The shadow in the balance sheet: The spectre of Enron and how accountants usethe past as a psychological defence against the future

摘要

Accounting frameworks play a crucial role in enabling us to make sense ofbusiness. These frameworks provide a common language for individuals,organizations and broader economic groupings to understand and make decisionsabout the commercial realm in which they operate. From a psychodynamicperspective, the language of accounting also plays an important role. On the onehand it offers a way to tame the uncertainty and unknowability of the future byrepresenting it in the same comforting terms as it does the past, thus reducinganxiety. Accounting provides a ‘shorthand’, which achieves a balance betweenpositive and negative, debit and credit, asset and liability. On the other hand,accounting can also provide an arena in which fantasies about the future can bestaged. However, the use of accounting language is problematic, particularlywhen it comes to dealing with the future. First, accounting frameworks areinherently backward looking and second, the reassuring sense of clarity andpredictability they give are bought at the price of unrealistic simplification.The shadow is never far away and is a constant source of surprises in theunfolding future of a business. Rationalizing and sanitizing the shadow throughaccounting language may alleviate anxiety but fails to provide an escape fromits effects, and echoes from the shadow side of business are capable of shakingthe world in the form of accounting scandals. Governments and businesses havereacted to scandals such as Enron and Worldcom by tightening legislation andrefining accounting standards but little, if anything, has been done to bring usany closer to confronting the shadow of business where these scandals have theirro