People tend to forget, but words have a history.<\/p>\n
\u2018Society\u2019 – as philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour reminds us \u2013 combines the Latin socius<\/i> (an ally or companion) with \u2018-ties\u2019. It\u2019s about how we as individuals bind ourselves to one another to form communities.<\/p>\n
But the way we govern and understand \u2018socie-ties\u2019 \u2013 be they states, public or private institutions – has not escaped our modern obsession with interpreting the world around us through calculation.<\/p>\n
Whether through financial figures, electoral polls or reality show audience votes, we\u2019ve come to believe we can simplify anything with supposedly objective data.<\/p>\n
In this drive to manage corporations, states and communities by numbers, we have come to believe incentives, metrics and other forms of numerical data can capture what are otherwise irreducible complexities.<\/p>\n
We no longer ask questions like: Why did that happen? What can\u2019t we know? What are the risks? What could go wrong?<\/p>\n
This search for certainty has made us falsely believe that by maximising shareholder value we can pursue the common good, but we\u2019ve forgotten this \u2018common good\u2019 is always in a state of flux. \u00a0It depends on the evolving links between political, social, moral and environmental concerns which should be debated, not measured.<\/p>\n
However, the greatest casualty of this world which praises numbers as sacred is \u2018rationality.\u2019 In our drive for certainty, we\u2019ve forgotten its true meaning.<\/p>\n
For many, it will be common knowledge the term originated from the Latin ratio. <\/i>But what\u2019s perhaps less understood is that it not only meant \u2018reason\u2019 but also \u2018account\u2019 and \u2018proportion\u2019.<\/p>\n
Because for an account to be rational, it must also seek proportionality \u2013 i.e. it must establish a proportionate relationship between members of a community and seek to reconcile opposites.<\/p>\n
By the 16th Century, the Jesuits had already developed a simple system to achieve this. Their colleges\u2019 cash boxes had two keys – one held by the procurator (the equivalent of today\u2019s CFO) the other held by the rector (in today\u2019s terms, the CEO).<\/p>\n
Only by talking to each other and mediating competing interests could they open the cash box and appropriate funds as agreed.<\/p>\n
For them, looking at financial numbers was a pragmatic means to interrogate non-financial issues, to seek the common good, which by definition, could not be defined once and for all but needed to be continuously negotiated.<\/p>\n
Accounting was the material practice to allow this negotiation and guarantee the search for an impossible balance between interests purposefully designed to be in opposition and in tension.<\/p>\n
Why the micro-lecture on the etymology of accounting in a post on entrepreneurial citizenship?<\/p>\n
The make-up of word \u2018entrepreneur\u2019 reminds us that a good business person is always between (entre) not only different ventures but also \u2018in between\u2019 competing concerns that today can range from geopolitical issues to pressing matters of inequality.<\/p>\n
Not only do entrepreneurs have to be citizens of a community and be able to navigate organising logics (industrial, civic, polity, market). \u00a0However, they must also \u2018speak\u2019 several languages (economic, political, technical, social), to communicate with complex audiences and act as cultural mediators between the business and the civic dimension of managerial actions.<\/p>\n
For centuries, accounting has been the tool entrepreneurs have looked to, to help them operate in this middle ground. It\u2019s how they\u2019ve mitigated concerns between economic and social tensions of their actions.<\/p>\n
It is also in today\u2019s entrepreneurial explosion where I see the greatest opportunity to rediscover the lost meaning of society and rationalism.<\/p>\n
Entrepreneurial citizens will have to be more socially aware than before, and ready to embrace a new form of governance that goes behind and beyond the numbers to really properly understand how business impacts, and can benefit us all.<\/p>\n
It is time for this new breed of entrepreneurs to embrace uncertainty and use data to build on it rather than seeking to control and reduce it.<\/p>\n
However, first we must accept that while rational choices may be impossible to make, reasonable judgements remain in our reach. Something which is only achievable once we appreciate the ties that bind societies together, and the challenges they create and which we have to mediate.<\/p>\n
Developing the right intellectual and ethical framework to allow this change in attitude is important, and it\u2019s essential we also give entrepreneurs the tools to navigate it.<\/p>\n
With the rise in big data, we now have a powerful instrument to draw on limitless sources of information to develop statistical models that know us better than we can know ourselves.<\/p>\n
Of course, this runs a very real risk of assuming certainty and accuracy can guarantee us an un-messy future. A belief which may in some cases force people, and algorithms, to make wrong decisions and at a faster speed.<\/p>\n
However, it also gives us a significant chance to increase the scope of our interpretive power, and restore judgement to our decision making to tackle the growing global challenges we face, as a community.<\/p>\n
We just have to remember the meaning behind our words.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
About the author:<\/strong><\/p>\n Paolo Quattrone is Professor and Chair of Accounting, Governance and Social innovation at the University of Edinburgh where he is also leading \u00a0a project to establish a new interdisciplinary institute to train \u2018entrepreneurial citizens\u2019 in collaboration with industry, government and the broader civic community. He has worked and conducted research at the universities in Madrid, Manchester, Oxford, Palermo and Stanford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" People tend to forget, but words have a history. \u2018Society\u2019 – as philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour reminds us<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[141,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1291"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}