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The Changing Role of Tax Governance: Remaking the Large Corporate Taxpayer Into a Visible Customer Partner

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The Changing Role of Tax Governance: Remaking the Large Corporate Taxpayer Into a Visible Customer Partner bs_bs_banner British Journal of Management, Vol. 24, S116–S131 (2013) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12031 The Changing Role of Tax Governance: Remaking the Large Corporate Taxpayer into a Visible Customer Partner Penelope Tuck Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, University House, Edgbaston Park Road, Birmingham B15 2TY, UK Email: [email protected] Neo-liberalism encourages the rule of private interests coordinated by markets and arms’-length regulation by central government and regulatory bodies, and also through the explosion of audit and scrutiny. Part of this approach is the reconceptualization of users of services or functions as customers even though a quasi supplier relationship does not seem to be involved, such as between a regulator and a regulatee. This empowerment of the customer has a consequential impact on the regulation process. This paper theorizes this dynamic of power as recursive governmentality. It examines the change and unintended consequences in a regulatory authority, HM Revenue and Customs, the UK tax administration, as it responds to this policy context and how this leads to a search for a new identity as a customer-service provider. Introduction In the paper I draw in part upon Foucault’s discussion of governmentality, in particular his The neo-liberal agenda has encouraged public later work on neo-liberal governance (Foucault, administration to focus on the users of services 1979b). Foucault’s work has been extensively rather than the act of providing the service them- drawn on in organization studies (Burrell, selves (Clarke et al., 2007). Part of this change in 1988; Ferlie, McGivern and FitzGerald, 2012; focus has been the reconceptualization of these McKinlay and Starkey, 1998; Townley, 1998), in users as customers (Laing and Hogg, 2002). This marketing (Skalen, 2009) and within the account- is not just confined to more traditional service ing literature (Graham, 2010; McKinlay and user areas, such as health or education, but even Pezet, 2010; Miller and O’Leary, 1987; Miller and to upstream service infrastructure and regulatory Rose, 1990; Neu, 2006; Preston, Chua and Neu, functions. It can also be seen with the emphasis on 1997; Rose, 1999). In addition there are a few internal customers between departments and the studies that specifically relate to taxation (Bush recent changes in public procurement. This paper and Maltby, 2004; Glaister and Frecknall focuses on one such relationship – the relationship Hughes, 2008; Lamb, 2001; Preston, 1989; between a corporate taxpayer and the UK tax Randall and Procter, 2008), which is surprising as administration, HM Revenue and Customs the corporate taxpayer and the collection of gov- (HMRC). ernment revenues are increasingly important issues for society. Public administration and public management scholarship has focused on Financial support for this research has been provided by the Chartered Accountants’ Trust for Education and the impact of consumerism on the consumer and Research of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in the customer (Clarke et al., 2007; Rosenthal and England and Wales. Peccei, 2007) and the impact on the professionals © 2013 The Author(s) British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA. The Changing Role of Tax Governance S117 administering the reoriented health service provi- disciplinary power. It is especially powerful at sion (Laing and Hogg, 2002). investigating linkages between those who govern The contribution of the paper is threefold. First (or help to govern) and those who are governed it makes connections between two prominent and assists in understanding ‘post bureaucratic’ public management issues that hitherto have been organizations (Ferlie, McGivern and FitzGerald, poorly understood. The first is the audit explosion 2012). This disciplinary power relies on a self- so effectively summarized by Power (1997) that disciplined subject such that ‘governing operates explains the growth of audit and regulation in through subjects’ (Miller and Rose, 1990, p. 18) contemporary public policy. The second is the and which in the process results in discipline or reconstruction of service users as customers government, i.e. an attempt to shape behaviour. (Clarke et al., 2007). Taking both these issues Disciplinary power is the political implementation together, what stands out is how the regulated are of pastoral power2 and is drawn from the ideas increasingly constructed as a customer within articulated by Foucault (1977, 1986). Here there is these new governance frameworks. However, the