be part of the

vocabulary of education during the post-reform

period. Financial re-presentations and accounting

technique were constitutive of public space in that

they mediated ‘‘the recognition of problems and

options available for their resolution’’ and infused

the field with particular ‘‘patterns of language’’

(Hopwood, 1987, p. 228).

While a vigorous public discussion regardingthe changes occurred, it is important to note that

not all field participants participated. Certainly

parent groups such as the aforementioned Coali-

tion for Equal Access to Education and the Home

and Schools Association participated. Likewise the

government itself became a very public partici-

pant. One interviewee comments that:

I guess what I believe to be true about the media is

that the person who takes the first shot gets to tell

his story first in the media, gets read, has some

credibility. And anything that comes after is sour

grapes . . . The province, they make the big

announcements for funding. TheyÕl l d o it in a

way, I mean theyÕre good at what they do when

it comes to spinning a news release. They set the

expectations and we get the fine print and it isnÕt

all that one would have believed to be true by

reading the press release.

This comment is consistent with the observa-

tions of Lisac (1995) who states that beginning in

this period all government communications flowedthrough the public relations department to ensure

that the ‘‘right message’’ was being communicated

to the public.

However the centralization of economic capital

in the hands of the provincial government encour-

aged trustees and administrators to eschew this

public dialogue. Stated differently, trustees and

administrators who understood the ‘‘rules of the

game’’ realized that public criticism of government

policy usually resulted in punitive actions:

Boards around the province have had a couple of

different approaches of getting messages to gov-

ernment. One is the cooperative method where

you befriend government, you work with them,you work towards incremental changes and you

stay out of trouble. The other way has been to

publicly confront the government using newspaper

headlines and protests and all kinds of things that

end up making the government embarrassed or

upset, in which case they react badly.

And:

I would say every board by and large is compli-

ant . . . In the sense that you try to stay inside the

dollars. The only one that didnÕ

t was Calgaryand they got thumped . . . But, itÕs been made very

clear: agree with us or else. This particular minister

is also very happy to involve himself directly in the

affairs of the boards.

In the preceding quote, the participant is refer-

ring to the fact that public disagreements between

the Minister of Education and the trustees for the

Calgary Board motivated the Minister in 1999 to

dissolve the Board of Trustees and to call for a

new election of trustees.

The emergence of the financial and the activeparticipation of the government and the less

active participation of school districts within public

discourse resonates with RoseÕs (1991) observa-

tion that ‘‘democratic power is calculated power,

and that numbers are intrinsic to the forms of

justification that give legitimacy to political

power in democracies’’. Accounting and other

financial numbers were intrinsic to the forms of

justification used by government spokespeople

to justify their actions. As a consequence, finan-

cial numeracy emerged as a form of cultural cap-ital within the field. However the ability of school

districts to utilize such capital was foreclosed by

their economic dependency on the government.

Thus in this case, the calculated power to which

Rose refers was unequally distributed within the

field.

Within the schools themselves, changes in ways

of saying were intertwined with changes in the

ways of doing. Participants talked about the emer-

gence of a ‘‘business focus’’ within schools:




And so the priorities change away from student

focus into more of a business management focus.

And the business management component is very

important or you canÕt have the successful studentprocess taking place. But it has to be near at hand

and IÕm finding that itÕs pulling the principals away

from where their priorities should be. We spend a

lot of time talking at principalsÕ meetings about

facilities, expenses, cutting teachers, dissolving

programs. We talk about photocopiers and

whether we can afford them. Faxes—people are

talking about those things because theyÕre a finan-

cial concern now.

These new ways of saying were simultaneously

a way of doing in that these discussions becamepart of the day-to-day activities of school staff.

In turn, they facilitated a re-visioning of social

relations within the school. Instead of the notion

of an educational team to which I referred in

the pre-reform analysis, participants spoke of a

hierarchical relation between administrators and

staff:

I think that before the changes, principals were

leaders more and I think now they are bosses . . .

And it develops a rift or a barrier between school

administration and staff because youÕre talking

about their jobs now, youÕre not a colleague so

much as you are a boss. And that changes the

game a little bit.

Interestingly, this participant specifically uses the

metaphor of the game in referring to the effect of

the changes.

Changed practices also involved new types of

reporting activities. Participants stated that plan-

ning and reporting had come to occupy a central

position within educational practice. At the dis-trict level, planning and reporting requirements

had increased significantly in the post-reform

period:

WeÕre required to put together three year educa-

tion plans which six or seven years ago was not

part of government requirements. Jurisdictions

had their own plans . . . ThereÕs now a requirement

to submit an annual education results report to the

government.

In turn these requirements trickled down to the

school level with the requirement being that indi-

vidual schools prepare plans and reports that can

then be ‘‘aggregated’’ upward:

Well thereÕs that but thereÕs also other things too

because what are the other priorities that we have,

how are we reporting on them, what kind of tar-

gets did we set, these are all requirements that

have been laid out that we have to address. So

not only we have to plan for that, but we have

to report. Which means that we have imple-

mented a whole different reporting process inside

our division, which means that in order to report,

you have to assemble the data. So we require a lot

of information in one fashion or another out of

our schools.

