Description
The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of social accounting at the micro level and
examines the use of social reporting for constructive purposes through internal communication devices. It
explores the discourse adopted by a large organisation in social accounting and reporting (workplace
flexibility) through employee newsletters. In doing so the paper seeks to answer two research questions.
First, what workplace flexibility practices are evident in the employee newsletters? Second, do
management use discourse (including self-accounts) in newsletters for self-serving management control
purposes or for the emancipatory purposes of benefiting employees?
Accounting Research Journal
Accounting for workplace flexibility: Internal communication in an Australian financial
institution
Vijaya Murthy J ames Guthrie
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To cite this document:
Vijaya Murthy J ames Guthrie , (2013),"Accounting for workplace flexibility", Accounting Research J ournal,
Vol. 26 Iss 2 pp. 109 - 129
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Accounting for workplace
?exibility
Internal communication in an Australian
?nancial institution
Vijaya Murthy
Discipline of Accounting, The University of Sydney,
Sydney, Australia, and
James Guthrie
Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance,
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of social accounting at the micro level and
examines the use of social reporting for constructive purposes through internal communication devices. It
explores the discourse adopted by a large organisation in social accounting and reporting (workplace
?exibility) through employee newsletters. In doing so the paper seeks to answer two research questions.
First, what workplace ?exibility practices are evident in the employee newsletters? Second, do
management use discourse (including self-accounts) in newsletters for self-serving management control
purposes or for the emancipatory purposes of bene?ting employees?
Design/methodology/approach – Content and discourse analysis are used to examine “workplace
?exibility” practices portrayed within the newsletters. This study explores the discourse adopted by a
large Australian ?nancial institution, in its social accounting disclosure in employee newsletters. It
does so by examining the discourse adopted by the organisation in relation to one aspect of social
accounting, that is, “workplace ?exibility” in the employee newsletters over the period 2003-2007.
Findings – The paper ?nds the ?nancial institution used its internal newsletters to in?uence employee
attitude and behaviour, not as claimed for social “betterment” – justice, welfare, emancipation. The
possibility of social accounting’s emancipatory potential was suppressed by those responsible for
providing the accounts. The paper found that management used discourse (including self-accounts) in the
newsletters for self-serving management control purposes and not as claimed for bene?ting employees.
Originality/value – The idea that the organisation provides workplace ?exibility for the sake of
bene?tting employees is questionable. The discourse found in the newsletters suggests that ?exible work
options instead appear to be aimed at garnering employee loyalty, with subsequent employer bene?ts of
improved organisational performance. The organisation used the discourse on workplace ?exibility to
blur the boundaries of work and life and persuade the employees to work harder and longer, to
continuously increase productivity. In doing so, the organisation camou?aged its own economic
sustainability and pro?tability as workplace ?exibility.
Keywords Workplace ?exibility, Self-accounts, Discourse analysis, Internal reporting,
Human competence accounting, Enabling accounting, Workplace, Communication
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1030-9616.htm
The authors wish to thank Fiona Crawford and Julz Stevens from Macquarie University for their
invaluable research assistance. The authors also are grateful to the participants at the Centre for
Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) conference, Adelaide and the
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Accounting (IPA) conference, Innsbruck for their feedback and
comments on this paper.
Accounting Research Journal
Vol. 26 No. 2, 2013
pp. 109-129
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1030-9616
DOI 10.1108/ARJ-12-2012-0096
Accounting
for workplace
?exibility
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1. Introduction
Critics argue that external social accounts are used by organisations to articulate,
express and establish their identityto their stakeholders (ChristensenandCheney, 2000),
and as a vehicle to communicate with themselves, creating an internal consensus
(Spence, 2009). While debate continues as to organisations’ intentions in using external
social accounts, simultaneously there have been calls to use social accounting as
“enabling accounting” for emancipatory purposes (Broadbent et al., 1997; Gallhofer and
Haslam, 2003; Roslender and Dillard, 2003; Roslender and Hart, 2010).
So, if external social reports are used to give “sense” to stakeholders, including
internal stakeholders (Morsing and Schultz, 2006), then we also need to understand the
purpose of social accounting through an internal communication device (such as
employee newsletters). Such communication devices could be used for emancipatory
purposes, to provide information for the bene?t of employees; or rather it could be for
self-serving management control purposes.
Also, recent studies on human capital accounting (HCA) insist that employees could
developand control their own (self) accounts of their contribution towards value creation
via various communication devices including the intranet and internet (Roslender and
Fincham, 2001; Roslender and Fincham, 2004; Roslender et al., 2006). The idea is that
employees could recount their own stories rather than these being told on their behalf by
accounting practitioners or management. Self-accounts could be considered as a
practical application of the enabling accounting branch of the critical accounting project
(Roslender and Hart, 2010).
This study explores the discourse adopted by a large Australian ?nancial institution
(AFI), in its social accounting disclosure in employee newsletters. It does so by
examining the discourse adopted by the organization in relation to one aspect of social
accounting, that is, “workplace ?exibility”[1] inthe employee newsletters over the period
2003-2007. The study intends to understand the way in which discourse about
workplace ?exibility is created in the newsletters, materialised and constituted as social
reality. In doing so the paper seeks to answer two research questions:
RQ1. What workplace ?exibility practices are evident in the employee newsletters?
RQ2. Do management use discourse (including self-accounts) in newsletters for
self-serving management control purposes or for the emancipatory purposes
of bene?ting employees?
There are three principal motivations for this paper. First, while the accounting
literature to date considers various frameworks for social accounting using
non-?nancial information, reporting on workplace ?exibility has not yet been
discussed widely. Second, there has been research on external social accounting, but
there is limited research examining the capacity of internal reports to provide social
accounting information. Third, the debate on social accounting, in particular human
capital accounting and reporting, has shifted towards “self-accounts” of employees and
there are calls to test the usefulness of these empirically.
Employee newsletters were chosen because they are an internal communication
device that form part of an organisation’s strategic communication function. The study
?nds that while the discourse in the newsletters projected anemancipatory appeal
designed to bene?t employees rather than control them, the intention was to
in?uence employee attitude and behaviour in favour of organisational performance.
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Discourse on workplace ?exibility was created by using the “self-accounts” of
employees, as edited and interpreted by management. This discourse materialised by
suggesting that workplace ?exibility practices empowered employees. Its aim was to
in?uence employee attitude and focus them to work towards organisational
performance.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a literature reviewoutlining the
context and background of social accounting, human capital accounting and reporting
and workplace ?exibility. Section 3 offers an insight into the meaning of discourse
analysis and its (discourse) effect on organisational change. Section 4 provides an
overview of the organisation chosen and presents the research method used. Section 5
discusses the ?ndings and gives an in-depth analysis and interpretation of data.
Section 6 provides conclusions and limitations and suggests areas for future research.
2. Literature review
2.1 Social accounting
Social accounting generally includes the impact of an organisation’s operations on the
environment, society, the local community, its customers and workforce. The term
“social” is broad and can include ethics, human rights, labour standards, diversity,
non-discrimination, health and safety, quality of work life and community issues. Social
accounting reports are generally voluntary and are widely issued externally along with
?nancial reports. Both social reports and ?nancial reports are used by organisations to
articulate and express an organisation’s achievements and identities (Christensen and
Cheney, 2000). Social accounting reports tend to synthesise the interests of various social
groups around the fundamental aims of business (Spence, 2007). Also, social reports are
self-referential in nature and the process of constructing and disseminating social
accounting reports is a means by which the organisation can talk to itself (Spence, 2009).
Gray (2002, p. 692) argues that social accounting should be seen as the universe of all
possible accountings. Abody of work has explored the possibilities of using accounting,
especially social accounting, for emancipatory purposes (Broadbent et al., 1997;
Gallhofer and Haslam, 2003; Roslender and Dillard, 2003). Gallhofer and Haslam (1997,
p. 82) describe enabling accounting as acting as a force for radical emancipatory social
change, making things visible and comprehensible, engendering dialogue and action,
with particular importance for repressed groups. Enabling accounting can open up and
extend the debate on howaccounting can be mobilised to promote social “betterment” –
welfare, justice, emancipation (Broadbent et al., 1997, p. 265). Considered in this light,
accounting can be viewed as a social practice that constructs, rather than represents,
realities (Crowther and Hosking, 2005). Therefore, accounting is a social and
communicative practice with broad potential (Gallhofer and Haslam, 2003).
Organisations create social reports to provide information about their social
practices, with the intention of in?uencing managers and employees to identify with
their workplace (Morsing, 2006). So, if one of the (implicit) purposes of external social
reports is to in?uence an internal audience, what is the function of internal
communication devices? There has been limited research examining internal social
reports. This paper examines internal reports (employee newsletters) that are targeted
towards employees.
Collison et al. (2010, p. 964) argued that social accounts share several important
characteristics: they systematically create alternative representations, new visibilities
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and knowledge of existing situations in order to problematise and act as a catalyst for
change and intervention. The focus of many previous studies has been on external
reporting and “macro” applications of social accounting (Collison et al., 2010). However,
our study examines, at the “micro” level, the discourse around “workplace ?exibility”
within employee newsletters in an organisation that is respected worldwide for
providing work-life balance to its employees.
The next section provides a brief description of the developments in the ?eld of
human capital accounting and highlights how enabling accounting has emerged in
recent times.
2.2 Developments in the ?eld of human capital accounting
Accounting for human capital began to gain importance from the 1960s. Since then,
researchers and practitioners have been trying vainly to develop measurement
frameworks for human competencies accounting (Guthrie and Murthy, 2009). Their
efforts have been futile because they attempted to embed their prescriptions within the
established frameworks of ?nancial reporting, management accounting or both
(Roslender and Fincham, 2001). Traditionally, human capital accounting (HCA) was
incorporated in the income statement as an expense (in the form of salary). In the 1960s
accounting researchers advocated that the skills and knowledge of employees should
be recognised and reported as a form of capital on the balance sheet ( Johnson, 1960;
Paton, 1962; Becker, 1965; Hekimian and Jones, 1967; Brummet et al., 1968).
Roslender and Dyson (1992) advocated the inclusion of qualitative information
regarding human resources. Accounting for human capital is enabling because it can
act as a force for social change through making things visible and engendering
dialogue and action towards change (Gallhofer and Haslam, 1997). The qualitative
information that it can incorporate allows for the emancipatory potential of HCA,
because employees can tell their own stories. No longer is the idea of human capital
accounting limited to “putting people on the balance sheet” (Roslender et al., 2012).
In a knowledge-based economy an employee focus is considered important because
work ability, well-being, and the creativity of employees are important to an organisation
(Nielsen et al., 2007). Therefore, as an enabling accounting, human capital accounting
reports onactions (suchas training, providing?exible work, etc) – activities all directedat
strengthening the capabilities of employees. In addition, “health” of employees has been a
recent focus because it is viewed as an intangible resource that should be maintained and
promoted by organisations (Akerlind and Schunder, 2007). Several researchers have
examined how information on “employee health” could be incorporated into HCA
(Roslender et al., 2006; Ahonen and Hussi, 2007; Nielsen et al., 2007).
Roslender et al. (2006) emphasized self-accounts in their study of “employee
wellness”. Their study illustrated possible ways of accounting for employee wellness
that departed from the traditional focus on cost and valuations. They proposed that
participants’ self-accounts could serve the twin functions of conveying the
organisation’s initiatives and encouraging others to become involved.
In summary, though there have been calls for (social accounting) studies that engage
with practice to construct and mobilise alternative enabling accountings and to provide
a critique of, and challenge to, existing practices (Broadbent et al., 1997), there has been
little progress, especially in the ?eld of HCA. Although research has moved from
an “economic accounting and reporting of human capital” (e.g. costs involved in
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recruiting and training), towards a social accounting of human capital (e.g. employee
health and wellness), few studies have examined whether HCA has been used as an
enabling accounting.
