Chandana Alawattage

• Professor
• Chair at University of Glasgow

Purpose-The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms. Design/methodology/approach-I...

Purpose The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms. Design/methodology/approach...

Using the concepts of ‘moral economy’ and ‘performative materialism’ in a case study of a Sri Lankan bank that has received awards and commendations for its sustainability reports, this study explores and theorises moral contradictions of how sustainability is enacted in a corporate setting. Its specific empirical observation reveals how enacting s...

Purpose This paper draws on the concepts of biopolitics and neoliberal governmentality to provide a sociological analysis of the strategic turn in management accounting. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual and review paper addresses four interrelated questions: How can the early history of management accounting be revisited from a biopolit...

Because accounting needs serious #change (it must go way beyond the narrow focus on capital markets but also let go of 'old school' traditions and gatekeeping, and embrace progressive mindsets)... watch and read our #Manifesto to #Open #Accounting below. #Decolonize #IndigenousPerspectives #Africa #LatinAmerica #Asia #DefenseIndustry #Feminism #Qu...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the themes and aims of this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability ( AAAJ ) special issue and comments on the papers included in the issue. The paper provides a thematic outline along which the future researchers can undertake more empirical research examining how neoliberalism shapes, and shaped by,...

Accountability has become integral to many African development reforms and permeated the World Bank's (WB) policy discourses, with “social accountability” as a major plank in its development orthodoxy. Since the 2004 Word Development Report, the Bank's leadership has been declaring its commitment to social accountability. This paper excavates what...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a multidimensional model for assessing the quality of corporate environmental reporting (CER) incorporating both preparer- and user-based views. Design/methodology/approach As opposed to frequently used researcher-chosen proxies, the authors used an online questionnaire asking preparers and users how...

Based on a micro-level study of microfinance, this paper explores how basic accounting technologies and interpersonal accountability are used to make lending to poor village women profitable and low risk. We argue that “microaccountability,” our term for the structuring and formalization of convivial relationships into a capillary system of account...

This paper theorizes accounting’s role in realizing the state’s political ambitions. It triangulates Dillard et al.’s (2004) institutional theory framework with historical institutionalism in order to trace the institutional layers and political processes that connect micro-organizational changes with ideological transformations within the politica...

This paper theorizes accounting’s role in realizing the state’s political ambitions. It triangulates Dillard et al.’s (2004) institutional theory framework with historical institutionalism in order to trace the institutional layers and political processes that connect micro-organizational changes with ideological transformations within the politica...

Using a discourse analysis of interviews with corporate managers and their published corporate sustainability information, this paper argues that corporate social and environmental accountability (CSEA) in a postcolonial context (Sri Lanka) is a textual space wherein local managers create a hybrid cultural identity through mimicking. It examines ho...

Doing critical management accounting research in emerging economies Abstract The paper introduces methodological and theoretical premises of critical management accounting research and provides some guidance for researchers. We see critical management accounting research in terms of three overlapping and interrelated ‘analytical acts’ that resear...

Using a case study of accounting regime change in a Malaysian company, this paper analyses how an accounting regime was changed to overcome an instance of decoupling that management of the case company perceived to be problematic and, despite certain technological and managerial improvements, why the accounting regime yet remained decoupled from th...

Drawing on Bourdieu's political economy of symbolic forms and symbolic power, and on an ethnography of gem mining rituals in Sri Lanka, this paper aims to provide an empirical illustration of the connection between calculative practices and the social structure of capital. It shows how capital is socially structured around particular fields of repr...

Purpose – This paper examines the changing regimes of governance and the roles of accounting therein in a less developed country (LDC) by using Sri Lanka tea plantations as a case. It captures the changes in a chronological analysis, which identifies four regimes of governance: (a) pre-colonial, (b) colonial, (c) post-colonial and (d) neo-liberal....

This paper offers a historical analysis of control and accounting for bonded labour relations in the 19th century colonial plantations in British Ceylon. The case illustrates the institutional evolution of colonial accountability and control systems, and the forms of accounting embedded therein. The notion of historical institutionalism is used to...

Purpose This paper aims to report on subalterns' emancipatory accounting (SEA) embedded in transformation of governance and accountability structures (GAS) in Ceylon Tea. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on James Scott's political anthropology to examine how subalterns' resistance and emancipatory accounting triggers structural transfor...

This paper addresses an empirical issue: the non-constitutive role of accounting in a political hegemony. An 11-month fieldwork in Sri Lankan tea plantations shows how labour control is manifested in a complex historical and socio-political context which gave shape to a political hegemony infusing economic enterprise, civil society and the politica...

Purpose This paper seeks to introduce, summarise, and reflect on the key themes and findings raised by the seven papers selected for this special issue devoted to management accounting in less developed countries (LDCs). Design/methodology/approach The conclusions are drawn from desk research generally and the articles contained in this collection...

Written by two experienced lecturers, this is the first student-centered textbook to bridge the technical and theoretical aspects of management accounting change. Packed full of pedagogical features, including mini-cases, learning outcomes, key terms, article summaries, key concept boxes, real-world cases, chapter summaries and further reading sugg...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how subalterns' everyday forms of resistance against tyrannies of their daily lives are implicated in structural and ideological transformations in postcolonial governance structures of economic activities. The case of Ceylon Tea is used for this illustration, which also illuminates an alternative...