The preceding highlights how the reforms facil-

itated changed ways of saying and doing within

the field, in particular that the reforms encour-

aged the insertion of the financial into public dis-

course. Likewise within the schools, participants

talked about education differently, focusing on

the financial aspects. They organized their time

differently, again spending more time on account-

ing/reporting activities and more time discussingthe financial aspects of schooling. They also

viewed internal social relations differently, choos-

ing to emphasize the hierarchical aspects of such

relations.

The provided evidence hints at the linkages

between the organizational and external portions

of the field. For example, the empirical material

suggests that the boundaries between organiza-

tional and external ways of saying were permeable

in that discussions of the financial were taken up

in both locations, the only difference being that

school district administrators and trustees gener-

ally did not participate in the public discussions

because of the punitive capacities of the govern-

ment. The analysis also illustrates how the infor-

mation generated within schools and school

districts (i.e. annual report information) became

public information. The next section hints at

how the circulation of this information through-

out the field created new opportunities for certain

field participants.




New opportunities

Clearly the financial, accounting and account-

ability changes re-constituted the field of educa-tion, shifting economic and symbolic capitals,

re-organizing social groupings, changing ways of

saying and doing and constraining the autonomy

of many of the fieldÕs participants. At the same

time, it is important to acknowledge that these

changes were also ‘‘productive’’ in that they pro-

vided new opportunities. As Foucault comments:

What makes power hold good, what makes it

accepted, is simply the fact that it doesnÕt only

weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it tra-

verses and produces things, it induces pleasure,forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to

be considered a productive network which runs

through the whole social body, much more than

a negative instance of repression (Foucault, 1984,

p. 119).

In the current case, the production and public

circulation of financial and student performance

information on individual school districts spawned

a new industry with companies such as School-

Works! using the new information to rank school

performance—performance rankings that werethen sold to interested parents and other parties.7

Financial information on individual school dis-

tricts and the population of school districts was

sometimes picked up and used in the media to

both question school district spending priorities

as well as government policy (cf. Jacobs, 2002).

These observations echo RoseÕs (1991) suggestion

that such information be viewed as poly-vocal

resources in that, once the information is produced

and begins to circulate within a particular public

space, it can be adopted, modified and used by a

variety of participants in a variety of ways. This

being said, the financial information arguably

facilitated a panoptic form of discipline whereby

‘‘everyone is watched, according to his position

within the system, by all or by certain of the oth-

ers’’ (Foucault, 1996, p. 235).

Within the schools themselves, previous sec-tions have highlighted how financial discourses

became more prevalent amongst school staff.

Similarly, principals found ways to modify and

utilize the newly-introduced accounting practices

to accomplish their administrative goals. For

example, one principal stated that funding

envelopes and decentralized budgets could be

modified to organize activities within individual

schools. This individual gave each teacher an

‘‘envelope’’ of supplies at the beginning of the

year as well as a line of credit with which to

buy photocopying:

I instituted classroom budgets for teachers so

instead of us having arts supplies, office supplies,

you know all these different things where people

just helped themselves to everything, scissors,

weÕd give them a little treasure box with their sta-

pler and their scissors and their whatever, one of

each of these things. . . hole punch, whatever.

And then, give them say $1200 or $1500 as their

line of credit. That was for xeroxing, that kind of

thing.

His rationale was that these financial practices

would economize on resource usage if each person

was accountable and responsible for their usage.

This example highlights how the practices man-

dated by the provincial government not only

functioned as a form of constraint on principals

in that they were required to produce school

budgets and annual reports but also provided

principals with news ways of organizing and

administering the organizational space within

schools.These examples of adoption and re-deployment

hint at how the new information, financial prac-

tices and financial discourses are productive in that

they come to circulate and traverse the social net-

work. This is not to say that the introduced

changes did not have negative consequences for

certain groups but rather that the changes simulta-

neously functioned as a source of constraint and a

source of new opportunity for participants within

this particular domain.

7 Although there appears to be a continued interest in such

ranking exercises as evidenced by the continued publication and

discussion of test results in the Alberta newspapers, School-

Works! itself disappeared from public view around 2002.




Discussion

This study examined the case of educational

reform in Alberta, Canada with a focus on howchanges in funding, accounting and accountability

practices encouraged the re-organization and re-

ordering of this particular field. The starting

assumption for the analysis was that an institu-

tional field is a social space that consists of both

public and less public spaces, with the public por-

tion being characterized by relatively more open-

ness in the flow of information and in the ability

of field participants to engage in public discussion

and debate.

Beginning from a series of interviews, conversa-

tions and focus groups as well as an analysis of archival documents, the case study highlighted

the positioning of accounting and accountability

within the processes leading to the reconstitution

of public and organizational spaces. Specifically

the analysis illustrated how the changes facilitated

a re-distribution of the types and amounts of cap-

ital amongst field participants with the provincial

government and their business allies gaining in

influence and the trustees, administrators, aca-

demic labour and parents losing in influence. The

changes also encouraged a fragmentation of gen-eral social groupings such as parents and academic

labour and their replacement with more finely dis-

tinguished and sometimes competing social group-

ings. Finally the analysis highlighted both how the

reforms encouraged changed ways of saying and

doing—in particular an increasing emphasis on

accounting discourses and practices—and how

the associated new flows of accounting informa-

tion were productive in that they were picked up

and used by certain field participants.