The next sub-section discusses the concept of workplace ?exibility as a further
development of employee health and wellness. In doing so, it argues that employee
discourse on workplace ?exibility could be used as a form of enabling accounting.
2.3 Workplace ?exibility
The concept of employee health and wellness incorporates attempts to improve the
working life of individuals and also reduce costs for the ?rm and society (Mouritsen
and Johanson, 2005; Ahonen and Gro¨jer, 2005).
In a knowledge economy, organisations seek to harness the knowledge, skills and
experience of their employees; and to attract, retain and keep them motivated (Guthrie
and Murthy, 2009). To stay motivated, individuals expect work to have a purpose
beyond work (Benveniste, 2000). One means of doing this is to offer opportunities for
workplace ?exibility (Gollan, 2000). Workplace ?exibility can contribute to health and is
considered to be a management tool based on “love” (Mouritsen and Johanson, 2005) –
that is because the employee is mobilised through a personnel policy that creates a
“modern, attractive and family-friendly workplace”. Further more employee health and
wellness is promoted through various initiatives including a ?exible workplace
(Roslender et al., 2006).
Workplace ?exibility is thought to provide bene?ts to individuals (Rice et al., 1992;
Capuzzi, 1995; Kossek and Ozeki, 1998; Bruck et al., 2002) and organizations (Russell
and Bowman, 2000; Boyar et al., 2003). While the bene?ts for employees are clear, for
organisations it is a strategic issue (De Cieri et al., 2005), based on market competition
and the potential reduction of employment costs (Twiname et al., 2006).
However, Benveniste (2000) argues that committing to workplace ?exibility is about
changing attitudes and organisational culture. Furthermore, Rennar (2007) contends
that workplace ?exibility could be attained by changing work ethics and by educating
and communicating with employees. Effective communication is a vital component in
ensuring a successful transition from policy through to implementation, to maximise
the bene?ts for business and employees.
Employee newsletters provide information to employees and, as self-accounts, can be
enabling (Roslender et al., 2012). Therefore, while employee newsletters promote
dialogue and action within an organisation, they can also be used to manage employee
behaviour and attitude. The present study uses workplace ?exibility, an aspect of social
accounting, to understand how the organisation produces and shapes its practices via
employee newsletters. It examines whether reporting in internal newsletters is used for
emancipatory purposes of empowering employees or for managerial control purposes.
3. Discourse and organisational change
This section discusses the meaning of discourse analysis, the use of accounting as a form
of discourse, and the effects of discourse on organisational change. Organisations can be
viewed as an ongoing social process that is constructed and performed in language
(Doolin, 2003). Organisational discourse is described as “languages and symbolic media
we employ to describe, represent, interpret and theorise what we take to be the facticity
of organisational life” (Grant et al., 1998, p. 1). Discourse is the principal means by which
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organisational members create a coherent social reality that frames their sense of who
they are. It is both an expression, and a creation of organisational structure (Mumby and
Clair, 1997). It is an organised system of meaning – one that frames and in?uences
the way people understand their realities and act upon them (Burr, 1995). Thus,
organisational discourse ?nds ways in which a variety of discursive practices can
contribute to the processes of organizing the behaviour of organisational stakeholders.
Discourses “do not simply describe the social world, but categorise it, they bring
phenomena into sight” (Parker, 1992, p. 4). Discourse analysis is a systematic study of
texts that contains clues to the discourse. Texts might include written or spoken
language, cultural artefacts, and visual representations (Grant et al., 1998). Our
research focuses on the texts found in the employee newsletters that are composed by
the organisation. It should be noted that discursive activity does not occur in a vacuum,
but emanates from interactions between social groups (within the organisation) and the
complex societal structures (of the organisation) (Hardy, 2001).
It is within this complex structure that discourse is embedded, and meanings are
created, supported and contested through the production, dissemination, and
consumption of texts. Discourse analysis tries to explore how socially produced ideas
andobjects that populate the world are created, maintainedandheld inplace over time. It
endeavours to uncover the way in which social reality is produced (Phillips and Hardy,
2002). Since discourse, as talk and text, shapes reality by in?uencing the behaviour of
organisational actors, discourse analysis is a suitable lens through which to understand
the discourse on workplace ?exibility within the organisation.
In our study, the focus is on how the reality of workplace ?exibility practices are
created through historically situated discursive moves (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000).
We want to understand the way in which discourses ensure that a phenomenon such as
workplace ?exibility is created, materialised, and comes to constitute reality (Hirsch,
1986; Dunford and Jones, 2000). The study endeavours to expose the way in which
organisational managers produce and shape their workplace ?exibility practices
through the use of various forms of discourse within the employee newsletter.
Accounting techniques are perceived widely as “the language of business” – as a
specialised formof discourse. Accounting illustrates the ?nancial information that could
be cast into ?nancial numbers (such as assets). In doing so, it creates artefacts (such as
depreciation, goodwill, etc). Also, it can include socially embedded elements (such as
human capital) that are dif?cult to quantify in ?nancial terms (Llewellyn and Milne,
2007). Accounting could be classi?ed as a written, instructional, codi?ed[2] text and
could be used as a means to mobilise organisational dialogue. Organisations use new
and emerging accounting discourses that are not codi?ed in a commonly accepted
fashion and contain non-?nancial numerical and narrative information, which are called
non-codi?ed discourses. Reporting of workplace ?exibility could be considered an
emerging form of non-codi?ed accounting discourse that facilitates the organisational
strategy for enacting a sustainable workplace.
Non-codi?ed discourse has its own merits. Cuganesan et al. (2007) argue that
ambiguity in discourse (non-codi?ed) may allow discourse producers (i.e. managers) to
have more ?exibility in shaping their actions and so help ensure that the readers
(i.e. discourse consumers) act in accordance with the practices prescribed. The main
advantage of non-codi?ed discourse, as opposed to a codi?ed discourse, is that
the producer has greater freedom to interest, persuade and mobilise consumers to
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enact it. Therefore, it could be proposed that non-codi?ed discourses in employee
newsletters on workplace ?exibility can be produced in ways that might convince the
employees to act according to practices as prescribed by managers.
The relationship between discourse and organisational practice is vital. Llewellyn and
Milne (2007) point out that practice is more than discourse; people can talk without acting.
They can also explore or intervene in the world without discourse. Sometimes discourse
and practice are not aligned. On the other hand, Iedema (2007) claims that discourse and
practice are “co-emergent”, and newways of talking and writing tend to follownewways
of acting. Also, Llewellyn and Milne (2007) remark that rather than being co-emergent,
sometimes changes in discourse precede changes in practice; and that sometimes there is
also a possibility that changes in practice precede discursive change. Our study examines
the employee newsletters of one organisation over a period of ?ve years to understand
how the organisation constructs its discourse on workplace ?exibility.
4. Research method
4.1 The case study organisation
The ?nancial institution, AFI,[3] is one of the largest banks in Australia with about
25,000 full-time equivalent employees with branches spread across Australia, New
Zealand and other parts of the world. The organisation has been voted “best” several
times internationally for its “work-life balance” practices and awarded the employer of
choice for women. Its reputation for encouraging workplace ?exibility meant that it
was a good choice for this study.
The dataset comprises 88 internal employee newsletters produced by AFI from 2003
to 2007. Employee newsletters are chosen because they represent a formal mode of
communication from management to employees, but nonetheless one that gives
informal information on workplace ?exibility. Any new policy or changes in policy
were announced of?cially on the bank’s intranet and individual letters were sent to all
employees. However, the of?cial letters and the institution’s policy documents were not
available to the researchers and do not form a part of the empirics. Over the period of
the study, the newsletters were available to all employees as hard copy and as soft
copy, which was available on the intranet.
The ?nancial institution has adopted three different forms of discourse in its
newsletters to convey its intended messages. First, news from management is provided
in the form of “news reports” to instruct, educate, explain, advise and notify employees
of various workplace ?exibility policies. Second, the newsletters publish feedback
received from employees about various workplace ?exibility policies in a news section
called “dialogue”. Third the newsletters publish employee “self-accounts”. Here the
newsletters use narratives of employees themselves to promote different workplace
?exible options.
The content of the employee newsletters could be attributed to the editors and writers,
but management had ?nal veto over the content published. On scrutiny, it was found that
the newsletters included only “positive” and “good” stories about the ?nancial institution.
Nothing “negative” was published. This is an important caveat to the study. It should be
noted that while negative feedback may have been provided by employees it was not
published in the newsletters. Overall, the employee newsletters consist of various types of
information, including about the bank’s products, community activities, changes in
leadership, employee matters, and internal affairs of the bank.
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The newsletters illustrate how the management communicated with employees and
this discourse could be classi?ed as either for management control purposes
(improving organisational performance) or for emancipatory purposes (addressing the
needs of employees and engendering dialogue and action) or both. Thus, it is expected
that scrutiny of the newsletters could provide information on the internal human
capital accounting and reporting pattern of AFI, speci?cally to its employees.
The organisation issued fortnightly newsletters in the ?rst two years of the study
and monthly newsletters in the remaining years of the study period. A total of
88 newsletters are analysed (Table I).
4.2 Content analysis and discourse analysis
This study uses content analysis and discourse analysis – content analysis is used to
answer our RQ1 and discourse analysis answers our RQ2. Krippendorff (2004, p. 21)
de?ned content analysis as “a research technique for making replicable and valid
inferences from data to their context”. Our use of content analysis enabled us to include
large amounts of textual information from the newsletters and systematically identify
their (textual) properties. Large volumes of data have been analysed using NVivo
software (Guthrie et al., 2004). This technique is also useful for examining trends and
patterns in the employee newsletters.
Content analysis is based on examination of the data for recurrent instances of
various workplace ?exibility attributes that were then systematically identi?ed across
the dataset and grouped together by a coding system (Wilkinson, 2004). The coded
data are quanti?ed – a way of providing a summary or overview of the dataset as a
whole. This quantitative content analysis provides answer to our RQ1. The results of
content analysis are presented in frequency counts. The unit of analysis for this study
is number of sentences, based on Milne and Adler (1999). This is used for coding and
measurement of workplace ?exibility, as sentences provide complete, meaningful and
reliable data for further analysis.
Quanti?cation is not a de?ning criterion for content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004).
Using counts instead of listing quotes is for the convenience of systematically coding the
text and for data processing. Hence, the content coded tends to be limited to the
representational, referential, or propositional meaning of the unit, and the categories are
pre-determined and not guided by the discourse (Wood and Kroger, 2000). Also, it is a
method that is consistent with mainstream theories, such as legitimacy or stakeholder
theory, providing answers for descriptive analysis, which suits our RQ1.
However, quantitative content analysis does not adequately address the questions
posed by other critical theorists. Therefore, discourse analysis of the text is performed
Year No. of issues
Average
pages
Average sentences/
page
Total
sentences
No. of sentences on
workplace ?exibility
2003 26 20 25 13,000 680
2004 26 20 25 13,000 727
2005 12 20 25 6,000 744
2006 12 20 25 6,000 626
2007 12 20 25 6,000 688
Total 88 44,000 3,465
Table I.
Summary of employee
newsletter
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to answer our RQ2. The results are presented in the form of quotes to support the
interpretations. These quotes are numbered sequentially so as to make it easier for us
to refer to those quotes and also for readers’ convenience. The numbering pattern
differentiates “management-speak” (as M) and employee “self-accounts” (as E) and
such differentiation would help us understand whether AFI has used “management
speak” or “employee self-accounts” to support their argument.
Discourse analysis or reporting of qualitative data is also described as thematic
analysis and sometimes as qualitative content analysis (Wilkinson, 2004). Our analysis
tookthe formof systematicallygroupingandsummarisingthe descriptions under various
categories, and providing a coherent organising framework that encapsulates and
explains aspects of the social worldthat the newsletters portrayed(HolsteinandGubrium,
2004, p. 156). The focus of analysis is on the discursive production of organisational
contexts (O’Connor, 2000; Heracleous and Barrett, 2001). The analysis of discourse in
the newsletters is performedwitha viewtounderstandingwhat management presentedin
the form of M or E. The aim is to understand whether management used discourse in the
newsletters for self-serving management control purposes; or for emancipatory purposes
to provide bene?ts to employees. The analysis of employee newsletters shows the
development of a discourse over a period of time (?ve years).
