Government Budgeting and Consensual Spaces: The Case of Sri Lanka Railway

This paper argues that subjectivities occurring within consensual spaces, which are formed by constraints enforced by control systems of organisations. The paper uses a case study on the budgeting practices of Sri Lanka Railways Department (SLRD), owner a state entity of Sri Lanka, to demonstrate the phenomenon. The notion of consensual space is constructed drawing drawing on the Labour Processes Theory and Gramsci's Hegemonic Analysis provides the analytical lens for the study. The research is an ethnographic case study, generating empirical materials mainly through semi-structured interviews, content analysis of documents and secondary data from historical studies. Findings add to the LDC accounting studies and bring an explanation to the common finding in these studies that formal control systems such as budgeting systems become rituals in the face of socio-cultural and political conditions. Finally, this study shows how such organisations continue to be governed by idiosyncratic controls formed within consensual spaces.