Re: Accounting and Economics LO27687
Well, the issues outlined below are being dealt with in a globally diffuse way. I am in contact with Mike Nickerson in Canada who's organisation is attempting (seemingly successfully) to switch attitudes away from dodgy economic accounting to that of measuring the well-being of individuals and the community. Here's the email I received today: Dear Friends of Sustainability: Just before Christmas I sent notice of the resolution passed by the City of Ottawa in support of the Canada Well-Being Measurement Act. It was a busy time so I'm repeating the notice here in case some of you who were preoccupied then might be interested in following up now that we are safely into the New Year. Municipal endorsement could be very persuasive. In one motion, Jean Chrétian, Paul Martin and local MPs all received word that Bill C-268 was a matter of interest. In addition, it provided a hook that could make news on any media in the area. The Ottawa resolution went like this: That the City of Ottawa support the goals and principles contained in Bill C-268, The Canada Well-Being Measurement Act and that this be communicated to the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, all area MPs and to Mr. Joe Jordan, MP, Leeds-Grenville. Change the name of the Municipality and this wording could be used anywhere. Ken Billings conceived the tactic. He asked at the City Office who on Council might be interested in well-being measurement. He didn't get the right person at first and had to follow the run around through several contacts before finding a Councilor who would bring the information to Council. A one page summary was provided and a copy of Measuring Well-Being (available from us). We were then asked to send enough copies for distribution to each Councilor and the staff involved. Some time later, the issue came up at the appropriate Committee, a resolution was proposed, unanimously agreed to and sent to the Council as a whole where it was adopted. We would be pleased to send you literature for raising this issue with your Council. Imagine if we had a couple dozen municipalities or more expressing support for the Act. A half dozen of you asked for literature toward this end, even during the pre-Christmas rush. Who else would like to try and get their Council involved? An added perk for your Municipality: In addition to introducing the proposal for national measures, you can tell the local Council that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has a program to help set up local well-being measurement programs. Information on this is available at: http://www.fcm.ca under: Quality of Life in Canadian Communities Details are available from: Marni Cappe, (613) 241-5221, ext. 247 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brenda Rosser [Who is also working with groups of local citizens for similar change in Tasmania] - Original Message - From: chris macrae [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 2:17 AM Subject: Re: Accounting and Economics LO27687 - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 16 January 2002 20:56 PM Subject: Accounting and Economics LO27687 Dear Learners, I have a few questions. I have a few statements. Where does the 'buck stop' in modern organizational life? Who is accountable as a 'leader' -whether as CEO or supervisor? Is the net result of 'corporate' corruption reversible? Is someone who drives ordinary and faithful followers to the brink of total ruin and maybe even suicide a terrorist by another name? When will those with enough talent and cleverness to manipulate so many systems of privilege to their own advantage create enough intelligence within themselves to realise that the time they say they never had enough of doesn't exist? Why has no-one (so far as I know in the public domain here) 'picked up' the tab I offered on the Enron scandal posting I wrote? Is it not a worthy enough as an issue to have a dialogue on then;-) now, in the near future...;-) Tom Johnson the famous ex-accountant, when asked what was 'wrong' with the system of 'corporate business' said there was 'not enough virtue'. He said that '70%' of what 'is wrong' is to do with virtue. Was he a twit? What is virtue worth to corporate life. As life becomes more transparent a new form of democracy will arise. I can see it arising. All such emergences have lashing tails, vortices. There is pain in abundance at attending such birthings. It will be like a kind of madness. Can anyone here sense it upon the far horizon? Shall we keep on doing what is familiar and plentiful toward our 'limited case' mortgages, becoming 'clinically obese' to the point of epidemic proportions, our children going 'quietly mad' ( one in five children in 'developed countries' sic. show signs of clinical depression) while four fifths of the world lives on less than two dollars a day? Where is the virtue, who
Re: Accounting and Economics LO27687
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 16 January 2002 20:56 PM Subject: Accounting and Economics LO27687 Dear Learners, I have a few questions. I have a few statements. Where does the 'buck stop' in modern organizational life? Who is accountable as a 'leader' -whether as CEO or supervisor? Is the net result of 'corporate' corruption reversible? Is someone who drives ordinary and faithful followers to the brink of total ruin and maybe even suicide a terrorist by another name? When will those with enough talent and cleverness to manipulate so many systems of privilege to their own advantage create enough intelligence within themselves to realise that the time they say they never had enough of doesn't exist? Why has no-one (so far as I know in the public domain here) 'picked up' the tab I offered on the Enron scandal posting I wrote? Is it not a worthy enough as an issue to have a dialogue on then;-) now, in the near future...;-) Tom Johnson the famous ex-accountant, when asked what was 'wrong' with the system of 'corporate business' said there was 'not enough virtue'. He said that '70%' of what 'is wrong' is to do with virtue. Was he a twit? What is virtue worth to corporate life. As life becomes more transparent a new form of democracy will arise. I can see it arising. All such emergences have lashing tails, vortices. There is pain in abundance at attending such birthings. It will be like a kind of madness. Can anyone here sense it upon the far horizon? Shall we keep on doing what is familiar and plentiful toward our 'limited case' mortgages, becoming 'clinically obese' to the point of epidemic proportions, our children going 'quietly mad' ( one in five children in 'developed countries' sic. show signs of clinical depression) while four fifths of the world lives on less than two dollars a day? Where is the virtue, who is the virtuous. Does it matter and do we care? Mmm Mr. Andrew Campbell MBA Oxford -- I was in Brussels talking about a similar topic yesterday talking to the Task Force leader on intangibles. It turns out that up to 85% of value produced and destroyed by large companies today is not within the remit of accountants, who measure the other 15% tangible/tranacrtional part with such dominating precision that it is all that some organisations get driven by. Even more strangely this seems to suit certain types of managers: Here's an extract from my diary notes that I post elsewhere: There are at least 2 types of corporate executives who find that accountants' measurement blindness to what determines 85% of Value Productivity/Destruction suits them: the semi-incompetent: if you published the intangible maps of their business, many of their investment decisions would look blind, random...embarassing! those who are making a killing because they obey all the insider and disclosure rules because the intangibles information which really matters on whether this company is investing in something valuable isnt being asked for ( understood in the dynamically unique corporate context). So they can do mother of all inside dealing without any danger of the law ever calling it that. This must be the greatest scandal impacting every human being's value productivity the world has ever faced without anyone 'knowing'. If there's anyone in these learning organisation or economics groups or elsewhere who feels that we should develop a sub-chapter to discuss this all -and decide who we can lobby - I think the subject's big enough to demand that we do this now. The net should be a very good medium for an activist refromation of this sort Below I reproduce para 115/6 of the EU report which you can link to via the bookmark at the bottom and which mirror reports recently issued from Brookings in Washington DC seem to have mirrored: 115. In our expert soundings, the growing disconnect between our established economic concepts and business models and today's rapidly-changing economic reality was readily and universally acknowledged. At a personal level, interest is invariably high, but the professional appetite and commitment of policy makers to embrace change were found to be disappointingly low. In this respect, the responses most often encountered were: a) Apathy, lack of interest. b) Active resistance to change. c) White papers and communications that embrace the rhetoric, but fail to address what is really needed to implement change. 116. If the recommendations set out in this report are not to be implemented, we would strongly prefer it to be as a result of the second response. In other words, we would prefer a conscious decision to remain locked in to a 19 th century institutional mindset, not least because this would constitute a conscious decision to opt out of the global competitiveness race. We would be disappointed with response a), especially if it reflected a lack of clear communication on our part and thus