Similar to Spence (2007), we rely on small excerpts to give an idea of the whole,
and switch between excerpts and the whole repeatedly, until an understanding is
reached. The analysis has been carried out by one of the authors, who received regular
advice and feedback from the second author. The analysis is performed with an idea
borrowed from Levy and Egan (2003, p. 806) in which discursive frameworks actively
constitute mutual interest.
Initially, each newsletter article was read. Passages from the whole were then
separated and entered into NVivo software for further analysis. Later these paragraphs
were grouped together based on three different categories, as will be explained in the
next paragraph. While the ?rst author grouped paragraphs, the second author kept a
close watch on the process. When either of the authors had doubt with grouping, the
whole article was read again together with the passages selected and the process
continued until a ?nal interpretation was reached with the consent of both authors.
Several NVivo functions, such as linking, shaping, and searching functions were used to
access, manage, shape and analyse detailed textual data. This enhanced transparency
and helped to judge the quality of the evidence (Crowley et al., 2002).
We rely on the Australian Agency for Equal Opportunity for Women (EOWA, 2001)
classi?cation for the categories of “workplace ?exible” policies: ?exible work
arrangements; and ?exible family and dependent care arrangements. While prior
research suggests various classi?cations of workplace ?exibility (Reilly, 1998; Origo and
Pagani, 2008), this study required a categorisation that included all forms of ?exibility
practices within the organisation, encompassing work, family and community
volunteering arrangements. The employee newsletters examined for this study included
?exible work-related options and ?exible leave-related options. Therefore, to capture
information on all forms of workplace ?exibility practices offered by the organisation and
for convenience of analysis, this study classi?es the workplace ?exibility attributes into
?exible workingarrangements, ?exible leave and dependent care arrangements, and other
general ?exible arrangements. The “other general ?exible arrangements” category is
included to capture those attributes that did not ?t into the other two categories.
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The ?rst category, “?exible working arrangements”, comprises attributes of
part-time work, job sharing, and working from home. The second category is “?exible
leave and dependent care arrangements”. The attributes included under this category
are: subsidised childcare; paid parental leave; carer’s leave; special leave for employee
development or competing in sports; breastfeeding in the workplace; and, use of sick
leave for medical appointments.
The third category is “other ?exible arrangements”, which includes all those ?exible
workplace attributes that are not included in the above two categories. This category
includes: community volunteering and career break. Any other workplace ?exibility
attributes that did not fall into any of the above were classi?ed as “other general”.
Thus, AFI used 13 attributes in relation to workplace ?exibility (Table II).
5. Results
5.1 Workplace practices evident in employee newsletters
A summary of the overall sentence count for the period of the study for the workplace
?exibility categories is highlighted in Table I (based on each year) and Table II
(based on each attribute). This quantitative content analysis provides an answer to
our RQ1.
On the basis of reporting for each year, we ?nd that in the ?ve year period, the
number of sentences on workplace ?exibility was between 626 and 744 with an
average of 693 sentences. The maximum number of sentences (744) appeared in 2005,
while the newsletters in 2006 have the least number of sentences (626).
Based on each attribute of workplace ?exibility, we ?nd that the most
disclosed workplace ?exibility category is “community volunteering” with 2,689
sentences (77.6 percent of total disclosures). The second most frequently disclosed
attribute is “special leave for employee development or competing in sports” with
308 sentences (8.89 percent). The least disclosed attributes are “career break or
time out” (0 percent) and “use of sick leave for medical appointments” (0 percent).
Sentences Percentage
Flexible working arrangements
Part-time working 4 0.12
Job sharing 88 2.54
Telecommuting, teleworking or working from home 44 1.27
Flexible leave and dependant care arrangements
Paid parental leave 51 1.47
Carer’s leave 76 2.19
Subsidised childcare 83 2.40
Breastfeeding in the workplace 16 0.46
Special leave for employee development or competing in sports 308 8.89
Use of sick leave for medical appointments 0 0
Other ?exible arrangements
Community volunteering 2,689 77.60
General other 84 2.42
Career break or time out 0 0
Time away day 2 0.63
Grand total 3,465 100.00
Table II.
Sentence count for each
attribute of workplace
?exibility categories
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5.2 Management use of discourse in newsletter
To answer our RQ2 the newsletters were analysed qualitatively to ?nd out the purpose
(i.e. management control or emancipatory purposes) of each disclosure. Before focusing
on the discourses within each of the categories of workplace ?exibility, the reasons for
publishing the newsletters is discussed to highlight management’s intention. The 200th
edition of the newsletter explained the reason for publishing the newsletters.
Management’s discourse appeared to suggest that the newsletters were intended to
inform employees about what was happening in the bank:
[M1] There spread out in a tabloid-sized, newspaper format, were the stories that
mattered the most to employees. There were reports on community involvement, products,
careers and employee achievement [. . .] the aim was the same – to keep everyone informed
[. . .] what we’re all here to achieve together[4]. (AFI newsletter, February 2005,
emphasis added).
It seemed that management used the discourses in the newsletters to create intended
outcomes among employees and to construct an image of the organisation as open.
Another edition highlighted that, for the organisation, taking care of its employees and
supporting them is important. The discourse at the surface is emancipatory –
addressing the needs of employees, while using workplace ?exibility as a strategy to
attract and retain employees:
[M2] People are at the heart of everything we do at AFI: Also part of building a sustainable
bank is taking care of employees. Supporting employees by providing ?exible working options
are part of the bank’s strategy to attract and retain the best talent (AFI newsletter,
February 2003).
Over the period of the study, the newsletters used employee self-accounts (but only
those with “positive” messages), where employees provide commentaries of their
experience. Selected illustrations of self-accounts published are provided below:
[E1] I study, as well as having a family and the job. The only way to balance my day is to
plan it very well. It’s all about time management. I have a set routine of getting up
in the morning and knowing what I have got to do (AFI newsletter, June 2004, emphasis
added).
[E2] To balance work and life responsibilities, you have to learn to take time out for
yourself. I play competitive sports, two nights a week, which helps me to unwind and
relax...NEVER take your (work) problems home (AFI newsletter, June 2006, emphasis added).
While the organization uses self-accounts about how employees could manage
their time, these discourses discreetly focus attention on organizational performance.
A quote below highlights how management use self-accounts to prompt employees to
work long hours and still ?nd time for other things:
[M3] Maintaining a healthy work and home life balance helps Malcolmcope with the day-to-day
pressures of being a business ?nancial planner. [E3]”I never take work home, and don’t work on
weekends,” Malcolm says. “While there were 12 to 13h a day I also make sure I’d take
regular breaks away”. (AFI newsletter, November-December 2003, emphasis added).
These excerpts from employee newsletters suggest that the information provided on
workplace ?exibility forms part of a strategy to attract and retain employees and to keep
existing employees happy in order to achieve organisational goals. Nevertheless, the
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discourses in the newsletters emphasise that employees are responsible for managing
their own work-life balance.
5.2.1 Flexible working arrangements. This section provides quotes from newsletters
on “?exible working arrangements”. It highlights how discourses are used for
self-serving management control purposes by in?uencing the attitudes and behaviour
of employees. Here we could observe that the newsletters used both “management
speak” and “self-accounts” to articulate self-serving management purposes. The three
attributes discussed in the following sub-sections are: “part-time work”; “job sharing”;
and “working from home”.
The discourses on “part-time work” arrangements seemed to address the needs of
employees, but within management’s agenda –bydirectingemployees’ attention towards
the organisation’s performance. A message from the head of diversity af?rms this point:
[M4] We have a good suite of ?exible working practices, which is re?ected in the huge number
of part-time staff with the bank. Many of these policies bene?t the whole AFI workplace, while
also making it as easy as possible for people to return fromparental leave. It’s all about creating
a positive working environment, with a focus on delivery rather than just making sure
people are in their desks. (AFI newsletter, January-February 2003, emphasis added).
The organisation has part-time arrangements in place, but the discourse in the
newsletters suggested that employees need to manage their own work-life balance.
Self-accounts of employees were also used in the newsletters to emphasise this point:
[E4] I workseven-dayfortnight, andthis part-time arrangement enables me totake care of things
outside work, such as family matters. When I need to move plans around, work is pretty pliable.
That’s very handy. I’ve worked at the bank for 10 years and have always been part-time.
This arrangement makes me feel positive about my career. (AFI newsletter, June 2006).
[E5] I have started working part-time. My husband works at the call-centre across the road,
and as he ?nishes earlier, he collects our daughter from after school and prepares dinner.
On the days I don’t work, I pick her up and collect her from school. As a family we are all
more settled and relaxed. (AFI newsletter, January-February 2003).
In relation to “job sharing”, an expectation of high individual performance was built
into the story. The news article from the head of diversity highlights the twin purpose
of job sharing – retaining employees and better performance:
[M5] Job sharing is key to our retention strategy. There’s also research to show job
share arrangements can even outperform full-time arrangements. People leaders who use this
option have the ability to get two minds for the price of one and great work?ow
management. (AFI newsletter, April-May 2007).
It was also evident that management used employee self-accounts to highlight
that “working fromhome” must be accompanied by achievement of a performance target:
[E6] Previously I was spending up to two hours each day travelling into work... and was often
too tired to spend time with Sara (daughter) at home. These days, I have time to walk Sara to
childcare in the morning, I can keep up on top of things and I’mable to start (work) half an
hour earlier than before. (AFI newsletter, August 2007, emphasis added).
[E7] Catherynsays “I could leave the of?ce at 2 PM today to pick up my kids from school and
manage the school chocolate drive and I can log off from home at 8PM tonight because
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I am giving my kids a cuddle good night”. (AFI newsletter, September-October 2005,
emphasis added).
Employee self-accounts highlight two important elements. First, the employees seem to
be willing to work after-hours to have (so called) “?exibility” at work. Second, in spite
of working for long hours they believe that they are able to balance work and life and
show their loyalty to the organisation for providing them with a ?exible option. The
newsletters make use of self-accounts to indicate that there is an expectation or trade
off in return for ?exibility.
To sum up, the discourses in the newsletter highlighted how ?exible working
arrangements enable employees to achieve greater ef?ciency and spend more time on the
job, despite taking up?exible opportunities. The discourses suggest that employees make
use of work related ?exible arrangements with the aim of improved organisational
performance. Althoughthe newsletters provided informationon?exible workpolicies, the
discourses are framed insuch a way as to emphasise that with the take-up of ?exible work
practices, comes expectation of high performance and loyalty to the bank. This quote
illustrates this:
[M6] We know employees value ?exibility and those who take advantage of our ?exible
working arrangements have higher levels of engagement and are more likely to be
committed to a career with us. (AFI newsletter, December 2005).
5.2.2 Flexible leave and dependant care arrangements. The attributes discussed include:
“subsidised childcare”, “paid parental leave”, “carer’s leave”, “special leave” for
employee development or competing in sports; and “breastfeeding” in the workplace.
One of the attributes (use of “sick leave for medical appointments”) is not discussed,
since the newsletters did not provide any information for this attribute.
Overall, the discourse on ?exible leave and dependant care arrangements was
emancipatory, making information visible and comprehensible. It was used to inform
employees about the leave option bene?ts available and ways in which the employee
can utilise this option:
[M7] Carer’s leave enables staff to use their sick leave entitlements to care for or support a
family member of their household who is ill, injured or recovering from surgery [. . .] where
possible staff members should give prior notice of their intended absence. (AFI newsletter,
January 2007).
