Towards constructing the governable worker in nineteenth-century Britain

John Richard Edwards

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2018, vol. 50, issue C, 36-55

Abstract: The governable worker, in Britain, is defined by the existing literature as a creation of the scientific management movement of the early twentieth century and, within the accounting domain, through standard costing as a disciplinary practice. This paper studies actions taken by the administrators and managers of Britain’s government military manufacturing establishments (GMMEs), from the 1850s onwards, to create a more governable workforce. This objective was achieved through the imposition of disciplinary practices, most importantly the use of time records to ensure attendance at the workplace and expert knowledge-based piece rates to monitor and control labour intensity. The absence of scientifically-established labour standards at GMMEs is acknowledged but, in other important respects, accounting is shown to have played a key role in the formulation of disciplinary practices designed to construct a governable labour force some decades before standard costing became the mechanism for rendering visible efficiency within the workplace.

Keywords: Accounting; Foucault; Governable worker; Piece rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:50:y:2018:i:c:p:36-55

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2017.05.001

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