INTERROGATING AN ACCOUNTING-BASED INTERVENTION ON 3 AXES - INSTRUMENTAL, MORAL AND AESTHETIC

Accounting research is beginning to concern itself with mapping the operation of accounting in specific empirical settings. This paper has a similar aim - to track the effects of an accounting-based intervention in a rationalized lifeworld that is constituted by three cultural spheres with their associated modes of rationality - instrumental, moral and aesthetic (Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, Heinemann, 1984). The institutional setting chosen is the U.S. health-care industry and the empirical event focused upon is the introduction of a prospective payment system in 1983. The empirics raise some interesting suggestions for future research. It appears that accounting struggles as an instrumental technology but enables action by providing a way out of moral dilemmas and in so doing enacts substantive power effects upon human bodies, both individual and collective.