Sometimes the newsletters used employee self-accounts to portray the leave options
positively, apparently with the intention of demonstrating how employees who use
these options are loyal to, and appreciative of, the organisation:
[E8] I think the ?exible work policies are extremely useful. I have had an experience where
my mother was terminally ill, and I was constantly at the intensive care unit to be with her.
I’ll never forget, my area manager told me “you don’t have to worry about work at all. You
just come back when you’re ready”. I was so relieved to hear those words, because I could
devote all of my time to my mother without having to think about work. (AFI newsletter,
September 2006).
The employee newsletters were sometimes emancipatory in their attempt to engender
dialogue and to indicate how the organisation has brought in changes based on
employee feedback. Text such as that below suggests that the organisation listens to
employees’ problems and requests:
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[M8] [. . .] proposals include changes to the Long Service Leave, changes to the cash out of
Annual Leave proposal that provides for the cash out of multiple blocks of leave. These
changes originated from employees’ ideas. (AFI newsletter, March 2007).
The newsletters also encourage employees to participate in sports and physical
activities. However, such encouragement could be interpreted as underpinned by
self-serving management interest, in which the bank promotes its brand. These
discourses suggest to employees that they can use ?exible leave and sporting options
“outside of work” and such activities should not disturb their existing work schedules:
[E9] I ?nd participating in any sporting activity is great release after a long day at work.
It also keeps me ?t and healthier. (AFI newsletter, April 2006 emphasis added).
The subtext is that management expect “something in return” for leave options, which
are framed as a “favour” provided to employees:
[M9] Candidates regularly tell us they are attracted by our ?exible use of sick leave, our
12 weeks paid parental leave available [. . .] Our breastfeeding policy also encourages women
to return to work by giving them access to appropriate facilities and time out.
(AFI newsletters, March 2003, emphasis added).
Discourses such as these are used as self-serving management control devices that tend
to shape the attitude of the employees and their ideas are re?ected in self-accounts.
An employee’s comments were used to show how activities outside work can help
employees in improving their ef?ciency in performance:
[E10] I joined private health insurance that gives me a discount on Yoga classes. Doing yoga
allows me to concentrate on meditation and is also a great workout. After class, I come to
work feeling refreshed and ready to tackle anything. (AFI newsletter,
October-November, 2005, emphasis added).
To sum up, discourse (both management speak and self-accounts) on “?exible leave
options” was super?cially emancipatory, providing information that suggested employees
bene?t from leave facilities. However, underlying was a quest for loyalty and ef?cient
performance in exchange for the leave options. Through newsletter discourses,
management encouraged employees to take up sporting activities to perform better at
work. Similar to ?exible work arrangements, the organisation’s apparent intention appears
to be to attract skilled employees, retain them and improve organisational performance.
5.2.3 Other arrangements. With regard to “other ?exible arrangements”, the
newsletters concentrated on “community volunteering”. Each newsletter had at least
?ve articles on this topic. In 2003, the CEO claimed that volunteering is the “tradition”
and “identity” of the organisation and therefore is given high importance:
[M10] For more than 150 years, AFI has joined the identity as a positive force in Australian
society [. . .] Community involvement and volunteering remains a very important way we
contribute to society and are an important part of AFI’s tradition [. . .] and go some way to
reclaim our identity as a force for good in Australian society. (AFI newsletter, April
2003, emphasis added).
While discourses in the newsletters indicate that the organisation expects the employee
to manage his/her ?exible leave and work options, it actively encourages employees to
participate in community activities. The discourse indicates that community
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volunteering could be used as a vehicle to “build relationship with customers”, “lift the
bank’s pro?le” and “enable support from the community”:
[M11] To ACHIEVE our mission to become No.1 ?nancial organisation by September 2005,
we need to build a deeper, stronger, more trusting relationship with our customers.
One of the ways to gain that trust is through volunteer work. Through our community
work we can really show our existing and potential customers that we are good corporate
citizens. (AFI newsletter, January-February 2003, emphasis added).
[M12] It [community volunteering] demonstrates that staff are proud of AFI’s commitment to
the community andthe support andencouragement the bank offers to local community groups.
This active involvement has helped build a positive reputation with the team’s effort
recognised in local media [. . .] which is lifting the bank’s pro?le. (AFI newsletter, October
2005, emphasis added).
The newsletters suggest that volunteering helps to make a person feel good. They
invited employees to participate in community volunteering, but the organisation’s
agenda was to advertise its brand name:
[E11] The public like to ?nd out why AFI employees are in plain clothes collecting money
and when they hear your collections get doubled by Matching Gifts you feel their amazement
and your own sense of pride. It’s not until you look, that you realise just how much AFI does
for the community. (AFI newsletter, November-December 2003).
Also, the newsletters used employee self-accounts to promote community volunteering,
but the underlying framing was to encourage people to remain in the bank:
[E12] AFI’s commitment to local community volunteer programs together with extensive
banking is what initially attracted me to become an employee at AFI. The bank’s Better Life and
Work referral program along with fair, ?exible hours of work and encouragement to achieve
make great incentives to remain an employee at the bank. (AFI newsletter, October 2007).
The organisation’s policy was that employees could take only one day of leave in a year
to engage in community activities. This was heavily advertised in the newsletters.
However, if an employee was interested in being involved in community activities
beyond the leave granted by the organisation, then they could do so by using other
?exible work options. The newsletters indicated that any other volunteering work could
be done outside working hours:
[M13] Every team member is entitled to one day of leave for community volunteering each
year, and ?exible working arrangements are available to make further involvement possible.
(AFI newsletter, June-July, 2005).
The newsletters used employee self-accounts to suggest that volunteering could also be
done outside work hours and that such activities provide promotional opportunities for
the organisation:
[E13] Complimenting my work during the day with community work after hours helps
me achieve balance in my life. I gain a lot personally starting with the warm feeling you get
inside when you help people (AFI newsletter, August 2005, emphasis added).
[E14] While Zisis and Dione devote their own time to working on the program they haven’t
looked back. Dione said the show is important to her because it gets people interested in their
?nancial affairs. “Our listeners appreciate that AFI is providing such a service to the
community,” Dione said. “It gives me great exposure in the Greek community, which will
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provide me the ability to generate future business”. (AFI newsletter,
September-October 2005, emphasis added).
Overall, in the newsletters the majority of text was on community volunteering (Table I).
The newsletters used both management speak and self-accounts to encourage employees to
undertake community volunteering. The discourse on community involvement as a
“workplace ?exibility option” merits further scrutiny. The organisation provides one day
leave per employee per year for community volunteering, but reports at length about the
satisfaction employees experience in being involved in such activities. Furthermore, the
discourse in the newsletters seems to encourage employees to use their weekends or make
use of ?exible work options to undertake community volunteering. In their community
volunteering activities the employees are encouraged to use the organisation’s logo, so as to
project the organisation as a “responsible” citizen. Encouraging employees to use weekends
or ?exible workoptions for communityvolunteeringthat has bene?ts for the organisationis
projected in the newsletters as an effective way of achieving work-life balance. Thus, while
the discourse on community volunteering in the newsletters portrayed the emancipatory
propositions of addressing the needs of employees, the underlying concept suggested
self-serving bene?ts for management, such as improving brand image, generating more
business, attracting and retaining employees and building a positive reputation.
6. Discussion and conclusion
The content and discourse analysis highlights a number of important themes. One is
the way workplace ?exibility is interpreted by AFI through its concentration in the self
accounts on “community volunteering” (78 percent) and “special leave” (9 percent),
with limited communication about the other attributes that make up workplace
?exibility, as highlighted in Tables I and II.
Our analysis indicates that many aspects of workplace ?exibility were not discussed
or reported in AFI’s employee newsletters. Accounting’s potential has been suppressed
by those responsible for providing accounts (managers) and there are contradictions
between what they choose to report, the (discourse) language they choose, and what is
omitted or suppressed. The main themes were built around self-serving management
control purposes centered on organisational performance and building brand awareness
in the community, rather than the bene?ts of workplace ?exibility to employees.
Our analysis shows that self-accounts, at the super?cial level, were intended to
empower employees but were instead predominantly used in AFI’s self-interest. For
instance, the newsletters pointed to the manner in which employees who used ?exible
leave options appeared to feel that they were obliged to show their gratitude at work.
While self-accounts are narrated accounts of employees giving their own lived
experiences, it should be noted that the published self-accounts were selected by
management and therefore were biased towards management intention. Employee
self-accounts could be used with emancipatory intent if employees had the freedom to
narrate their own stories (Roslender et al., 2012). However, from our study we ?nd that
employees’ self-accounts used were overshadowed by self-serving management concerns.
The idea that the organisation provides workplace ?exibility for the sake of
bene?tting employees is questionable. The discourse found in the newsletters suggests
that ?exible work options instead appear to be aimed at garnering employee loyalty,
with subsequent employer bene?ts of improved organisational performance. The
organisation used the discourse on workplace ?exibility to blur the boundaries of work
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and life and persuade the employees to work harder and longer, to continuously
increase productivity. In doing so the organisation camou?aged its own economic
sustainability as workplace ?exibility.
The main contributions that this paper makes to the extant literature are as follows.
First, this paper has attempted to examine the reporting of workplace ?exibility, thereby
expanding the focus of HCA and reporting as enabling accounting. Second, this study
empirically examines the use of employee self-accounts as a form of reporting. However, if
the publicationof self-accounts is at the discretionof management, these self-accounts likely
re?ect organisational interests. Third, this study ?nds that accounting discourse, such as
workplace ?exibility reporting, could be used by managers for self-serving management
purposes since it allows management to shape its actions and ensure that employees act in
accordance with the practices prescribed. Fourth, we ?nd that management used different
types of discourse, suchas self-accounts andmanagement speakto attempt to persuade and
mobilise employees to act according to organisational expectations.
Our study is a nascent attempt to examine workplace ?exibility reporting in internal
newsletters. The results should be interpreted after acknowledging the following
limitations. First, this is a case study of one organisation and the results cannot be
generalised to other organisations. Further research could be extended to various
organisations from one industry (service sector) or organisations from different industry
sectors (service, manufacturing) to understand different reporting patterns. Second, the
analysis was restricted to the discourse provided in employee newsletters. This analysis
might not give a complete picture of the use of alternative organisational discourse to
in?uence employee attitudes andbehaviour. Also, we didnot address matters suchas who
produced the text? Who read them? How are they circulated? However, we do know that
management had a ?nal decision on the news that goes into the newsletters and that the
intended readership is employees. Deeper scrutiny into these questions would provide
answers to several other questions and is for a future research project. Further study
shouldbe conductedusingsemi-structuredinterviews and?eldresearchtoimprove onthe
?ndings of this study. Further empirical studies could be conducted to examine whether
self-accounts can be used in areas such as employee well-being, where quantitative
?nancial numbers cannot be used.
Notes
1. The term “workplace ?exibility” is used in this paper to explain the situation in which an
employee, with the consent of an employer, makes changes to when, where and how s/he will
work to meet individual and organisational needs. Workplace ?exibility is commonly taken
to mean those family-friendly work practices that enable workers to balance family and
work responsibilities (Sheridan and Conway, 2001).
2. “Codi?ed” means that accounting could be cast into commonly accepted systematic forms
that prescribe codes for practices. Like a recipe, rule, guideline, template, protocol or law,
accounting techniques indicate to people how accounting practice should be done (Llewellyn
and Milne, 2007).
3. This material was collected for the PhD thesis of one of the authors. She spent six months in
the ?nancial institution collecting data for which ethical clearance from the University and
the ?nancial institution was obtained. One condition of the ethics approval was that the
name of the ?nancial institution not be revealed. Therefore, direct references that might have
identi?ed the institution have been removed.
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4. This and parts of several other quotes have been emphasised in bold to stress the intensity of
expression placed in these phrases by management (both as management-speak and
employee self-accounts).
