Paradise Lost: Accounting Narratives Without Numbers
Abela Mario ()
Additional contact information
Abela Mario: Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, 2020, vol. 10, issue 2, 34
Abstract:
Regulations addressing corporate reporting in the United Kingdom require reporting entities to disclose their business model in their Strategic Report. The business model is intended as the organising concept for the non-financial disclosures, with its principal role being to explain how the reporting entity creates value for stakeholders. The business model concept has become a pervasive concept for corporate reporting with global organisations such as the IIRC, AICPA and IFAC emphasising it central role in external reporting. Using interviews conducted with FTSE 350 company executives and others in the reporting ecosystem, this paper analyses the extent to which responses from the interviewees align with the economic and strategic management literature framing the conceptualisation of business models. It is argued in this paper that there is a powerful preformative aspect to business model reporting. It does not strengthen accountability but serves a different purpose: to colonise new arenas of value by installing unstable concepts like purpose, value and stakeholders. These business model disclosures obfuscate and provide an opportunity for managers to construct narratives that are untethered from the financial statements to create stories without numbers. This ‘reinvention’ of capitalism is more a recasting of old principles rather than ushering an era of a more enlightened view of the corporation. It is a salutary reminder that regulation of corporate reporting does not necessarily lead to improved accountability.
Keywords: business models; corporate reporting; regulation; economic sociology; contents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ael-2019-0035 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:aelcon:v:10:y:2020:i:2:p:34:n:8
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ael/html
DOI: 10.1515/ael-2019-0035
Access Statistics for this article
Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium is currently edited by Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yuri Biondi and Shyam Sunder
More articles in Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().