Economics Performativity and its Consequences for Accounting and Organizational Spaces: The Case of Public Sector Reforms

Frequently, public sector reforms are justified with the use of consultant reports invoking economic theories and concepts. Such reports often have an impact on the use of spatially determined aspects of the promulgated reforms. Using a case method with the aid of Actor-Network-Theory and agencing, this chapter reports on how a systemic reform of the Danish Police Service ignored spatial matters and bent space in deference to theorizing about productivity and economics of scale. Whilst geographical boundaries and workspaces were redrawn little concern was given to what those boundaries and workspaces meant to actors delivering police services. Callon’s performativity of economics thesis is extended to identify contributory roles of accounting enquiries to economic theories. The chapter concludes that privileging economics at the expense of spatial considerations is an important factor behind the disappointing performance in terms of budget overruns and dis-economies of scale in public sector reforms.