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Corresponding author
Vijaya Murthy can be contacted at: [email protected]
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doc_551471901.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of social accounting at the micro level and
examines the use of social reporting for constructive purposes through internal communication devices. It
explores the discourse adopted by a large organisation in social accounting and reporting (workplace
flexibility) through employee newsletters. In doing so the paper seeks to answer two research questions.
First, what workplace flexibility practices are evident in the employee newsletters? Second, do
management use discourse (including self-accounts) in newsletters for self-serving management control
purposes or for the emancipatory purposes of benefiting employees?
Accounting Research Journal
Accounting for workplace flexibility: Internal communication in an Australian financial
institution
Vijaya Murthy J ames Guthrie
Article information:
To cite this document:
Vijaya Murthy J ames Guthrie , (2013),"Accounting for workplace flexibility", Accounting Research J ournal,
Vol. 26 Iss 2 pp. 109 - 129
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Accounting for workplace
?exibility
Internal communication in an Australian
?nancial institution
Vijaya Murthy
Discipline of Accounting, The University of Sydney,
Sydney, Australia, and
James Guthrie
Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance,
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of social accounting at the micro level and
examines the use of social reporting for constructive purposes through internal communication devices. It
explores the discourse adopted by a large organisation in social accounting and reporting (workplace
?exibility) through employee newsletters. In doing so the paper seeks to answer two research questions.
First, what workplace ?exibility practices are evident in the employee newsletters? Second, do
management use discourse (including self-accounts) in newsletters for self-serving management control
purposes or for the emancipatory purposes of bene?ting employees?
Design/methodology/approach – Content and discourse analysis are used to examine “workplace
?exibility” practices portrayed within the newsletters. This study explores the discourse adopted by a
large Australian ?nancial institution, in its social accounting disclosure in employee newsletters. It
does so by examining the discourse adopted by the organisation in relation to one aspect of social
accounting, that is, “workplace ?exibility” in the employee newsletters over the period 2003-2007.
Findings – The paper ?nds the ?nancial institution used its internal newsletters to in?uence employee
attitude and behaviour, not as claimed for social “betterment” – justice, welfare, emancipation. The
possibility of social accounting’s emancipatory potential was suppressed by those responsible for
providing the accounts. The paper found that management used discourse (including self-accounts) in the
newsletters for self-serving management control purposes and not as claimed for bene?ting employees.
Originality/value – The idea that the organisation provides workplace ?exibility for the sake of
bene?tting employees is questionable. The discourse found in the newsletters suggests that ?exible work
options instead appear to be aimed at garnering employee loyalty, with subsequent employer bene?ts of
improved organisational performance. The organisation used the discourse on workplace ?exibility to
blur the boundaries of work and life and persuade the employees to work harder and longer, to
continuously increase productivity. In doing so, the organisation camou?aged its own economic
sustainability and pro?tability as workplace ?exibility.
Keywords Workplace ?exibility, Self-accounts, Discourse analysis, Internal reporting,
Human competence accounting, Enabling accounting, Workplace, Communication
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1030-9616.htm
The authors wish to thank Fiona Crawford and Julz Stevens from Macquarie University for their
invaluable research assistance. The authors also are grateful to the participants at the Centre for
Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) conference, Adelaide and the
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Accounting (IPA) conference, Innsbruck for their feedback and
comments on this paper.
Accounting Research Journal
Vol. 26 No. 2, 2013
pp. 109-129
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1030-9616
DOI 10.1108/ARJ-12-2012-0096
Accounting
for workplace
?exibility
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1. Introduction
Critics argue that external social accounts are used by organisations to articulate,
express and establish their identityto their stakeholders (ChristensenandCheney, 2000),
and as a vehicle to communicate with themselves, creating an internal consensus
(Spence, 2009). While debate continues as to organisations’ intentions in using external
social accounts, simultaneously there have been calls to use social accounting as
“enabling accounting” for emancipatory purposes (Broadbent et al., 1997; Gallhofer and
Haslam, 2003; Roslender and Dillard, 2003; Roslender and Hart, 2010).
So, if external social reports are used to give “sense” to stakeholders, including
internal stakeholders (Morsing and Schultz, 2006), then we also need to understand the
purpose of social accounting through an internal communication device (such as
employee newsletters). Such communication devices could be used for emancipatory
purposes, to provide information for the bene?t of employees; or rather it could be for
self-serving management control purposes.
Also, recent studies on human capital accounting (HCA) insist that employees could
developand control their own (self) accounts of their contribution towards value creation
via various communication devices including the intranet and internet (Roslender and
Fincham, 2001; Roslender and Fincham, 2004; Roslender et al., 2006). The idea is that
employees could recount their own stories rather than these being told on their behalf by
accounting practitioners or management. Self-accounts could be considered as a
practical application of the enabling accounting branch of the critical accounting project
(Roslender and Hart, 2010).
This study explores the discourse adopted by a large Australian ?nancial institution
(AFI), in its social accounting disclosure in employee newsletters. It does so by
examining the discourse adopted by the organization in relation to one aspect of social
accounting, that is, “workplace ?exibility”[1] inthe employee newsletters over the period
2003-2007. The study intends to understand the way in which discourse about
workplace ?exibility is created in the newsletters, materialised and constituted as social
reality. In doing so the paper seeks to answer two research questions:
RQ1. What workplace ?exibility practices are evident in the employee newsletters?
RQ2. Do management use discourse (including self-accounts) in newsletters for
self-serving management control purposes or for the emancipatory purposes
of bene?ting employees?
There are three principal motivations for this paper. First, while the accounting
literature to date considers various frameworks for social accounting using
non-?nancial information, reporting on workplace ?exibility has not yet been
discussed widely. Second, there has been research on external social accounting, but
there is limited research examining the capacity of internal reports to provide social
accounting information. Third, the debate on social accounting, in particular human
capital accounting and reporting, has shifted towards “self-accounts” of employees and
there are calls to test the usefulness of these empirically.
Employee newsletters were chosen because they are an internal communication
device that form part of an organisation’s strategic communication function. The study
?nds that while the discourse in the newsletters projected anemancipatory appeal
designed to bene?t employees rather than control them, the intention was to
in?uence employee attitude and behaviour in favour of organisational performance.
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Discourse on workplace ?exibility was created by using the “self-accounts” of
employees, as edited and interpreted by management. This discourse materialised by
suggesting that workplace ?exibility practices empowered employees. Its aim was to
in?uence employee attitude and focus them to work towards organisational
performance.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a literature reviewoutlining the
context and background of social accounting, human capital accounting and reporting
and workplace ?exibility. Section 3 offers an insight into the meaning of discourse
analysis and its (discourse) effect on organisational change. Section 4 provides an
overview of the organisation chosen and presents the research method used. Section 5
discusses the ?ndings and gives an in-depth analysis and interpretation of data.
Section 6 provides conclusions and limitations and suggests areas for future research.
2. Literature review
2.1 Social accounting
Social accounting generally includes the impact of an organisation’s operations on the
environment, society, the local community, its customers and workforce. The term
“social” is broad and can include ethics, human rights, labour standards, diversity,
non-discrimination, health and safety, quality of work life and community issues. Social
accounting reports are generally voluntary and are widely issued externally along with
?nancial reports. Both social reports and ?nancial reports are used by organisations to
articulate and express an organisation’s achievements and identities (Christensen and
Cheney, 2000). Social accounting reports tend to synthesise the interests of various social
groups around the fundamental aims of business (Spence, 2007). Also, social reports are
self-referential in nature and the process of constructing and disseminating social
accounting reports is a means by which the organisation can talk to itself (Spence, 2009).
Gray (2002, p. 692) argues that social accounting should be seen as the universe of all
possible accountings. Abody of work has explored the possibilities of using accounting,
especially social accounting, for emancipatory purposes (Broadbent et al., 1997;
Gallhofer and Haslam, 2003; Roslender and Dillard, 2003). Gallhofer and Haslam (1997,
p. 82) describe enabling accounting as acting as a force for radical emancipatory social
change, making things visible and comprehensible, engendering dialogue and action,
with particular importance for repressed groups. Enabling accounting can open up and
extend the debate on howaccounting can be mobilised to promote social “betterment” –
welfare, justice, emancipation (Broadbent et al., 1997, p. 265). Considered in this light,
accounting can be viewed as a social practice that constructs, rather than represents,
realities (Crowther and Hosking, 2005). Therefore, accounting is a social and
communicative practice with broad potential (Gallhofer and Haslam, 2003).
Organisations create social reports to provide information about their social
practices, with the intention of in?uencing managers and employees to identify with
their workplace (Morsing, 2006). So, if one of the (implicit) purposes of external social
reports is to in?uence an internal audience, what is the function of internal
communication devices? There has been limited research examining internal social
reports. This paper examines internal reports (employee newsletters) that are targeted
towards employees.
Collison et al. (2010, p. 964) argued that social accounts share several important
characteristics: they systematically create alternative representations, new visibilities
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and knowledge of existing situations in order to problematise and act as a catalyst for
change and intervention. The focus of many previous studies has been on external
reporting and “macro” applications of social accounting (Collison et al., 2010). However,
our study examines, at the “micro” level, the discourse around “workplace ?exibility”
within employee newsletters in an organisation that is respected worldwide for
providing work-life balance to its employees.
The next section provides a brief description of the developments in the ?eld of
human capital accounting and highlights how enabling accounting has emerged in
recent times.
2.2 Developments in the ?eld of human capital accounting
Accounting for human capital began to gain importance from the 1960s. Since then,
researchers and practitioners have been trying vainly to develop measurement
frameworks for human competencies accounting (Guthrie and Murthy, 2009). Their
efforts have been futile because they attempted to embed their prescriptions within the
established frameworks of ?nancial reporting, management accounting or both
(Roslender and Fincham, 2001). Traditionally, human capital accounting (HCA) was
incorporated in the income statement as an expense (in the form of salary). In the 1960s
accounting researchers advocated that the skills and knowledge of employees should
be recognised and reported as a form of capital on the balance sheet ( Johnson, 1960;
Paton, 1962; Becker, 1965; Hekimian and Jones, 1967; Brummet et al., 1968).
Roslender and Dyson (1992) advocated the inclusion of qualitative information
regarding human resources. Accounting for human capital is enabling because it can
act as a force for social change through making things visible and engendering
dialogue and action towards change (Gallhofer and Haslam, 1997). The qualitative
information that it can incorporate allows for the emancipatory potential of HCA,
because employees can tell their own stories. No longer is the idea of human capital
accounting limited to “putting people on the balance sheet” (Roslender et al., 2012).
In a knowledge-based economy an employee focus is considered important because
work ability, well-being, and the creativity of employees are important to an organisation
(Nielsen et al., 2007). Therefore, as an enabling accounting, human capital accounting
reports onactions (suchas training, providing?exible work, etc) – activities all directedat
strengthening the capabilities of employees. In addition, “health” of employees has been a
recent focus because it is viewed as an intangible resource that should be maintained and
promoted by organisations (Akerlind and Schunder, 2007). Several researchers have
examined how information on “employee health” could be incorporated into HCA
(Roslender et al., 2006; Ahonen and Hussi, 2007; Nielsen et al., 2007).
Roslender et al. (2006) emphasized self-accounts in their study of “employee
wellness”. Their study illustrated possible ways of accounting for employee wellness
that departed from the traditional focus on cost and valuations. They proposed that
participants’ self-accounts could serve the twin functions of conveying the
organisation’s initiatives and encouraging others to become involved.
In summary, though there have been calls for (social accounting) studies that engage
with practice to construct and mobilise alternative enabling accountings and to provide
a critique of, and challenge to, existing practices (Broadbent et al., 1997), there has been
little progress, especially in the ?eld of HCA. Although research has moved from
an “economic accounting and reporting of human capital” (e.g. costs involved in
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recruiting and training), towards a social accounting of human capital (e.g. employee
health and wellness), few studies have examined whether HCA has been used as an
enabling accounting.
