Editorial

Citation

Evans, S. (2014), "Editorial", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 27 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-01-2014-1594

Editorial

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 27, Issue 3

Ingenuity or just breaking the rules?

At times we all stand in awe of humankind’s ability to solve seemingly intractable issues, or just to delight us with imaginative responses to dilemmas. Inventing the steam engine opened a door to the benefits of new technology, albeit at the cost of making particular kinds of workers redundant, for example. Penicillin slashed mortality rates from infection and probably reduced the number of gravediggers. Slicing through a Gordian Knot is no less striking; a sign that we are all, presumably, capable of flashes of inspiration – the A-ha moment – that precedes action. These may seem very different animals, though they belong to the same tribe.

Anyhoo, I want to write about creativity itself another time, so we will put the steam engine (and microchip, and so on) to one side for now. In this issue, the focus is going to be on how people see an opportunity to wriggle through the system when it would normally be seen to block their path. In some ways it is a warning for those who would dare to set out principles meant to govern human behaviour. What is the saying: rules were made to be broken? Here are a few examples.

The dingo effect

Various measures have been employed in Australia to minimize the deleterious effect of dingoes. A native animal also found in parts of Asia, dingoes often “bothered sheep”, as they say. In fact, they bothered so many to death that a very long fence was built across the interior of the country to control their movement, and a bounty was also placed on their scalps. Calls are frequently made to reinstate the bounty as the problems persist and the dingo is still regarded as a pest. They may be apocryphal, but stories emerged in the heyday of the bounty program that some dingo shooters realised there was an easier way to make a living, and so began to breed their own dogs. Why go out in vehicles and spend all that time and money hunting when you could raise your own prey? Of course you had to enclose and feed the dingoes but I will let you do the sums.

Cash for bangers (or clunkers)

Do you live in a country where one of these schemes was implemented? In the USA, UK, Germany and France, what was ostensibly a double-headed attempt to boost local car manufacturers’ sales while also improving the environment, simply flopped. Car owners were promised a minimum amount for trading-in cars of a certain age in order to purchase new cars that achieved stated pollution ratings. The result? Not only did buyers tend to acquire small imported cars, thus thwarting one intention of the schemes, but some people snapped up wrecks and created an intermediate market for lower quality vehicles. What entrepreneur could resist grabbing a few to sell to intending purchasers of new cars?

People smugglers’ boats

A similar response is possible as a result of the Australian government’s stated plan to directly enter the Indonesian market and buy up boats that might otherwise be used for smuggling people from that country to Australia. Oddly, it is just the action that would tend to drive up the value of such craft, and the likely cost to desperate would-be immigrants.

Hospital ramping

Do you have a hospital whose processing of emergency patient arrivals is measured in the time it takes to deal with them? Those pesky demands can be eliminated quite easily. You can defer starting the clock by attending to the arrivals as they lie in rows of ambulances outside the hospital. It means that you have a pre-admission category to deal with but that just requires some new ideas, if not actual complete treatment of the poor sods waiting to see medical staff. Another tactic is to discharge patients, and send them to a nearby surgery in order to have them referred for re-admission.

The backwards to go forwards solution

When the Lotus Seven kit car was initially sold in the UK, it was subject to a purchase tax (similar to the subsequent VAT). All the necessary parts were included to make a running vehicle. How to get around the tax? Instead of including a set of assembly instructions that would render the kit taxable, the car would arrive with excerpts from the Sports Car and Lotus Owner magazine that detailed how to disassemble one. Apparently that was enough to dodge the clutches of the taxman.

What’s in the tank?

Stories of imaginative rule “flexing” abound in motor sport. In the USA, Smokey Yunick was said to have presented his NASCAR racer’s fuel tank for inspection with an inflated basketball tucked inside. When deflated, it added extra volume and thus room for more gas than the specified limit. It was Yunick, too, who was said to have removed the regular fuel line in one car and replaced it with another that was eight times the usual diameter, thus squeezing in extra gallons of fuel where it would not be measured.

And so …?

You have to admire the determination of some people when they recognize a pathway with potential that others have not seized. If it is not actually illegal, it might still be unethical, and yet is it an issue if no rule is actually broken? Where would you place an auditor in the midst of such activity? What would their obligations be? Maybe you can think of some creative applications of rule bending in the world of business.

In this issue we feature John Dumay’s poem, “Professor Lee Parker’s qualitative research methods class”. There is note of hope along with the despair apparent in the narrator’s account of dealing with qualitative research.

Your own creative contributions can be submitted via ScholarOne (see footnote), and your e-mail correspondence is always welcome, of course, at: mailto:steve.evans@flinders.edu.au

Acknowledgements

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ.

Author guidelines for contributions to this section of the journal can be found at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=aaaj

Steve Evans
Literary editor