The department of Accounting and Finance organized a seminar on Wednesday August 25 which, was presented by Mr. Umesh Sharma, an academic from the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. He spoke on the topic : Governmentality and Accounting in the Corporatisation and Privatisation of a Fijian Telecommunication Company.

The seminar focused on accounting within a Fijian Telecommunications Company and the use of new public management in the Fiji an telecommunication sector through a governmentality perspective. Using the case of Telecom Fiji Limited, Mr. Umesh Sharma discussed and how it had evolved from a government department to becoming part of the Amalgamated Telecom Holdings.

The idea behind the seminar was to educate accounting students about New Public Management and in the case of Telecom Fiji Limited how the representation and intervention of Accounting led to the reform of the Telecommunications sector. He also discussed how Accounting discourse was used to rationalize corporatisation and privatisation policies and constitute polices and translate them into practice. The research case study documents how initially after independent government authorities used accounting technologies to institute government, while maintaining the existing social relations based on a chiefly hierarchy, and then, how, as part of New Public Management reforms accounting became a disciplinary power on its own. The seminar also discussed the pre-corporatisation era of Telecom Fiji Limited in detail.

Mr. Sharma holds a BA in Accounting, Bachelor of Education, Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting and Financial Management and Master of Arts in Accounting from USP.