The next sub-section discusses the concept of workplace ?exibility as a further
development of employee health and wellness. In doing so, it argues that employee
discourse on workplace ?exibility could be used as a form of enabling accounting.
2.3 Workplace ?exibility
The concept of employee health and wellness incorporates attempts to improve the
working life of individuals and also reduce costs for the ?rm and society (Mouritsen
and Johanson, 2005; Ahonen and Gro¨jer, 2005).
In a knowledge economy, organisations seek to harness the knowledge, skills and
experience of their employees; and to attract, retain and keep them motivated (Guthrie
and Murthy, 2009). To stay motivated, individuals expect work to have a purpose
beyond work (Benveniste, 2000). One means of doing this is to offer opportunities for
workplace ?exibility (Gollan, 2000). Workplace ?exibility can contribute to health and is
considered to be a management tool based on “love” (Mouritsen and Johanson, 2005) –
that is because the employee is mobilised through a personnel policy that creates a
“modern, attractive and family-friendly workplace”. Further more employee health and
wellness is promoted through various initiatives including a ?exible workplace
(Roslender et al., 2006).
Workplace ?exibility is thought to provide bene?ts to individuals (Rice et al., 1992;
Capuzzi, 1995; Kossek and Ozeki, 1998; Bruck et al., 2002) and organizations (Russell
and Bowman, 2000; Boyar et al., 2003). While the bene?ts for employees are clear, for
organisations it is a strategic issue (De Cieri et al., 2005), based on market competition
and the potential reduction of employment costs (Twiname et al., 2006).
However, Benveniste (2000) argues that committing to workplace ?exibility is about
changing attitudes and organisational culture. Furthermore, Rennar (2007) contends
that workplace ?exibility could be attained by changing work ethics and by educating
and communicating with employees. Effective communication is a vital component in
ensuring a successful transition from policy through to implementation, to maximise
the bene?ts for business and employees.
Employee newsletters provide information to employees and, as self-accounts, can be
enabling (Roslender et al., 2012). Therefore, while employee newsletters promote
dialogue and action within an organisation, they can also be used to manage employee
behaviour and attitude. The present study uses workplace ?exibility, an aspect of social
accounting, to understand how the organisation produces and shapes its practices via
employee newsletters. It examines whether reporting in internal newsletters is used for
emancipatory purposes of empowering employees or for managerial control purposes.
3. Discourse and organisational change
This section discusses the meaning of discourse analysis, the use of accounting as a form
of discourse, and the effects of discourse on organisational change. Organisations can be
viewed as an ongoing social process that is constructed and performed in language
(Doolin, 2003). Organisational discourse is described as “languages and symbolic media
we employ to describe, represent, interpret and theorise what we take to be the facticity
of organisational life” (Grant et al., 1998, p. 1). Discourse is the principal means by which
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organisational members create a coherent social reality that frames their sense of who
they are. It is both an expression, and a creation of organisational structure (Mumby and
Clair, 1997). It is an organised system of meaning – one that frames and in?uences
the way people understand their realities and act upon them (Burr, 1995). Thus,
organisational discourse ?nds ways in which a variety of discursive practices can
contribute to the processes of organizing the behaviour of organisational stakeholders.
Discourses “do not simply describe the social world, but categorise it, they bring
phenomena into sight” (Parker, 1992, p. 4). Discourse analysis is a systematic study of
texts that contains clues to the discourse. Texts might include written or spoken
language, cultural artefacts, and visual representations (Grant et al., 1998). Our
research focuses on the texts found in the employee newsletters that are composed by
the organisation. It should be noted that discursive activity does not occur in a vacuum,
but emanates from interactions between social groups (within the organisation) and the
complex societal structures (of the organisation) (Hardy, 2001).
It is within this complex structure that discourse is embedded, and meanings are
created, supported and contested through the production, dissemination, and
consumption of texts. Discourse analysis tries to explore how socially produced ideas
andobjects that populate the world are created, maintainedandheld inplace over time. It
endeavours to uncover the way in which social reality is produced (Phillips and Hardy,
2002). Since discourse, as talk and text, shapes reality by in?uencing the behaviour of
organisational actors, discourse analysis is a suitable lens through which to understand
the discourse on workplace ?exibility within the organisation.
In our study, the focus is on how the reality of workplace ?exibility practices are
created through historically situated discursive moves (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000).
We want to understand the way in which discourses ensure that a phenomenon such as
workplace ?exibility is created, materialised, and comes to constitute reality (Hirsch,
1986; Dunford and Jones, 2000). The study endeavours to expose the way in which
organisational managers produce and shape their workplace ?exibility practices
through the use of various forms of discourse within the employee newsletter.
Accounting techniques are perceived widely as “the language of business” – as a
specialised formof discourse. Accounting illustrates the ?nancial information that could
be cast into ?nancial numbers (such as assets). In doing so, it creates artefacts (such as
depreciation, goodwill, etc). Also, it can include socially embedded elements (such as
human capital) that are dif?cult to quantify in ?nancial terms (Llewellyn and Milne,
2007). Accounting could be classi?ed as a written, instructional, codi?ed[2] text and
could be used as a means to mobilise organisational dialogue. Organisations use new
and emerging accounting discourses that are not codi?ed in a commonly accepted
fashion and contain non-?nancial numerical and narrative information, which are called
non-codi?ed discourses. Reporting of workplace ?exibility could be considered an
emerging form of non-codi?ed accounting discourse that facilitates the organisational
strategy for enacting a sustainable workplace.
Non-codi?ed discourse has its own merits. Cuganesan et al. (2007) argue that
ambiguity in discourse (non-codi?ed) may allow discourse producers (i.e. managers) to
have more ?exibility in shaping their actions and so help ensure that the readers
(i.e. discourse consumers) act in accordance with the practices prescribed. The main
advantage of non-codi?ed discourse, as opposed to a codi?ed discourse, is that
the producer has greater freedom to interest, persuade and mobilise consumers to
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enact it. Therefore, it could be proposed that non-codi?ed discourses in employee
newsletters on workplace ?exibility can be produced in ways that might convince the
employees to act according to practices as prescribed by managers.
The relationship between discourse and organisational practice is vital. Llewellyn and
Milne (2007) point out that practice is more than discourse; people can talk without acting.
They can also explore or intervene in the world without discourse. Sometimes discourse
and practice are not aligned. On the other hand, Iedema (2007) claims that discourse and
practice are “co-emergent”, and newways of talking and writing tend to follownewways
of acting. Also, Llewellyn and Milne (2007) remark that rather than being co-emergent,
sometimes changes in discourse precede changes in practice; and that sometimes there is
also a possibility that changes in practice precede discursive change. Our study examines
the employee newsletters of one organisation over a period of ?ve years to understand
how the organisation constructs its discourse on workplace ?exibility.
4. Research method
4.1 The case study organisation
The ?nancial institution, AFI,[3] is one of the largest banks in Australia with about
25,000 full-time equivalent employees with branches spread across Australia, New
Zealand and other parts of the world. The organisation has been voted “best” several
times internationally for its “work-life balance” practices and awarded the employer of
choice for women. Its reputation for encouraging workplace ?exibility meant that it
was a good choice for this study.
The dataset comprises 88 internal employee newsletters produced by AFI from 2003
to 2007. Employee newsletters are chosen because they represent a formal mode of
communication from management to employees, but nonetheless one that gives
informal information on workplace ?exibility. Any new policy or changes in policy
were announced of?cially on the bank’s intranet and individual letters were sent to all
employees. However, the of?cial letters and the institution’s policy documents were not
available to the researchers and do not form a part of the empirics. Over the period of
the study, the newsletters were available to all employees as hard copy and as soft
copy, which was available on the intranet.
The ?nancial institution has adopted three different forms of discourse in its
newsletters to convey its intended messages. First, news from management is provided
in the form of “news reports” to instruct, educate, explain, advise and notify employees
of various workplace ?exibility policies. Second, the newsletters publish feedback
received from employees about various workplace ?exibility policies in a news section
called “dialogue”. Third the newsletters publish employee “self-accounts”. Here the
newsletters use narratives of employees themselves to promote different workplace
?exible options.
The content of the employee newsletters could be attributed to the editors and writers,
but management had ?nal veto over the content published. On scrutiny, it was found that
the newsletters included only “positive” and “good” stories about the ?nancial institution.
Nothing “negative” was published. This is an important caveat to the study. It should be
noted that while negative feedback may have been provided by employees it was not
published in the newsletters. Overall, the employee newsletters consist of various types of
information, including about the bank’s products, community activities, changes in
leadership, employee matters, and internal affairs of the bank.
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The newsletters illustrate how the management communicated with employees and
this discourse could be classi?ed as either for management control purposes
(improving organisational performance) or for emancipatory purposes (addressing the
needs of employees and engendering dialogue and action) or both. Thus, it is expected
that scrutiny of the newsletters could provide information on the internal human
capital accounting and reporting pattern of AFI, speci?cally to its employees.
The organisation issued fortnightly newsletters in the ?rst two years of the study
and monthly newsletters in the remaining years of the study period. A total of
88 newsletters are analysed (Table I).
4.2 Content analysis and discourse analysis
This study uses content analysis and discourse analysis – content analysis is used to
answer our RQ1 and discourse analysis answers our RQ2. Krippendorff (2004, p. 21)
de?ned content analysis as “a research technique for making replicable and valid
inferences from data to their context”. Our use of content analysis enabled us to include
large amounts of textual information from the newsletters and systematically identify
their (textual) properties. Large volumes of data have been analysed using NVivo
software (Guthrie et al., 2004). This technique is also useful for examining trends and
patterns in the employee newsletters.
Content analysis is based on examination of the data for recurrent instances of
various workplace ?exibility attributes that were then systematically identi?ed across
the dataset and grouped together by a coding system (Wilkinson, 2004). The coded
data are quanti?ed – a way of providing a summary or overview of the dataset as a
whole. This quantitative content analysis provides answer to our RQ1. The results of
content analysis are presented in frequency counts. The unit of analysis for this study
is number of sentences, based on Milne and Adler (1999). This is used for coding and
measurement of workplace ?exibility, as sentences provide complete, meaningful and
reliable data for further analysis.
Quanti?cation is not a de?ning criterion for content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004).
Using counts instead of listing quotes is for the convenience of systematically coding the
text and for data processing. Hence, the content coded tends to be limited to the
representational, referential, or propositional meaning of the unit, and the categories are
pre-determined and not guided by the discourse (Wood and Kroger, 2000). Also, it is a
method that is consistent with mainstream theories, such as legitimacy or stakeholder
theory, providing answers for descriptive analysis, which suits our RQ1.
However, quantitative content analysis does not adequately address the questions
posed by other critical theorists. Therefore, discourse analysis of the text is performed
Year No. of issues
Average
pages
Average sentences/
page
Total
sentences
No. of sentences on
workplace ?exibility
2003 26 20 25 13,000 680
2004 26 20 25 13,000 727
2005 12 20 25 6,000 744
2006 12 20 25 6,000 626
2007 12 20 25 6,000 688
Total 88 44,000 3,465
Table I.
Summary of employee
newsletter
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to answer our RQ2. The results are presented in the form of quotes to support the
interpretations. These quotes are numbered sequentially so as to make it easier for us
to refer to those quotes and also for readers’ convenience. The numbering pattern
differentiates “management-speak” (as M) and employee “self-accounts” (as E) and
such differentiation would help us understand whether AFI has used “management
speak” or “employee self-accounts” to support their argument.
Discourse analysis or reporting of qualitative data is also described as thematic
analysis and sometimes as qualitative content analysis (Wilkinson, 2004). Our analysis
tookthe formof systematicallygroupingandsummarisingthe descriptions under various
categories, and providing a coherent organising framework that encapsulates and
explains aspects of the social worldthat the newsletters portrayed(HolsteinandGubrium,
2004, p. 156). The focus of analysis is on the discursive production of organisational
contexts (O’Connor, 2000; Heracleous and Barrett, 2001). The analysis of discourse in
the newsletters is performedwitha viewtounderstandingwhat management presentedin
the form of M or E. The aim is to understand whether management used discourse in the
newsletters for self-serving management control purposes; or for emancipatory purposes
to provide bene?ts to employees. The analysis of employee newsletters shows the
development of a discourse over a period of time (?ve years).
