Abstract

FLOR ORTEGA, Naila Katherine. Accounting as a Power Device: An Interpretative Approach from a Foucaultian Perspective. Cuad. Contab. [online]. 2013, vol.14, n.34, pp.133-158. ISSN 0123-1472.

Modern accounting has continued to perfect itself by including, for example, practices such as cost calculation and budgetary control, and it has become a necessary tool for capitalist power. This is due to the fact that it is through accounting that factors such as capital, materials, production and human resources are controlled. In this sense, and with regard to the possibility of accounting aiding the control of individuals converted into human resources, the ideas of French thinker Michel Foucault on the type of power that rose in the West in the eighteenth century, and on the devices with which power is exerted (that allow to control, discipline and punish individuals, in other words, to govern them through the direction of their conduct). These Foucaultian concepts of power and device constitute a valuable analytical tool for interpreting and characterising accounting as a power device that enables to control, discipline, punish and in fact to govern individuals. The question that will thus guide the present paper is: how can accounting be characterised as a power device from a Foucaultian perspective?

Keywords : Power; Device; Accounting; Government of Men; Budget and Cost Standards; Accounting Data; Cost accounting; budget control; accounting interpretations.

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