Budget making: The theatrical presentation of accounting discourse

This interpretative research engages with calls for a visual turn in accounting by presenting stagy empirical illustrations of municipal budgeting that draw upon Goffman's dramaturgical framework. The budget is theorized as visual and theatrical. Analysis of video recordings of budget meetings and on-scene observation of budget-making at a site of city management reveal visual triggers, rhetoric, and framing that constitute budgeting as visual discourse. A central impression presented in this paper is that of uncontrollability. The apparatus of budgeting is complex and grows in an undisturbed way, given that budget actors seem to be passive in taking leadership roles to substantively promote change. This paper draws attention to numerous elements of budget-making that highlight visual accounting as part of its apparatus. This view is in contrast to classic theories of controllability that claim Weberian bureaucratic ideals of rationality, efficiency, and professionalism. Two scholarly contributions are claimed. First, this paper joins a growing academic conversation about visual accounting, and extends this discussion with an exemplar of management accounting. Until recently, the visual has been inappropriately neglected in accounting research, particularly in studies of the public sector. Second, this paper applies Goffman's dramaturgy, an underused perspective in the accounting literature and a thought-provoking methodology with a capacity for what may be regarded as “visual critique”.