Exhibiting nongovernmental organizations: Reifying the performance discourse through framing power

Anne-Marie Duval, Yves Gendron and Christophe Roux-Dufort

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2015, vol. 29, issue C, 31-53

Abstract: This article investigates the power of representation through a study of how funders may exert framing influence on NGOs through the collection and arrangement of information required in grant applications. We examine the Canadian International Development Agency's (CIDA) grant application process, especially the detailed blank forms it imposes on grant seekers and the extensive guidelines provided. Our focus is how the prescriptive arrangement of information constrains personalization possibilities and shifts, partially but significantly, the power of framing NGO representations into funders’ hands. Out of this process emerges a representation of NGOs as “financially inclined performers”, which aim to deliver results as defined by funders. CIDA is found to diffuse normative views on what NGOs ought to be and do, thereby constructing a sense of reality that privileges (economic) performance over social imperatives. Our study illustrates how meaning creation, an “unobtrusive device”, is a constituent of funders’ disciplinary arsenal, which reifies a political discourse that conceives of NGOs’ role as performers that deliver aid technically and narrowly – certainly not in an adaptive way. Although forms and guidelines do not constitute unequivocal manifestations of power, they are positioned to exert subtle and indirect influence, in our case in the name of neoliberalism.

Keywords: Critical discourse analysis; Framing power; New public management (NPM); Nongovernmental organization (NGO); Social; Visual cultural studies and representation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235415000143
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:29:y:2015:i:c:p:31-53

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2015.01.003

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 ().