Kelum Jayasinghe

• University of Essex

This study examines the consequences of PFM systems in the context of developing countries. More specifically, the study first investigates the association between PFM systems, and both fiscal transparency and public accountability, and whether existing economic, political and social institutional oversight factors in developing countries (e.g., su...

Many of the emerging economies have maintained a good economic record over the last decade or so, implicitly lending credibility to the global development discourse. No matter how commendable, this economic progress cloaks the ‘problems’ inherent in the development discourse thus warranting a need for a critical analysis. Development in emerging ec...

This report examines the first stage in the design of a new Blue and Green Infrastructure (BGI) Strategy for Colchester Borough, which is in the early phases of development. Closely connected to ‘green infrastructure’, BGI refers to an integrated approach to managing, improving and/or reintroducing natural and semi-natural green (vegetation) and bl...

Purpose: This paper examines the historical evolvement of competing institutional logics (i.e. religion, profession, state, market and community) underpinning Islamic accounting standardisation projects and power relations between internal actors representing these logics. Design/methodology/approach: The paper adopts a case-study approach and ana...

Purpose This paper examines how the properties and patterns of a collaborative “networked hierarchy” incident command system (ICS) archetype can provide incident command centres with extra capabilities to manage public service delivery during COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach The paper illustrates the case of Sri Lanka's COVID-19 administratio...

Background: Through the extensive use of public media, the government of England was heavily involved in encouraging and instructing people on how to manage their life during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This model of health emergency governance replicates the practice of 'calculative technologies' and 'bio-politics' embedded in population...

The principle of participatory budgeting (PB), as a mechanism to foster the involvement of local communities in sub-national public financial management (PFM) systems, rarely generates strong opposition given its inherent ability to embed ‘pro-poor’, equitable, and/or inclusive approaches to the allocation of public resources. Yet, and somewhat par...

Purpose This study aims to address the possibility of integrating some elements of the “radical constructivist” approach to management accounting teaching. It answers the following two questions: to what extent should management accounting educators construct a “radical constructivist” foundation to guide active learning? Then, in which ways can ma...

Debate over public-sector auditors’ independence has focused largely on Western developed democracies. Drawing on Gramsci's theory of hegemony, this study explores how the political hegemony and ideology influence public-sector auditors’ independence and audit quality in a developing country, Indonesia. In contrast to the widely accepted belief tha...

Debate over public-sector auditors’ independence has focused largely on Western developed democracies. Drawing on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this study explores how the political hegemony and ideology influence public-sector auditors’ independence and audit quality in a developing country, Indonesia. In contrast to the widely accepted belief tha...

This study aims to analyze the performance of the loan products and services offered by Indonesian government’s Forest Development Financing Center (BLU-P2H Center) that target the prevention and repair of forest damage. The methodology used is a systematic literature review that identifies, assesses, and interprets this chosen research topic's fin...

Purpose This paper examines how a “quasi-formal” organisation in a developing country engages in informal means of organising and decision-making through the use of calculative measures. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a case study of a large-scale indigenous manufacturing company in Ghana. Data for the study were collected through...

Purpose First, the paper examines the short-term fiscal and budgetary responses of the South Asian governments to the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, it brings out the implications of such responses, focusing on India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on multiple secondary data sources, including the viewpoints of exper...

The objective of this paper is two-fold. First, it assesses existing local accounting and financial reporting practices in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on the extent to which recent government financial statements published by ten selected countries adhere to mainstream qualitative features of public sector reporting. Second, it investigates...

Purpose This paper analyses participatory budgeting (PB) in two Indonesian indigenous communities, illustrating how the World Bank sponsored neo-liberal model of “technical rational” PB is overshadowed by local values and wisdom, consisting of sophisticated, pre-existing rationalities for public participation. Design/methodology/approach Adopting...

Purpose The paper illustrates how accountability of collaborative governance was constituted in the context of disaster managerial work carried out by the Government, local authorities, and Maori community organisations, after the 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach A case study detailing the communitarian...

Service quality and customer satisfaction of public sector organizations are not yet being studied in Sri Lankan setting. The current study was undertaken to explore the factors affecting the service quality and customer satisfaction in the National Medicine Regulatory Authority (NMRA). One hundred customers (age 20-60 consisting both males and fem...

The 2nd Accounting and Accountability in Emerging Economies* (AAEE) Conference will provide a high-profile forum for academics, policy makers, research students and other key stakeholders to discuss issues relating to, and deepening and broadening knowledge of, the role of accounting and accountability in emerging economies; and to build and consol...

his article draws on the experiences of a team of authors who have published in the area of accounting and development. They discuss the issues and problems they have encountered and means of resolving them.

The 2nd Accounting and Accountability in Emerging Economies* (AAEE) Conference will provide a high-profile forum for academics, policy makers, research students and other key stakeholders to discuss issues relating to, and deepening and broadening knowledge of, the role of accounting and accountability in emerging economies; and to build and consol...

Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on the enterprise lending and control process in closely held banks, with special reference to Sri Lanka. It explores how those processes are being influenced by the distinctive cultural and political processes at organizational and societal levels. Design/methodology/approach The study relies...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use the case study of development projects in Sri Lanka and development reports published from 1978 to 2006 to trace how the World Bank has utilised accounting rhetoric/languages in articulating development discourses at different stages of global capitalism. Design/methodology/approach Multiple research m...

Abstract Purpose: this paper provides an account of banking scandals in relation to corporate governance failures in an emerging economy, arguing that Anglo-American ideas of corporate governance are misplaced in traditional settings. Research Methods: semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders. Observations of annual general...

Drawing on Stones’ (2005) strong structuration theory, the paper unfolds why and how the key stakeholders of central government accounting in Nepal are involved in the reproduction of routinised accounting practices, resisting the externally-propagated changes. Government accountants (the agents-in-focus) through their capability to control the bud...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on the enterprise lending and control process in closely held banks, with special reference to Sri Lanka. It explores how those processes are being influenced by the distinctive cultural and political processes at organizational and societal levels. Design/methodology/approach The study relies on thr...

This paper examines the controversial role played by accounting within the discriminatory bank-lending practices of a privately owned bank in Sri Lanka. It reports on an analytical auto-ethnography (during the period 1994–2004) coupled with follow-up interviews and reiterated analyses. Data were analysed using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field, c...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on the enterprise lending and control process in closely held banks, with special reference to Sri Lanka. It explores how those processes are being influenced by the distinctive cultural and political processes at organizational and societal levels. Design/methodology/approach The study relies on three...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how accounting is implicated in the creation and maintenance of organizational boundaries. The analysis focuses on organizations subjected to conflicting objectives as a result of new public management (NPM) reforms. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based on case studies of four cultur...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce and synthesise insights from the papers contained in this special issue on accounting, accountability and auditing in emerging economies. Methodology/approach: This paper draws upon general desk research and the papers in this special edition. Findings: This paper shows that the rapid development o...

Jayasinghe, K. N., Thomas, D. A. (2013). Alternative and Social Accounting. In M. Parker, G. Cheney, V. Fournier, & C. Land (Eds.), Routledge Companion to Alternative Organization. (pp. 267-279). [Chapter 18] (Routledge Companions in Business, Management and Accounting). Routledge.

This paper examines the critical role the 'accounting language' plays in organisational change. Whilst researchers have studied 'business planning' as a pedagogic device aimed at controlling spending and at introducing accountability, the explicit role played by 'accounting language' in the change process has not been emphasised, particularly in th...

Key Words: Social Sciences, SMB, Deep Learning, Constructivist Epistemology, UG Year 2, Lecture Teaching, Seminar Teaching

Key Words: Social Sciences, SMB, Surface Learning, Deep Learning, Interactive Lectures, UG Year 2, Independent Learning

This paper focuses on poverty alleviation projects in a Sri Lankan village and examines their changing mechanisms of resource allocation, referred to as “development accounting”. Neo-liberal policy on poverty alleviation prescribes a resource allocation mechanism that empowers the rural poor, enabling them to participate in decision-making, local a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Buddhist and Hindu people in non‐Western societies perceive rational accountability practices in religious organizations, through their respective religious “spirit” and “beliefs” and in combination with broader structural elements of the society. Design/methodology/approach The interpretive...

This paper examines the central role accounting plays in changing and managing ‘volunteer emotions’ during a change process at a heritage railway. Informed by the ‘bounded emotionality’ framework, it shows how ‘accounting language’ interacts and conflicts with the defining characteristics of volunteer labour. We argue that in organizational context...

Purpose The paper aims to examine how indigenous accounting practices are mobilised in the daily life of a subaltern community, and how and why the members of that community have managed to preserve such practices over time despite external pressures for change. Design/methodology/approach An ethno‐methodological field study is employed to produce...

Following the emergent trend to deconstruct the conventional view of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship, this paper specifically addresses the questions of how psychological meanings and moral factors affect rural microentrepreneurship in developing countries and how the calculative practices of such rural entrepreneurs are embedded within their cultur...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to advocate the employment of “bounded emotionality”, as borrowed from organisational studies on emotionality, as an alternative framework to examine and understand entrepreneurial behaviour and practice. Design/methodology/approach The authors review the debate and trends in entrepreneurship research with part...

The Critical Perspectives conference is designed to look at the history, practice, and future of the accounting profession in an expansive framework that includes consideration of social conflict and market economy winners and losers. Topics and themes include: Subprime Sagas, The Big 4 After Enron; SOX, Lessons from Andersen; Resisting and Transfo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence on how and why a poor rural community is engaged in certain calculative practices, and how these are embedded in a “total institution” defined in terms of “relations of production” and “relations in production”. Design/methodology/approach Focusing on the traditional fishing indust...

This paper reports on a Sri Lankan case study of accountability in NGOs. International financial/donor agencies expect a fair allocation of resources through establishing mutual dependencies and linkages between development programmes and agencies, enabling group-based economic activities to be promoted. This is a development paradigm whereby rural...

This paper critically examines the traditional and contemporary approaches towards conducting entrepreneurship research and emphasises the need for alternative research frameworks for future entrepreneurship research. The paper considers the implications of using different social theories to understand entrepreneurial issues at the rural community...