Too much noise,not enough hard work

摘要

Age has its privileges, one of which is the ability to look backover the years to consider how things used to be and to compare that with current practices. So the 20th anniversary of the publication of Making Corporate Reports Valuable (MCRV), the radical and seminal 1988 publication from the ICAS Research Committee, proved to be the right timefor a retrospective in accountancy developments. Of course, the first change is that accountancy no longer develops. Instead, there is thought leadership -a ghastly term. It conjures up images of candidates on The Apprentice claiming to be the best thinker in Europe or even the world. Behind the change of terminology lie more worrying challenges for the accountancy profession. Has it abandoned earnest, well-researched reports, developed in the public interest, in favour of headline-grabbing, short-term thinklets?