Accounting and structural reforms: A case study of Egyptian electricity

Chandana Alawattage and Loai Ali Alsaid

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2018, vol. 50, issue C, 15-35

Abstract: This paper theorizes accounting’s role in realizing the state’s political ambitions. It triangulates Dillard et al.’s (2004) institutional theory framework with historical institutionalism in order to trace the institutional layers and political processes that connect micro-organizational changes with ideological transformations within the political state. Data comes from an ‘extended case study’ comprising a three-month fieldwork into an Egyptian electricity company’s cost management practices and an extensive review of secondary materials on Egypt’s electricity-sector reforms. Empirical findings provide insights into the ways in which accounting plays a political role in institutionalizing structural reforms and how that role evolves with the political ideologies of the state. Accounting’s political role during the colonial regime was speculation of commercial and scientific gains, while it was signification of centralized political power during the postcolonial military regime. Accounting’s role during the neoliberal regime was paradoxical – simultaneously a reformation technology and a deficient institutional apparatus that hindered privatization. Accounting takes political meanings when it institutionalizes the state’s reformative ideologies. Accounting makes the connections between the macro-political and micro-organizational.

Keywords: Public sector; New public management; Institutional theory; Historical institutionalism; Egypt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235417300874
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:50:y:2018:i:c:p:15-35

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2017.09.001

Access Statistics for this article

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING is currently edited by Marcia Annisette, Christine Cooper and Yves Gendron

More articles in CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().