Socio-spatial inequality: the case of Indonesian railway's reform

Purpose This study aims to examine how accounting practices as tools of governance reproduce inequality by reshaping relational spaces which intersect with colonial legacies, local contexts and neoliberal logics. Design/methodology/approach This study investigates organisational reforms of PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero) (KAI) during 2009–2014. It focuses on the transformation of station areas where neoliberal imperatives of efficiency and customer orientation reshaped socially vibrant, informally sustained spaces into purified, commercially driven zones, displacing long-standing occupants and disrupting local economies. Employing 28 semi-structured interviews with employees, passengers, consultants and experts, complemented by annual reports and public documents, the study validates methodological triangulation. By situating stations as socially and historically constructed spaces, the analysis demonstrates how accounting and governance practices intersected with spatial restructuring to produce and legitimise socio-spatial inequalities. Findings The findings reveal that neoliberal reforms generate structural inequalities by redefining who and what is recognised within organisational spaces. Accounting functions as a powerful instrument in this process, shaping the criteria through which actors are rendered visible, accountable and authorised to occupy the contested spaces. In doing so, previously established actors along with their culturally, historically and socially constructed livelihood were marginalised and rendered invisible and became vulnerably underrepresented upon their occupational rights as spatial value was recalibrated according to neoliberal logics. Accounting thus actively legitimises spatial reconfiguration and purification by embedding exclusionary logics. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by attributing neoliberal reform's structural consequences as inequality particularly pertaining to socio-spatial accounting. It empirically extends our understanding on accounting's centrality as a socio-spatial power as it actively constructs organisational realities, defining what is legible, permissible and valuable in both spatial and social life.