A longitudinal study of Aboriginal images in annual reports: evidence from an arts council

Abstract

This paper provides a longitudinal analysis of Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander imagery use in the annual reports (ARs) of the Australia Council for the Arts (ACA). Content analysis based on imagery, textual narrative and para-text analyses of ARs over 43 years reveals that the nature and extent of Aboriginal images in ACA's ARs systematically varies with the broader contemporary socio-political and economic developments. Our findings provide insights on an institutional response to the portrayal and shaping of the identity of a key stakeholder group, i.e. Aboriginal artists, which are associated with gaining and maintaining organisational legitimacy.

Qualitative accounting research: special issue introduction

“…Last in this group, the paper by Rentschler et al (2019) is interesting because it looks at accounting for the visual, which has been the subject of at least one special issue of AAAJ and several other prominent papers in accounting research (e.g., Davison, 2009Davison, , 2010. The authors use a mix of content analysis of images and texts to understand how the Australia Council for the Arts was accountable to respond to portraying and shaping the identity of Aboriginal artists, and its impact on its organisational legitimacy.…”

“…Nguyen (2019) The construction of accountant identity in a transitioning economy: the case of Vietnam Nguyen and Kend (2019) An examination of the Vietnamese emerging market economy: understanding how and why auditors have responded to the audit law reforms Nguyen and Rahman (2019) From totalitarianism to capitalismthe case of IFRS adoption in Vietnam Yang and Northcott (2019) How can the public trust charities? The role of performance accountability reporting Abhayawansa et al (2019) A practice theoretical analysis of the irrelevance of integrated reporting to mainstream sell-side analysts Rentschler et al (2019) A longitudinal study of Aboriginal images in annual reports: evidence from an arts council shaped by organisational strategy'; however, the more contemporary view is that the MCS 'shapes, and is shaped by, strategy'. The first paper, by Ozdil and Hoque (2019), looks at an important topic in universities, especially in Australia, as they deal with funding that has led to what they call the financialisation of universities and their strategies.…”

Calculative practices and socio-political tensions: A historical analysis of entertainment, arts and accounting in a government agency

“…Dispositional attributions entail causes of failure influenced by the general public’s legitimacy concerns, where tactics to manage perceptions include organisational distancing from the failures and to attribute them to external influences that are outside their control (Kibler et al, 2017). Such impression management strategies can also be applied subtly through imagery in public media such as ARs where a calculative practice is not easily verifiable (Rentschler et al, 2019).…”

“…Funding shifts started in the 1970s, when the Australian economy spun out of control, with inflation high. This placed pressure on government spending (Rentschler et al, 2019). By the 1980s, government agencies changed their accounting practices (Hood and Lodge, 2004) putting further pressure on the need to change as the New Public Management (NPM) took hold in arts agencies as well as other organisations.…”

“…The term, calculative practices, is used in order to ‘register more fully’ its ‘diversity and multiplicity’ (Miller and Napier, 1993), allowing us to engage with the discursive nature of calculation altering the ‘capacities of agents, organisations’ and their connections (Miller, 2001). Calculative practices have been explored within arts management in the context of augmented demands for the accountability of entertainment and the arts especially in relation to state funding (Jeacle and Miller, 2016; Rentschler et al, 2019). As available funding becomes ever more limited, a climate of austerity has seen calculative practices intensify for arts councils as funding bodies in terms of their subjection to ‘performance measurement’ (e.g.…”