Annual Accounting Reports and Their Role in the Creation of the Organizational “Self”

Abstract

This article subscribes to the argumentative line

of interdisciplinary studies on corporate reports, with an emphasis

on the corporate self; such is the reason behind delving

into the question: How are annual accounting reports used

to create the “self” of the modern economic organization,

in the contemporary frame? As a consequence, from an interpretative

perspective, we turn to Lacanian psychoanalysis

—together with the appropriation of conceptual categories

created in the bosom of contemporary sociology and philosophy—

in order to identify the characteristics on which

the development of the “self” and subjectivity are based

in the space of contemporaneity. The purpose behind this

is to make understandable the constituting role of annual

accounting reports beside the economic and communicative

dimension they are subscribed to today. In this way, we

address and characterize, based on the case of a Colombian

company, the mechanisms that make the annual accounting

reports mirrors of identity that provide support to the institutionalization

of the organizational “self”. At the same time,

they work showing the text that makes of modern economic

organizations as if they became a kind of “corporate citizens”.