Similar to Spence (2007), we rely on small excerpts to give an idea of the whole,
and switch between excerpts and the whole repeatedly, until an understanding is
reached. The analysis has been carried out by one of the authors, who received regular
advice and feedback from the second author. The analysis is performed with an idea
borrowed from Levy and Egan (2003, p. 806) in which discursive frameworks actively
constitute mutual interest.
Initially, each newsletter article was read. Passages from the whole were then
separated and entered into NVivo software for further analysis. Later these paragraphs
were grouped together based on three different categories, as will be explained in the
next paragraph. While the ?rst author grouped paragraphs, the second author kept a
close watch on the process. When either of the authors had doubt with grouping, the
whole article was read again together with the passages selected and the process
continued until a ?nal interpretation was reached with the consent of both authors.
Several NVivo functions, such as linking, shaping, and searching functions were used to
access, manage, shape and analyse detailed textual data. This enhanced transparency
and helped to judge the quality of the evidence (Crowley et al., 2002).
We rely on the Australian Agency for Equal Opportunity for Women (EOWA, 2001)
classi?cation for the categories of “workplace ?exible” policies: ?exible work
arrangements; and ?exible family and dependent care arrangements. While prior
research suggests various classi?cations of workplace ?exibility (Reilly, 1998; Origo and
Pagani, 2008), this study required a categorisation that included all forms of ?exibility
practices within the organisation, encompassing work, family and community
volunteering arrangements. The employee newsletters examined for this study included
?exible work-related options and ?exible leave-related options. Therefore, to capture
information on all forms of workplace ?exibility practices offered by the organisation and
for convenience of analysis, this study classi?es the workplace ?exibility attributes into
?exible workingarrangements, ?exible leave and dependent care arrangements, and other
general ?exible arrangements. The “other general ?exible arrangements” category is
included to capture those attributes that did not ?t into the other two categories.
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The ?rst category, “?exible working arrangements”, comprises attributes of
part-time work, job sharing, and working from home. The second category is “?exible
leave and dependent care arrangements”. The attributes included under this category
are: subsidised childcare; paid parental leave; carer’s leave; special leave for employee
development or competing in sports; breastfeeding in the workplace; and, use of sick
leave for medical appointments.
The third category is “other ?exible arrangements”, which includes all those ?exible
workplace attributes that are not included in the above two categories. This category
includes: community volunteering and career break. Any other workplace ?exibility
attributes that did not fall into any of the above were classi?ed as “other general”.
Thus, AFI used 13 attributes in relation to workplace ?exibility (Table II).
5. Results
5.1 Workplace practices evident in employee newsletters
A summary of the overall sentence count for the period of the study for the workplace
?exibility categories is highlighted in Table I (based on each year) and Table II
(based on each attribute). This quantitative content analysis provides an answer to
our RQ1.
On the basis of reporting for each year, we ?nd that in the ?ve year period, the
number of sentences on workplace ?exibility was between 626 and 744 with an
average of 693 sentences. The maximum number of sentences (744) appeared in 2005,
while the newsletters in 2006 have the least number of sentences (626).
Based on each attribute of workplace ?exibility, we ?nd that the most
disclosed workplace ?exibility category is “community volunteering” with 2,689
sentences (77.6 percent of total disclosures). The second most frequently disclosed
attribute is “special leave for employee development or competing in sports” with
308 sentences (8.89 percent). The least disclosed attributes are “career break or
time out” (0 percent) and “use of sick leave for medical appointments” (0 percent).
Sentences Percentage
Flexible working arrangements
Part-time working 4 0.12
Job sharing 88 2.54
Telecommuting, teleworking or working from home 44 1.27
Flexible leave and dependant care arrangements
Paid parental leave 51 1.47
Carer’s leave 76 2.19
Subsidised childcare 83 2.40
Breastfeeding in the workplace 16 0.46
Special leave for employee development or competing in sports 308 8.89
Use of sick leave for medical appointments 0 0
Other ?exible arrangements
Community volunteering 2,689 77.60
General other 84 2.42
Career break or time out 0 0
Time away day 2 0.63
Grand total 3,465 100.00
Table II.
Sentence count for each
attribute of workplace
?exibility categories
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5.2 Management use of discourse in newsletter
To answer our RQ2 the newsletters were analysed qualitatively to ?nd out the purpose
(i.e. management control or emancipatory purposes) of each disclosure. Before focusing
on the discourses within each of the categories of workplace ?exibility, the reasons for
publishing the newsletters is discussed to highlight management’s intention. The 200th
edition of the newsletter explained the reason for publishing the newsletters.
Management’s discourse appeared to suggest that the newsletters were intended to
inform employees about what was happening in the bank:
[M1] There spread out in a tabloid-sized, newspaper format, were the stories that
mattered the most to employees. There were reports on community involvement, products,
careers and employee achievement [. . .] the aim was the same – to keep everyone informed
[. . .] what we’re all here to achieve together[4]. (AFI newsletter, February 2005,
emphasis added).
It seemed that management used the discourses in the newsletters to create intended
outcomes among employees and to construct an image of the organisation as open.
Another edition highlighted that, for the organisation, taking care of its employees and
supporting them is important. The discourse at the surface is emancipatory –
addressing the needs of employees, while using workplace ?exibility as a strategy to
attract and retain employees:
[M2] People are at the heart of everything we do at AFI: Also part of building a sustainable
bank is taking care of employees. Supporting employees by providing ?exible working options
are part of the bank’s strategy to attract and retain the best talent (AFI newsletter,
February 2003).
Over the period of the study, the newsletters used employee self-accounts (but only
those with “positive” messages), where employees provide commentaries of their
experience. Selected illustrations of self-accounts published are provided below:
[E1] I study, as well as having a family and the job. The only way to balance my day is to
plan it very well. It’s all about time management. I have a set routine of getting up
in the morning and knowing what I have got to do (AFI newsletter, June 2004, emphasis
added).
[E2] To balance work and life responsibilities, you have to learn to take time out for
yourself. I play competitive sports, two nights a week, which helps me to unwind and
relax...NEVER take your (work) problems home (AFI newsletter, June 2006, emphasis added).
While the organization uses self-accounts about how employees could manage
their time, these discourses discreetly focus attention on organizational performance.
A quote below highlights how management use self-accounts to prompt employees to
work long hours and still ?nd time for other things:
[M3] Maintaining a healthy work and home life balance helps Malcolmcope with the day-to-day
pressures of being a business ?nancial planner. [E3]”I never take work home, and don’t work on
weekends,” Malcolm says. “While there were 12 to 13h a day I also make sure I’d take
regular breaks away”. (AFI newsletter, November-December 2003, emphasis added).
These excerpts from employee newsletters suggest that the information provided on
workplace ?exibility forms part of a strategy to attract and retain employees and to keep
existing employees happy in order to achieve organisational goals. Nevertheless, the
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discourses in the newsletters emphasise that employees are responsible for managing
their own work-life balance.
5.2.1 Flexible working arrangements. This section provides quotes from newsletters
on “?exible working arrangements”. It highlights how discourses are used for
self-serving management control purposes by in?uencing the attitudes and behaviour
of employees. Here we could observe that the newsletters used both “management
speak” and “self-accounts” to articulate self-serving management purposes. The three
attributes discussed in the following sub-sections are: “part-time work”; “job sharing”;
and “working from home”.
The discourses on “part-time work” arrangements seemed to address the needs of
employees, but within management’s agenda –bydirectingemployees’ attention towards
the organisation’s performance. A message from the head of diversity af?rms this point:
[M4] We have a good suite of ?exible working practices, which is re?ected in the huge number
of part-time staff with the bank. Many of these policies bene?t the whole AFI workplace, while
also making it as easy as possible for people to return fromparental leave. It’s all about creating
a positive working environment, with a focus on delivery rather than just making sure
people are in their desks. (AFI newsletter, January-February 2003, emphasis added).
The organisation has part-time arrangements in place, but the discourse in the
newsletters suggested that employees need to manage their own work-life balance.
Self-accounts of employees were also used in the newsletters to emphasise this point:
[E4] I workseven-dayfortnight, andthis part-time arrangement enables me totake care of things
outside work, such as family matters. When I need to move plans around, work is pretty pliable.
That’s very handy. I’ve worked at the bank for 10 years and have always been part-time.
This arrangement makes me feel positive about my career. (AFI newsletter, June 2006).
[E5] I have started working part-time. My husband works at the call-centre across the road,
and as he ?nishes earlier, he collects our daughter from after school and prepares dinner.
On the days I don’t work, I pick her up and collect her from school. As a family we are all
more settled and relaxed. (AFI newsletter, January-February 2003).
In relation to “job sharing”, an expectation of high individual performance was built
into the story. The news article from the head of diversity highlights the twin purpose
of job sharing – retaining employees and better performance:
[M5] Job sharing is key to our retention strategy. There’s also research to show job
share arrangements can even outperform full-time arrangements. People leaders who use this
option have the ability to get two minds for the price of one and great work?ow
management. (AFI newsletter, April-May 2007).
It was also evident that management used employee self-accounts to highlight
that “working fromhome” must be accompanied by achievement of a performance target:
[E6] Previously I was spending up to two hours each day travelling into work... and was often
too tired to spend time with Sara (daughter) at home. These days, I have time to walk Sara to
childcare in the morning, I can keep up on top of things and I’mable to start (work) half an
hour earlier than before. (AFI newsletter, August 2007, emphasis added).
[E7] Catherynsays “I could leave the of?ce at 2 PM today to pick up my kids from school and
manage the school chocolate drive and I can log off from home at 8PM tonight because
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I am giving my kids a cuddle good night”. (AFI newsletter, September-October 2005,
emphasis added).
Employee self-accounts highlight two important elements. First, the employees seem to
be willing to work after-hours to have (so called) “?exibility” at work. Second, in spite
of working for long hours they believe that they are able to balance work and life and
show their loyalty to the organisation for providing them with a ?exible option. The
newsletters make use of self-accounts to indicate that there is an expectation or trade
off in return for ?exibility.
To sum up, the discourses in the newsletter highlighted how ?exible working
arrangements enable employees to achieve greater ef?ciency and spend more time on the
job, despite taking up?exible opportunities. The discourses suggest that employees make
use of work related ?exible arrangements with the aim of improved organisational
performance. Althoughthe newsletters provided informationon?exible workpolicies, the
discourses are framed insuch a way as to emphasise that with the take-up of ?exible work
practices, comes expectation of high performance and loyalty to the bank. This quote
illustrates this:
[M6] We know employees value ?exibility and those who take advantage of our ?exible
working arrangements have higher levels of engagement and are more likely to be
committed to a career with us. (AFI newsletter, December 2005).
5.2.2 Flexible leave and dependant care arrangements. The attributes discussed include:
“subsidised childcare”, “paid parental leave”, “carer’s leave”, “special leave” for
employee development or competing in sports; and “breastfeeding” in the workplace.
One of the attributes (use of “sick leave for medical appointments”) is not discussed,
since the newsletters did not provide any information for this attribute.
Overall, the discourse on ?exible leave and dependant care arrangements was
emancipatory, making information visible and comprehensible. It was used to inform
employees about the leave option bene?ts available and ways in which the employee
can utilise this option:
[M7] Carer’s leave enables staff to use their sick leave entitlements to care for or support a
family member of their household who is ill, injured or recovering from surgery [. . .] where
possible staff members should give prior notice of their intended absence. (AFI newsletter,
January 2007).
