The effect of business-like behaviour on values, norms and operations of student unions: rhetorics, actors and accountability

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Accounting, La Trobe Business School, Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

This thesis examines the effects of business-like behaviours on the values, norms and operations of student unions. It seeks to identify how the corporatisation of the higher education sector has changed the values,norms and how these organisations operate. It also examines how powerful actors in this interplay use language to influence these transformations. This study investigates how accountability is socially constructed within student unions and how accounting is used as a technology or language for change. A qualitative case study approach was adopted and 6 organisations (3 student unions and 3 national bodies, i.e. the National Union of Students, the National Tertiary Education Union, and Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations were involved in this research. This garnered a total of 54 participants who were interviewed face-to-face. Interviews ranged from 30-90 minutes in duration. Observations, primary documents together with interviews were then analysed using document and discourse analysis. These findings will be seen through the lens of Rhetorical Theory of Diffusion (Green,2004) and Orders of Worth (Boltanski and Thevnot, 1999). This thesis contributes a theoretical perspective by bringing together Orders of Worth into Rhetorical Theory of Diffusion, the aim being to better explain the research issues presented here. It also contributes an accounting perspective to existing literature on student unions and adds to accounting studies on higher education reforms by providing a micro-view of corporatisation’s impact on organisations within universities.