Building Trust in Crisis Management: A Study of Insolvency Practitioners and the Role of Accounting Information and Processes
研究了破产从业者在正式破产危机中如何利用会计信息和流程与多元债权人群体建立信任，揭示了客观性、可比性等会计特性及“以牙还牙”策略的作用，对政策制定者和研究者理解会计信息在人际关系中的运用有参考价值。
ABSTRACT This paper seeks to understand how insolvency practitioners attempt to build trust with a heterogeneous creditor body during the crisis of formal insolvency and the role accounting information and processes play. Accounting information is mobilized in different ways according to how insolvency practitioners believe the information will be interpreted and valued. This paper suggests specific qualitative characteristics, accounting principles, and processes which appear to enhance trust building in a crisis context. These include perceived objectivity, comparability, cash flow accounting, “matching” of secured liabilities with secured assets, and “crisis” audit. The value ascribed by insolvency practitioners to maintaining specific creditor relationships also appears relevant to trust‐building activities. A “tit‐for‐tat” strategy emerges with secured creditors, whereby insolvency practitioners engage in demonstrable fee write‐offs, but on the implicit understanding that future, lucrative work will come their way. This study points to the importance for researchers and policymakers of understanding the “desirable” properties of accounting through informed understandings of how and why that information is mobilized and received in specific relationships between people.