Sometimes the newsletters used employee self-accounts to portray the leave options
positively, apparently with the intention of demonstrating how employees who use
these options are loyal to, and appreciative of, the organisation:
[E8] I think the ?exible work policies are extremely useful. I have had an experience where
my mother was terminally ill, and I was constantly at the intensive care unit to be with her.
I’ll never forget, my area manager told me “you don’t have to worry about work at all. You
just come back when you’re ready”. I was so relieved to hear those words, because I could
devote all of my time to my mother without having to think about work. (AFI newsletter,
September 2006).
The employee newsletters were sometimes emancipatory in their attempt to engender
dialogue and to indicate how the organisation has brought in changes based on
employee feedback. Text such as that below suggests that the organisation listens to
employees’ problems and requests:
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[M8] [. . .] proposals include changes to the Long Service Leave, changes to the cash out of
Annual Leave proposal that provides for the cash out of multiple blocks of leave. These
changes originated from employees’ ideas. (AFI newsletter, March 2007).
The newsletters also encourage employees to participate in sports and physical
activities. However, such encouragement could be interpreted as underpinned by
self-serving management interest, in which the bank promotes its brand. These
discourses suggest to employees that they can use ?exible leave and sporting options
“outside of work” and such activities should not disturb their existing work schedules:
[E9] I ?nd participating in any sporting activity is great release after a long day at work.
It also keeps me ?t and healthier. (AFI newsletter, April 2006 emphasis added).
The subtext is that management expect “something in return” for leave options, which
are framed as a “favour” provided to employees:
[M9] Candidates regularly tell us they are attracted by our ?exible use of sick leave, our
12 weeks paid parental leave available [. . .] Our breastfeeding policy also encourages women
to return to work by giving them access to appropriate facilities and time out.
(AFI newsletters, March 2003, emphasis added).
Discourses such as these are used as self-serving management control devices that tend
to shape the attitude of the employees and their ideas are re?ected in self-accounts.
An employee’s comments were used to show how activities outside work can help
employees in improving their ef?ciency in performance:
[E10] I joined private health insurance that gives me a discount on Yoga classes. Doing yoga
allows me to concentrate on meditation and is also a great workout. After class, I come to
work feeling refreshed and ready to tackle anything. (AFI newsletter,
October-November, 2005, emphasis added).
To sum up, discourse (both management speak and self-accounts) on “?exible leave
options” was super?cially emancipatory, providing information that suggested employees
bene?t from leave facilities. However, underlying was a quest for loyalty and ef?cient
performance in exchange for the leave options. Through newsletter discourses,
management encouraged employees to take up sporting activities to perform better at
work. Similar to ?exible work arrangements, the organisation’s apparent intention appears
to be to attract skilled employees, retain them and improve organisational performance.
5.2.3 Other arrangements. With regard to “other ?exible arrangements”, the
newsletters concentrated on “community volunteering”. Each newsletter had at least
?ve articles on this topic. In 2003, the CEO claimed that volunteering is the “tradition”
and “identity” of the organisation and therefore is given high importance:
[M10] For more than 150 years, AFI has joined the identity as a positive force in Australian
society [. . .] Community involvement and volunteering remains a very important way we
contribute to society and are an important part of AFI’s tradition [. . .] and go some way to
reclaim our identity as a force for good in Australian society. (AFI newsletter, April
2003, emphasis added).
While discourses in the newsletters indicate that the organisation expects the employee
to manage his/her ?exible leave and work options, it actively encourages employees to
participate in community activities. The discourse indicates that community
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volunteering could be used as a vehicle to “build relationship with customers”, “lift the
bank’s pro?le” and “enable support from the community”:
[M11] To ACHIEVE our mission to become No.1 ?nancial organisation by September 2005,
we need to build a deeper, stronger, more trusting relationship with our customers.
One of the ways to gain that trust is through volunteer work. Through our community
work we can really show our existing and potential customers that we are good corporate
citizens. (AFI newsletter, January-February 2003, emphasis added).
[M12] It [community volunteering] demonstrates that staff are proud of AFI’s commitment to
the community andthe support andencouragement the bank offers to local community groups.
This active involvement has helped build a positive reputation with the team’s effort
recognised in local media [. . .] which is lifting the bank’s pro?le. (AFI newsletter, October
2005, emphasis added).
The newsletters suggest that volunteering helps to make a person feel good. They
invited employees to participate in community volunteering, but the organisation’s
agenda was to advertise its brand name:
[E11] The public like to ?nd out why AFI employees are in plain clothes collecting money
and when they hear your collections get doubled by Matching Gifts you feel their amazement
and your own sense of pride. It’s not until you look, that you realise just how much AFI does
for the community. (AFI newsletter, November-December 2003).
Also, the newsletters used employee self-accounts to promote community volunteering,
but the underlying framing was to encourage people to remain in the bank:
[E12] AFI’s commitment to local community volunteer programs together with extensive
banking is what initially attracted me to become an employee at AFI. The bank’s Better Life and
Work referral program along with fair, ?exible hours of work and encouragement to achieve
make great incentives to remain an employee at the bank. (AFI newsletter, October 2007).
The organisation’s policy was that employees could take only one day of leave in a year
to engage in community activities. This was heavily advertised in the newsletters.
However, if an employee was interested in being involved in community activities
beyond the leave granted by the organisation, then they could do so by using other
?exible work options. The newsletters indicated that any other volunteering work could
be done outside working hours:
[M13] Every team member is entitled to one day of leave for community volunteering each
year, and ?exible working arrangements are available to make further involvement possible.
(AFI newsletter, June-July, 2005).
The newsletters used employee self-accounts to suggest that volunteering could also be
done outside work hours and that such activities provide promotional opportunities for
the organisation:
[E13] Complimenting my work during the day with community work after hours helps
me achieve balance in my life. I gain a lot personally starting with the warm feeling you get
inside when you help people (AFI newsletter, August 2005, emphasis added).
[E14] While Zisis and Dione devote their own time to working on the program they haven’t
looked back. Dione said the show is important to her because it gets people interested in their
?nancial affairs. “Our listeners appreciate that AFI is providing such a service to the
community,” Dione said. “It gives me great exposure in the Greek community, which will
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provide me the ability to generate future business”. (AFI newsletter,
September-October 2005, emphasis added).
Overall, in the newsletters the majority of text was on community volunteering (Table I).
The newsletters used both management speak and self-accounts to encourage employees to
undertake community volunteering. The discourse on community involvement as a
“workplace ?exibility option” merits further scrutiny. The organisation provides one day
leave per employee per year for community volunteering, but reports at length about the
satisfaction employees experience in being involved in such activities. Furthermore, the
discourse in the newsletters seems to encourage employees to use their weekends or make
use of ?exible work options to undertake community volunteering. In their community
volunteering activities the employees are encouraged to use the organisation’s logo, so as to
project the organisation as a “responsible” citizen. Encouraging employees to use weekends
or ?exible workoptions for communityvolunteeringthat has bene?ts for the organisationis
projected in the newsletters as an effective way of achieving work-life balance. Thus, while
the discourse on community volunteering in the newsletters portrayed the emancipatory
propositions of addressing the needs of employees, the underlying concept suggested
self-serving bene?ts for management, such as improving brand image, generating more
business, attracting and retaining employees and building a positive reputation.
6. Discussion and conclusion
The content and discourse analysis highlights a number of important themes. One is
the way workplace ?exibility is interpreted by AFI through its concentration in the self
accounts on “community volunteering” (78 percent) and “special leave” (9 percent),
with limited communication about the other attributes that make up workplace
?exibility, as highlighted in Tables I and II.
Our analysis indicates that many aspects of workplace ?exibility were not discussed
or reported in AFI’s employee newsletters. Accounting’s potential has been suppressed
by those responsible for providing accounts (managers) and there are contradictions
between what they choose to report, the (discourse) language they choose, and what is
omitted or suppressed. The main themes were built around self-serving management
control purposes centered on organisational performance and building brand awareness
in the community, rather than the bene?ts of workplace ?exibility to employees.
Our analysis shows that self-accounts, at the super?cial level, were intended to
empower employees but were instead predominantly used in AFI’s self-interest. For
instance, the newsletters pointed to the manner in which employees who used ?exible
leave options appeared to feel that they were obliged to show their gratitude at work.
While self-accounts are narrated accounts of employees giving their own lived
experiences, it should be noted that the published self-accounts were selected by
management and therefore were biased towards management intention. Employee
self-accounts could be used with emancipatory intent if employees had the freedom to
narrate their own stories (Roslender et al., 2012). However, from our study we ?nd that
employees’ self-accounts used were overshadowed by self-serving management concerns.
The idea that the organisation provides workplace ?exibility for the sake of
bene?tting employees is questionable. The discourse found in the newsletters suggests
that ?exible work options instead appear to be aimed at garnering employee loyalty,
with subsequent employer bene?ts of improved organisational performance. The
organisation used the discourse on workplace ?exibility to blur the boundaries of work
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and life and persuade the employees to work harder and longer, to continuously
increase productivity. In doing so the organisation camou?aged its own economic
sustainability as workplace ?exibility.
The main contributions that this paper makes to the extant literature are as follows.
First, this paper has attempted to examine the reporting of workplace ?exibility, thereby
expanding the focus of HCA and reporting as enabling accounting. Second, this study
empirically examines the use of employee self-accounts as a form of reporting. However, if
the publicationof self-accounts is at the discretionof management, these self-accounts likely
re?ect organisational interests. Third, this study ?nds that accounting discourse, such as
workplace ?exibility reporting, could be used by managers for self-serving management
purposes since it allows management to shape its actions and ensure that employees act in
accordance with the practices prescribed. Fourth, we ?nd that management used different
types of discourse, suchas self-accounts andmanagement speakto attempt to persuade and
mobilise employees to act according to organisational expectations.
Our study is a nascent attempt to examine workplace ?exibility reporting in internal
newsletters. The results should be interpreted after acknowledging the following
limitations. First, this is a case study of one organisation and the results cannot be
generalised to other organisations. Further research could be extended to various
organisations from one industry (service sector) or organisations from different industry
sectors (service, manufacturing) to understand different reporting patterns. Second, the
analysis was restricted to the discourse provided in employee newsletters. This analysis
might not give a complete picture of the use of alternative organisational discourse to
in?uence employee attitudes andbehaviour. Also, we didnot address matters suchas who
produced the text? Who read them? How are they circulated? However, we do know that
management had a ?nal decision on the news that goes into the newsletters and that the
intended readership is employees. Deeper scrutiny into these questions would provide
answers to several other questions and is for a future research project. Further study
shouldbe conductedusingsemi-structuredinterviews and?eldresearchtoimprove onthe
?ndings of this study. Further empirical studies could be conducted to examine whether
self-accounts can be used in areas such as employee well-being, where quantitative
?nancial numbers cannot be used.
Notes
1. The term “workplace ?exibility” is used in this paper to explain the situation in which an
employee, with the consent of an employer, makes changes to when, where and how s/he will
work to meet individual and organisational needs. Workplace ?exibility is commonly taken
to mean those family-friendly work practices that enable workers to balance family and
work responsibilities (Sheridan and Conway, 2001).
2. “Codi?ed” means that accounting could be cast into commonly accepted systematic forms
that prescribe codes for practices. Like a recipe, rule, guideline, template, protocol or law,
accounting techniques indicate to people how accounting practice should be done (Llewellyn
and Milne, 2007).
3. This material was collected for the PhD thesis of one of the authors. She spent six months in
the ?nancial institution collecting data for which ethical clearance from the University and
the ?nancial institution was obtained. One condition of the ethics approval was that the
name of the ?nancial institution not be revealed. Therefore, direct references that might have
identi?ed the institution have been removed.
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4. This and parts of several other quotes have been emphasised in bold to stress the intensity of
expression placed in these phrases by management (both as management-speak and
employee self-accounts).
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Corresponding author
Vijaya Murthy can be contacted at: [email protected]
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