‘Management by accounting’: the roles of accounting in agencification

This chapter reflects on how accounting practices relate to aspects of agencification, that is, the use of semi-autonomous agencies to deliver public services. It explores the way in which agency managers and staff pursue agencification purposes using accounting. It is concerned with how accounting practices shape, and are shaped by the agencification arrangements. Drawing on the conceptualisation of accounting as a micro-process, it argues that agencification should be understood in a dual sense as an ensemble of (to use Miller and O’Leary’s term) rationalities and technologies. Based on direct observation and survey in Indonesia, it is argued that by means of accounting technologies, rationalities of agencification are made operable within the agencies. Overall, the chapter shows how accounting, when entering the semi-autonomous agencies setting, is capable of imposing new patterns of autonomy and control, new forms of legitimate behaviour of the involved actors, and distinct rationalities for individual and organisational actions.