Citation:
David Cooper, Kim James, Richard Kwiatkowski, Richard Taffler, The shadow in the balance sheet: The spectre of Enron and how accountants use the past as a psychological defence against the future. The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations 2004 Symposium, Coesfeld, Germany, June 18-20, 2004.
Abstract:
Accounting frameworks play a crucial role in enabling us to make sense of
business. These frameworks provide a common language for individuals,
organizations and broader economic groupings to understand and make decisions
about the commercial realm in which they operate. From a psychodynamic
perspective, the language of accounting also plays an important role. On the one
hand it offers a way to tame the uncertainty and unknowability of the future by
representing it in the same comforting terms as it does the past, thus reducing
anxiety. Accounting provides a ‘shorthand’, which achieves a balance between
positive 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 be
staged. However, the use of accounting language is problematic, particularly
when it comes to dealing with the future. First, accounting frameworks are
inherently backward looking and second, the reassuring sense of clarity and
predictability they give are bought at the price of unrealistic simplification.
The shadow is never far away and is a constant source of surprises in the
unfolding future of a business. Rationalizing and sanitizing the shadow through
accounting language may alleviate anxiety but fails to provide an escape from
its effects, and echoes from the shadow side of business are capable of shaking
the world in the form of accounting scandals. Governments and businesses have
reacted to scandals such as Enron and Worldcom by tightening legislation and
refining accounting standards but little, if anything, has been done to bring us
any closer to confronting the shadow of business where these scandals have their
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