Denunciation and resistance in post-crisis sensemaking

Abstract

Many stakeholders require some form of post-crisis sensemaking to help them better understand what happened, and why. Through this lens, we review public inquiry oral evidence sessions with the incriminated company leaders from three major business failures in the UK. While the stated objective of these public inquiries was to ‘learn lessons’, we mobilize Harold Garfinkel’s writings on ceremonies of degradation to offer an alternative perspective. We identify and discuss the strategies employed by the denouncers intended to lower the targets’ identities in the social order. We find that the denouncers frequently rely on accounting-oriented challenges. Following this, we explore the company leaders’ responses as they attempt to resist the denunciation. We identify four key resistance strategies: reframing, recalibration, refocusing, and blame-shifting/-sharing. As part of their response, the denounced provide their own accounting-oriented counter-explanations, emphasising that their choices were consistent with professional norms. We discuss the implications of these findings and what they mean for the management and maintenance of social order in the wake of a financial scandal. Specifically, we point to the inherent ambiguity built into established accounting norms which become a key battleground in the fight for the preservation (or ritual destruction) of the target’s identity.