New public management and accounting in a Fiji telecommunications company

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate tension between the implementation of new public management and associated accounting technologies in the Fiji telecommunication sector and the indigenous Fijian culture and political structure. In doing so, the article contrasts the economic-based reforms of the telecommunications sector (from 1990), with the traditional social relations that were exercised post-independence (1970 onwards). This research aim is achieved by focusing on archival documents and interviews with those involved in Fiji telecommunications. We illustrate how the use of new public management concepts replaced traditional social relations with the disciplinary technologies of modern capitalism but were also altered as a result of these social relations. In the Fiji Telecommunications company, the cultural conflicts and political influences led to the new public management process being resisted and modified to reduce the tension between economic and social relations