EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Contrôle de gestion et gouvernance de l'université: la comptabilité comme ressource discursive de la performance

Marie-Andrée Caron and Hugues Boisvert
Additional contact information
Marie-Andrée Caron: ESG - UQAM - Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal
Hugues Boisvert: Chaire internationale CMA - HEC Montréal - HEC Montréal

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Increasing budgetary constraints of higher education caused by public financing compressions tends to put forward accounting as an indisputable mechanism of governance, while it is interpreted in various ways. Researchers in the combined management and accounting fields have shown how accounting through management control is being used as a lever of action for managers. University financing and governance oscillates actually between two poles, one related to research as a means for revenue generation, and another related to university as institutions dedicated to the democratisation of society. An intermediate (or hybrid) stand, closer to the idea of universities involved in research and professionalism, tends to emerge, positioning the professor-researcher as an actor involved in governance. In order to better understand the role of accounting in the conception of a new governance territory, we have looked at the complex relations between discursive elements, socio-materiality of mechanisms and actors play. Using excerpts of speeches of several actors, we analyze their meaning, their limits and risks of interpretation. The main result is to show that accounting is a discursive resource of a high symbolic value used often to promote managers own will (politically) and whose effective potential is still to be realised.

Keywords: management control; public sector; higher education; predominance of situation on efficiency; professor-researcher; discourse; enseignant-chercheur; discours; performance; contrôle de gestion; secteur public; enseignement supérieur; primauté de la situation sur l'efficacité (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-05-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01188554
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Comptabilité, Contrôle et Audit des invisibles, de l'informel et de l'imprévisible, May 2015, Toulouse, France. pp.cd-rom

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-01188554/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:journl:hal-01188554

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01188554