Change explained as impermanence

Identification of a unit of change, reductionism and linearity are related concepts. From these, limitations have developed in our ability to understand the concept of change in organisations. The use of the concept of reality in explaining change inevitably leads to the problems of identification of the unit of change, reductionism and linearity.

As Quattrone and Hopper (2001) and Busco et al. (2007) indicate, and a key issue that I came across in explaining change, is the identification of a discrete entity and explaining a change of that entity using only one or a few aspects over time and space. As explained in this chapter, these issues are common to all approaches that have been used in accounting studies. Therefore, even if different perspectives were integrated, they would still have similar limitations in explaining change in an organisation. Quattrone and Hopper also note that the belief in a discrete entity and the realistic nature of change have been key constraints in understanding how and why change occurs. They discuss the need for an alternative view in looking at nature of change, specifically one that does not assume there is a reality which is changing.

I believe that the task of finding a new approach, one that interprets the inadequacies of the extant theories on organisational change, would be more successful if it were based on a worldview that does not believe in mutually observed and understood existence. Accordingly,

76

I propose that one should consider this changing nature of the organisation, its different entities, and why people perceive change differently.

Buddhist philosophy explains the nature of change by using a concept called “impermanence”. This philosophy does not believe in methodological assumptions of a reality. Impermanence can be used to explain how we construct concepts and how we perceive change of these concepts. Thus, I will use the concept of “impermanence” to explain how people perceive change and the dynamic nature of organisations. I believe that one can develop an alternative framework to understand and explain change in organisations and accounting practices by applying the concept of impermanence. This would have the potential to overcome these shortcomings. Thus, I set out to devise such a framework.

As mentioned in Chapter One, impermanence is one of the three marks of existence. According to Buddhist philosophy, any object, circumstance, situation or event that appears to exist is subject to a continuous change process which can be explained as the emergence and the decline of forms of that entity. This section explains impermanence and how I adopt that concept in this study to explain change.

According to Nayanatiloka Thero (2004, p.16),

impermanency of things is the rising, passing and changing of things, or the disappearance of things that have become or arisen. The meaning is that these things never persist in the same ways, but that they are vanishing, dissolving from moment to moment. Impermanency is a basic feature of all conditioned phenomena, be they material or mental, coarse or subtle, one’s own or external: “All formations are impermanent” (sabbe sankhārā aniccā).

According to Stcherbatsky (1930, p. 84), the theory of Universal Momentariness in Buddhist logic “implies that every duration in time consists of point-instants following one another, every extension in space consists of point-instants arising in contiguity and simultaneously, every motion consists of these point-instants arising in contiguity and in succession”. Here, contiguity can be explained as close succession or sequential emergence of observations. Therefore, he concludes that separate reality of time and space is denied in Buddhism, in contrast to realists. Thus,

77

Realists assume the existence of real substances along with real qualities, whereas the Buddhist view is that ultimate reality cannot be so divided, it cannot represent a stable stuff with real moving qualities situated upon it. However, it is hard to eliminate terms such as thing, qualities, substances etc. implying a sense of reality which is rejected in Buddhism. (Stcherbatsky, 1930, p. 97)

Kalupahana (1976, p. 37) explains that “things” are impermanent not because they are momentary (i.e. things have a momentary duration – see Stcherbatsky, 1930), but because they are characterised by emergence (uppāda) and decline (vaya). He claims that a theory of moments might be derived from a logical analysis of this decay of change, which literally means change to what exists.

The following exemplifies the nature of emergence and decline of things:

[L]ife is comparable to a river. It is a progressive moment, a successive series of different moments, joining together to give the impression of one continuous flow. It moves from cause to cause, effect to effect, one point to another, one state of existence to another, giving an outward impression that it is one continuous and unified movement, whereas in reality it is not. The river of yesterday is not the same as the river of today. The river of this moment is not going to be the same as the river of the next moment. So does life. It changes continuously, becomes something or the other from moment to moment. (“The Buddhist Concept of Impermanence”, no date) Applying this to the subject of this study, it would be a mistake to believe that a person, an organisation or an accounting practice remains the same for more than an instant. Instead, these things change every moment: people, organisations and accounting practices are impermanent. However, as observers cannot observe all these instantaneous changes, they construct something permanent at points in time and they construct explanations about differences occurring during the intervals between each chosen two points. They then explore these changes to identify how and why they occurred and refer to them as changes. This exploration process leads to an explanation of change of an existing organisation or accounting practice.

My starting point is to assume that every construct consists of point instances that are linked continuously, as explained by Stcherbatsky (1930). A movement of an object, an organisation, or an event comprised of point instances can be illustrated using Figure 5. It

78

shows how a construct, in this case a ballerina in one instant, changes to another construct in the next instant. Thus, the picture captures very closely (theoretically there are an infinite number of instances) how one action is followed by another and shows how movements of the dancer follow one another.

Figure 5: Sequence of Instances - 1

(Source: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, 2012)

In practice, a human eye may not capture all the movements visible in Figure 5. This would depend on how fast the dancer makes the movements and on the observational capabilities of the observer. The points of change that are observed would vary. For instance, consider Figure 6. The movement of the person in the picture is not as comprehensive as the picture shown in Figure 5. The gaps shown in the picture do not explain what happened in between the point instants A-B, B-C, C-D and so on, in as detailed a manner as in Figure 5.

Furthermore, if this picture contained only points B and F, the movements of C, D and E would not be seen, known or attract the possibility of explanation. Hence, an observer would not necessarily know there had been a jump, let alone the height of the jump. The observer may reach conclusions about the movement of the person only with respect to the distance of her movement and could not make conclusions about how she has reached the other end (e.g., walked, ran, jumped, or stumbled). This illustrates that point instances observed by observers may be insufficient for knowing and being able to explain how moments are in fact linked: it is important to observe as many moments as possible and how each is linked with others to be able to explain what has happened.

79

Figure 6: Sequence of Instances - 2

(Source: Vloothuis, 2008)

When we observe the context as a chain of moments, we observe and take into consideration all, or at least as many as possible, instances that are particular to the object under consideration. If we observe changes as point instances, as one followed by another, we can see the clear links between those point instances and can arrive at reasonable conclusions on how change has occurred from one point instance to another. On the other hand, if we neglect the point instances in between some given points, we are going to ignore some important information. For example, as shown in Figure 6, point instance C, D and E are important for making a comprehensive conclusion about the movement of the person from B-F.

Therefore, the more we can observe change as a sequence of point instances, linked more closely together (i.e. from one moment to another), the probability that we can obtain a comprehensive knowledge of impermanence increases. In contrast, we can compare an organisation or accounting practices at two predetermined points based on a selected variable. The further the two points are apart, the less we will able to explain what has happened during the interval between the points and the less satisfactory the explanation will be, particularly the more variables that are actually involved but which go unobserved. However, by trying to observe events without limiting the study only to predetermined point instances and not restricting our observations to only one or a few variables, we can know more about change to an organisation and its accounting practices from multiple aspects.

! A! D! E! F! C! B! H! G!

80

Using the concept of impermanence, the following sections discuss how individuals construct static entities, what is change, how individuals perceive change, why perceived change is different from one individual to another and the importance of the concept of impermanence in explaining change.