a particular focus on how disciplinarity is a two- use of the term customer gives the illusion of sided term, which designates both a certain mode empowerment (Sturdy, Grugulis and Willmot, of knowledge (the knowledge ‘disciplines’) and a 2001). This paper looks at this difficulty with the mode of conduct (behavioural discipline, includ- customer basis of control in a different and novel ing self-discipline). This is a nexus of power/ way. knowledge (Ferlie, McGivern and FitzGerald, Second, much of the literature on governmen- 2012). tality in management studies has looked at it from Foucault in his later work argued that the 20th a disciplinary power perspective. Foucault’s later century saw the development of disciplinary work which deals explicitly with the apparatus of power whereby, instead of just focusing on indi- security and neo-liberal governmentality has been viduals as the subject, populations were being largely neglected in business research (Munro, subjected to a further apparatus of power which 2012, p. 350). I seek to address this gap. In par- he called ‘the apparatus of security’. The concept ticular I seek to demonstrate in a contemporary of ‘population’ allowed the government of the setting aspects of neo-liberal governmentality, in state to involve both individualization and totali- particular the centrifugal forces of market, tech- zation (Curtis, 2002). It is similar to the Christian niques for performance measurement, the audit notion of a ‘flock’ where each member of the con- mechanism and normalization of a population gregation is equivalent to another member and, in (Munro, 2012, p. 351). Third this paper contrib- addition, each member is equivalent to the whole utes empirically as research into tax administra- congregation. The ‘apparatus of security’ occurs tion is underdeveloped (Boden et al., 2010). when not to intervene will cost more. For Fou- The paper commences with discussion of the cault ‘discipline concentrates, focuses, encloses’ theoretical framework used before a brief history (Foucault, 1978, p. 45). Discipline is thus a cen- of HMRC and the customer construct. I then tripetal force whereas the apparatus of security examine the impact of the customer construct on expands as a centrifugal force which encompasses the governed, the large corporation,1 before production, psychology, behaviour and the ways looking at the impact on HMRC as a regulator. of doing things of producers, buyers and consum- The paper concludes with a discussion of the ers (Foucault, 1978). This has contributed to dynamic of power and the consequences and the transformation in the relationship between implications of pursuing a customer service knowledge and government and the boundary approach. between state and the economy (Foucault, 1979b). For Foucault, neo-liberalism can be dis- tinguished from liberalism. Whereas liberalism is Governing the taxpayer a mode of regulation to permit natural regulation The Foucauldian notion of the technology of 2Pastoral power which has its roots in Christianity is government is built upon Foucault’s idea of salvation-oriented, oblative, individualizing, coexistence and continuous with life and linked to the truth of the 1This will include multinational groups of companies. individual (Foucault, 1994, p. 333). © 2013 The Author(s) British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management. S118 P. Tuck such as laissez-faire and the market is thought of (Brown and Lewis, 2011; Burchell, Clubb and as being a ‘spontaneous quasi natural reality’, Hopwood, 1985; Bush and Maltby, 2004; neo-liberalism regards the market not as such a Graham, 2010; Hoskin and Macve, 1986, 1988; natural reality but one in which government con- Miller and O’Leary 1987; Miller and Rose, 1990; ducts ‘a policy towards society such that it is pos- Neu, 2006; Preston, 1989; Thornborrow and sible for a market to exist and function’ (Gordon, Brown, 2009) and the ‘panoptican’ to understand 1991, p. 41). Neo-liberal government does not management practices (Munro, 2012). This has ‘define and monitor market freedom, for the examined the knowledge/power nexus and the market is itself the organizing and regulative prin- training of docile bodies that make up the work- ciple underlying the state’ (Lemke, 2001, p. 200). force. Within health research, Ferlie, McGivern The state does not control the market, but the and FitzGerald (2012) investigate the applicabil- market exerts influence on the state. ity of governmentality in the English cancer ser- Neo-liberal governmentality or advanced liber- vices field. They find that evidence based medicine alism has two aspects. First it is to govern is viewed from a power/ knowledge perspective ‘through the regulated and accountable choices such that those with specialist knowledge are in a of autonomous agents’ and second ‘to govern privileged
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