Accounting and accountability in workfare programs

Abstract

This paper is a comparative study of national workfare programs from an empirical accounting perspective, informed by the works of Bourdieu. The site of investigation includes four fundamentally different models run in the welfare states countries of United States of America (US), United Kingdom (UK) and non-welfare developing nations of South Africa (SA) and Liberia-World Bank (WB). The focus of this paper is a contextual analysis of these four programs and how such context impacts the programs the subsequent enlistment of accounting and accountability systems and practices. How social services operate in different contexts can be explored through charting the accumulation of forms of capitals by key players. The paper focuses on a type of social services program known as “Workfare” or Work-for-Welfare, made popular by developed nations but versatile with a global audience. Though research on emerging economies is now garnering increased interest (Van Helden & Uddin, 2016), the thesis of existing mainstream research streams in the field of social services do not hold on a global level and neither have they been enlisted to inform or shed light on non-developed welfare models.