Literature and insights

Citation

Evans, S. (2012), "Literature and insights", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj.2012.05925aaa.002

Literature and insights

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 25, Issue 1

Matters of style aside, the best of creative writing is when someone says something significant that also feels intrinsically new. It’s still pretty good if they work out a new and striking way to say something that is already well known, though that is recognition rather than discovery. Is the same true of accounting? Is there the potential for real novelty in accounting and, if so, how do we achieve it?

When writing poetry, I love the instant when I sense that the work before me is emerging through some larger forces than my own. In various activities, this is often referred to as “flow”, when everything converges and just feels “right”.

In my case, the rational part of the mind still says that the writing is being mediated by my past experiences, the culture of my personal upbringing, the nature of the times in which I live, all sorts of learned behaviours, a bit of serendipity, my developed expertise, making a series of logical choices in a flash and the fact that I have simply got good at doing it through my own past practice. Somehow, these background factors work suddenly and I feel as if I have been visited by the muse. Wow! How did I accomplish that? That bedazzlement of the instant means my first reaction is intensely personal first and a more finely digested one second.

I have been known, though, to look in the refrigerator and only see the food there as an unsolved puzzle, the equivalent of disconnected dots. My wife can stand beside me scanning the contents for a few seconds, and then successfully put together an impromptu family meal for five people. There were possibilities in that fridge all the time, but for me they would have taken another 10 or 15 minutes to come out of hiding, if ever. I didn’t have the same inventory of skills and practices to help me as I do with writing.

Whenever a friend of mine discovers that one of his cars or motorcycles is not behaving as it should, he sits on the other side of his garage and stares at the vehicle in question. It’s not voodoo; he’s simply working through the details until has the design system laid out in his head, and then a sense of probabilities about what could have gone wrong. He uses a similar process whenever he wants to fabricate an entirely new device such as a special bracket for his former race-bike, or an air-conditioner mounting for his house.

I have seen a car restorer take to the metal fender on a very valuable 1930s car and, with nothing more than a file in hand, still set its compound curve exactly true. It’s not entirely learned craftsmanship, but for most people that would be what is necessary, and this man has developed the art – or is it the craft? – over a lifetime’s work.

Me? I’m getting better at cooking, and very slowly improving at solving mechanical problems. These are areas of performance generally outside my realms of expertise, however, and I don’t hold out high hopes. When I also consider what I have been doing for decades as a writer in various areas (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, reviewing, academic research, and so on), it makes me curious about what we call creativity.

Is creativity really so far removed from a more structured, problem-solving approach, one commonly recognised in the trades, sciences and the professions? I hesitate to raise the question as it risks seeming to desire a demystification of the arts whereas the tide has been running in the other direction for centuries, but such concern is not based on being out of step. Rather, it is about whether we are missing an opportunity.

Problem solving, it seem to me, is not so distantly related to creativity. The most creative artists are often regarded as the ones who push existing boundaries the furthest. In automotive design there have been many well-regarded names but few radicals, unlike in the visual arts. That probably reflects the need to make a profit, so that all of those dazzling flights of fancy at annual car shows are teasers that end up typically toned-down and made into more practical creatures for mass consumption four years later. Seemingly intuitive, creative thought does seem more likely to happen the more one practices it, nonetheless.

I am not suggesting that the magic of creativity in the arts will somehow be revealed for a sham, or disappear in a puff of not very exciting smoke. Realistically, we are not on the brink of a new rationalism; nor should we be. We are, however, at a point where we need to acknowledge that so-called left brain/right brain processing distinction is counter-productive, and simply not true for many of the epiphanic moments right across the spectrum of human advancement. Systematic enquiry is not out of place in creative writing, for example.

The “a-ha” moments are not the preserve of the poets, though I suspect the fundamentals of solving accounting report glitches are less romantically viewed. We live in an age where creativity is encouraged, though often within a grid. In the latter case, when it actually tries to systematise the processes rather than allowing a hands-off, skunk-works approach, it can actually stifle inventiveness. Why don’t we just spend more time outside our normal work in artistic or craft activities that encourage creativity in general? There is an argument that the opposite is true, too; that we need to be set problems requiring systematic thought if that is what tends to be neglected otherwise.

There has been a long-standing dialogue about the social implications of creativity, and also about its application in systems such as business environments. Wide-ranging enquiries are evidenced by such publications as the Cambridge Book of Creativity (Kaufman and Sternberg, 2010). Researchers with a particular focus on creative writing have studied it (Brophy, 1998, 2003). Lee Parker and I had a go at introducing creative writing to the process of teaching accounting (Parker and Evans, 2007). Of course, the late Steve Jobs was praised for thinking “different” (perhaps not including the bad grammar) in the way he sought to answer technological needs. That last area of attention also stimulates such events as the 8th Conference of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 2011 that made “Creativity & Cognition” its theme, with an attempt to unite rather than to not to divide:

We seek to understand human creativity in its many manifestations, to design new interactive techniques and tools to augment and amplify human creativity, and to use computational media technologies to explore new creative processes and artifacts in all human endeavors ranging from the arts to science, from design to education (see http://dilab.gatech.edu/ccc/).

So, in its broadest sense, none of this is new (sorry). Where we go with it, though, will be the hallmark of how accounting keeps itself relevant. Playing safe may be a sensible response because customers want reliability, predictability and conservatism. On the other hand, they also want accounting to anticipate the future. Where is the skunk-works of accounting going to come from?

In APIRA conferences since 2004, there have been creative writing activities available to delegates. That is a strong sign of looking for ways to keep accounting integrated with broader cognitive approaches, and I truly hope that the 2013 conference in Kobe embraces that endeavour as well. On a more regional level, perhaps there is something else that can be done in between times. Food for thought? I think it is time to face the refrigerator once more.

In this issue, we have a bumper show of material for you. First off is Lyn Daff’s “Restructuring Questions”, which asks whether we ever really learn from organisational change. And on that note of ritual behaviour, Lee Parker uses two poems to skewer the dull conference paper on one hand and the departmental meeting on the other. Take care if you are at meetings, the delivery of papers, or organisational reviews when these two are around.

We close with Dianne Dean’s irreverent tale of the victory of fashion over function, or is that dollars over sense? Her brief story, “Sponsorship”, is a whimsical reminder of how budget pressures are resolved in some areas of corporate/governmemnt activity.

I look forward to your contribution to this section of the journal, which can be sent to me at: steve.evans@flinders.edu.au

Steve EvansLiterary Editor