Accounting and the making of Homo Liberalis

Caroline Lambert () and Eric Pezet ()
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Caroline Lambert: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This paper investigates the practices whereby the subject, in an organisational context, carries out systematic practices of self-discipline and becomes a calculative self. In particular, we explore the techniques of conduct developed by management accountants in a French carmaker, which adheres to a neoliberal environment. We show how these manage-ment accountants become calculative selves by building the very measurement of their own performance. The organisation thereby emerges as the cauldron in which a Homo liberalis is forged. Homo liberalis is the individual capable of constructing for him/her the political self-discipline establishing his/her relationship with the social world on the basis of measurable performance.

Keywords: technologies of the self; performance; accounting; Homo Liberalis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-05
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Published in Foucault Studies, 2012, 13, pp.67-81

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00806391

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