Silence and management - part 1

This is a bit different blog. I am writing a text about silence in organizations. As a whole the text will be more than 20 pages long. The text will focus on silence from a management perspective but I will also explore silence more generally. It seems that silence is very important topic to us all and in order to understand better what silence is and how it is approached it is necessary to dig a bit deeper into this mysterious and powerful concept.

My plan is to publish one blog in a week. I will publish the text in parts and here is part 1. I hope you enjoy and find this treatise useful.

Best regards,
Ari

                Silence

Hot but quiet topic on the arena of management and control

1.    Hush, shh, … introduction

1.1 Money, silence and accounting

There is a connection between the level of silence and the success of an organization. Hence there is also a connection between money and the level of silence in organization. This is because money, the financial side of success is actually connected to everything. Money is unavoidably present everywhere. Every idea, every plan, every dream, every act has financial consequences. There is always a monetary side lurking somewhere. This is unavoidable - it is a fact of life. At the same time it can be, of course, true that people in different situations do not think about money. Perhaps they do not need to care about money, they may feel (without stopping to think) that there is enough money for their needs or for some other reasons money is not part of their thinking.

The point here is not raise money on a high pedestal, surely I wish to leave the appreciation of money for each of us to decide.  In fact, in order balance the effect which the start of this article may have created, we must remember what has been often said and what also seems pretty profound and it is the following wisdom:  wisest and happiest people are those who think that what they have right now is quite enough. In that thinking the money is also there but its role is modest. Also it can be said that most valuable things are those which you cannot buy with money.

Yet, money seems to be somehow linked to everything.  And there are very special human activities where the role of money has an enhanced role. I would claim that organizational life is that kind of special sphere of human activity where it both makes sense and where it is necessary to focus on money with a very special way. Again let us not raise money on any kind of the sublime pedestal, that is not the point here. Clearly organizations have their missions which can be closely or remotely connected to money. In fact, it is rarely a way to succeed that some organization just wants more money for itself. Clearly in order to succeed one - be it organization or any person - has to provide something valuable to others and from that kind of activity can also the faucets of money open.

Consequently organizations have to pay attention to these monetary flows, because organizations need to be effective and productive in order to survive in a competitive market environment. Many organizations also wish to grow and constantly develop themselves and in order to fulfill these aspirations “the good old money “ is needed. Also it is fact of life that if any organization wants to continue its very existence in the first place it must be able to somehow acquire more money in the long run than what it is compelled to use for various necessary expenses.

At this point you, dear reader, may wonder where to this all will lead us. Well, the point is to establish a connection with silence and accounting. It will be suggested here that one important factor for the success of any organization is the level of silence. It is critical success factor in any organization that how people choose to act in relation to silence in everything what they think, experience and perceive. It is both important and valuable to understand that when and why people may choose silence; or when and why they decide to share instead.

 It is proposed here that in the knowledge economy silence is almost like an item which could added to liabilities, because silence is not a success factor in organizations. Yes, there are exceptions which are discussed later but as a general rule silence can be viewed as an element which reduces success potential for any organization. Does this mean that the opposite ie. non-silence is an asset? The claim here is that this is actually the case, perhaps not always but often. Hence it can be proposed that almost all those actions which reduce silence can be viewed as ways increase a possibility for organization to succeed.

How this all relates to accounting discipline and practice?  Clearly we have to define that what the scope of accounting actually is in the first place. Do we think that accounting is mainly book entries,  posting and handling documents, calculating numbers and producing reports? Or do we think that the scope of accounting is much wider?  Here we advocate the idea that accounting is not just numbers, reports and documents but also very much people in action, people making actions which have financial consequences, people thinking what kind of decisions and actions would financially wise.  Hence we suggest here that accounting should provide information for those executives who are interested to understand what are the key elements which eventually will determine whether organization is financially successful or not.

From this perspective we are approaching the conclusion that silence is a topic which may also interest accounting, ie. those accounting people who have vested interest in the financial success of an organization and who wish to engage dialogue with those executives who wish to understand the underpinnings of financial success of their organization. Therefore, in particular strategic accounting and accounting in action kind of approaches of accounting discipline may also wish to understand better what kind of critical success factor silence actually is.  Also it is important to study how we could and should approach silence and in particular from the managerial point of view, ie, what to do with silence as an executive. It is valuable to understand how we could reduce the level of silence in our organization and how much silence may actually cost - also money wise.

...be continued