Accounting for Values in Modern Slavery Survivor Care: An Ethnographic Study of the Development of, and Interplay between, Outcomes and Indicators

Seminar summary

In recent years, there has been a growing demand to measure performance beyond financial profit. Despite the acknowledged complexities in accounting for elusive dimensions such as safety, human rights, and dignity, organizations are obliged to comply with regulatory and contractual demands that necessitate the measurement of diverse values. In this paper, we draw on an ethnographic study conducted within an organization contracted by the UK government to provide care services for survivors of modern slavery. The focus is on an internal reform project of the organizational performance measurement system which aimed to align the contractual outcomes and measures with the values the organization holds. We observe how these measures became imbued with organizational values, particularly those related to trauma-informed and survivor-centric care. We show how a concern with outcomes came to play a different role than often assumed in the literatures on performance measurement. Rather than being concerned with the difficulties of measuring outcomes, our case organization mobilized a concern with outcomes as a non-quantified background foil against which new performance measures were developed and anchored in organizational values. A concern with outcomes framed ‘the what’ and ‘the how’ of measurement and offered a space for reflexivity for practitioners. We suggest that mobilizing outcomes in such a way can help reinfuse performance measurement with values. This study holds relevance for practitioners, policy makers, and academics involved in the development and interpretation of measures for values.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

We welcome you to join us online on Wednesday 20 March at 2pm.

Speaker bio

Andrea Mennicken

Andrea Mennicken is Associate Professor of Accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Co-Director of the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation. Her research interests include social studies of quantification, accounting and valuation, governance and regulation, processes of marketization, standardization, and public sector reforms. Her work has been published in Accounting, Organizations and Society, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, Foucault Studies, Organization Studies, Sociologie du Travail, amongst others. Lately, she completed an ESRC funded international research project exploring the changing relationships between quantification, administrative capacity and democracy in healthcare, correctional services, and higher education. With Robert Salais, she co-edited “The New Politics of Numbers: Utopia, Evidence and Democracy” (Palgrave Macmillan 2022). She is an editor of Accounting, Organizations and Society