Accounting as colonisation

Colonisation can be intuitively understood by going back to its roots and can be defined as a process where people “settle among and establish control over (the indigenous people of an area)” or when talking of a plant or animal it will “establish itself in (an area).” ¹ This chapter reflects the view that whilst colonisation may be imposed, the colonisers may well have a positive intention – leaving open whether this is misguided or not – to achieve what they see as a positive outcome. Our main assumption, however, is that many colonisation attempts are unwelcome, often resisted and not guaranteed to succeed. We are particularly concerned with the use of ‘accounting’ as a tool of colonisation. Our concern is the manner in which accounting, as a way of thinking and a set of values, is used by one set of actors (the attempted colonisers) to try to reshape the thinking, values and actions of another set of actors (the target group to be colonised). The chapter unpacks this complexity, as it manifests itself in the context of public services, particularly those supplied through public sector organisations. ² To provide an empirical grounding to this analysis the focus will be primarily on public sector organisations in the UK, ³ which have, for many years, been subject to a wide range of accounting-driven requirements coming from a range of societal regulatory bodies.