The analysis is illustrative of HopwoodÕ

s (1987,p. 229) suggestion that ‘‘through its intertwining

with the discursive notions of accountability and

responsibility, accounting can play a role in the

reconstitution of organizational agents’’. However

the analysis also contributes to our understanding

of the positioning of accounting within democratic

deliberation and how accounting is constitutive of

the public interest. For example, a sub theme

throughout the analysis was the centrality of

accounting numbers to democratic deliberation.

In this regard I alluded to the prior work of Rose

(1991), particularly his notion that democratic

power is both a calculated and calculating power

(p. 675). The analysis highlighted that accountingpractices not only facilitated the re-forming of this

particular space but also encouraged the insertion

of accounting discourses into political discussions.

As Rose comments, ‘‘in a democratic society with

an elaborated sphere of Ôcivil societyÕ and a plural-

ity of interest groups, numbers produce a public

rhetoric of disinterest in situations of contesta-

tion’’ (p. 678). It was through financial numbers

and by financial numbers that a subset of partici-

pants articulated, justified and defended their

interests within the public discourse regarding edu-

cational reforms.The caveat that only a subset of participants

participated in the public discussion and utilized

accounting justifications is important. The in-

creased circulation of financial information and

the incorporation of this information into

democratic deliberation increased the value of

financial/accounting literacy as a form of cultural

capital within the field. At the same time for school

districts, such cultural capital was subservient to

the economic and other capitals of the provincial

government in that school districts realized thatthe government usually ‘‘reacts badly’’ to public

criticism. As a consequence, the introduction of

new funding, accounting and accountability mech-

anisms simultaneously ‘‘produced’’ more financial/

accounting information that could be used within

democratic deliberations and ‘‘restricted’’ the

groups that could participate in such discussions.

While financial literacy increased in value with-

in the field, I did not observe that accounting

became ‘‘implicated in the creation of a domain

where technical expertise (narrowly defined) cameto dominate political debate’’ (Hopwood quoted

in, Rose, 1991, p. 678). Accounting numbers did

facilitate the creation of a space where numbers

became central to public discourse in the post-

reform period but the majority of participants

were not accountants and tended to use these num-

bers in non-technical ways. In this sense, the

accounting numbers and accounting discourses

were ‘‘polyvocal resources’’ (Rose, 1991, p. 684)

that were mixed, matched and deployed with little




concern for the sources and appropriateness of the

numbers. Thus while some degree of financial liter-

acy was necessary to participate in the discussions

and to use the financial numbers, the debate wasnot limited to accountants and other technical

experts.

In addition to encouraging us to think about

the positioning of accounting numbers within

democratic deliberation, the current study pushes

us to re-consider the notion of the public interest.

Previous public interest research has tended to

concentrate on the consequences associated with

accounting and auditing practices. Frequently

consequences have been defined as distributional

consequences in terms of wealth, jobs and prices.

For example, auditing research has emphasizedthe publics that are disadvantaged financially by

current-day auditing practices (Briloff, 1990,

2001; Martens & McEnroe, 1992; Mitchell & Sik-

ka, 1993; Sikka et al., 1998); research on account-

ing standards/practices has illustrated the financial

and other job-related consequences for employees

of certain accounting standards (Baker & Hayes,

1995; Reiter & Omer, 1992; Tinker & Ghicas,

1993); public sector research has highlighted the

employment consequences for employees (Arnold

& Cooper, 1999; Cooper & Hopper, 1988) andthe price consequences for consumers (Shaoul,

1997).

Clearly, as this study has demonstrated,

accounting does have distributional consequences

within institutional fields. Yet of equal importance

are the ways in which accounting is constitutive of

the public interest itself. Social groupings, as Bour-

dieu (1990, p. 113) reminds us, are not pre-existing

but rather are formed and re-formed by the pecu-

liarities of the field. In the current study, the anal-

ysis highlighted how the changes in conjunctionwith the other reform initiatives encouraged both

the emergence and utilization of financial dis-

courses within the public sphere as well as self

and other labelling—labelling that partitioned

generic categories such as parents/students and

academic labour into more discrete categories

thereby fragmenting the public interest. In these

ways, accounting not only encouraged such frag-

mentation but also provided the vocabularies

and numbers with which to discuss the differential

effects across groups. Thus while accounting may

contribute to democratic deliberation it may also

forestall the construction of an inclusive public

interest by shattering the public into a series of iso-lated and competing interest groups. In such situ-

ations, the demise of the public interest as a

conceptual category may be an un-intended conse-

quence of a ‘‘politics of the numbers’’.

Acknowledgements

The funding provided by the Canadian Aca-

demic Accounting Association as well as the com-

ments provided by Jeff Everett, Cameron Graham,

Duncan Green, Monica Heincke, Elizabeth Ocam-po and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully

acknowledged.

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Documents

Accounting for Public Space