Decision Workshops
4/10
Legislate
In this scenario a law gets passed stating that accounts should get written using the Confidence Accounting methodology. This happens because the press gets interested in the subject and embarrasses the government into action. The secnario is shown below
Dilemmas involved
The scenario here is that the government is indifferent to confidence accounting as such, however when the press kicks up a fuss about it, saying that the government should do something then the government reacts into action, legislating it. The Options table is shown below - the government believes that if it legislates against confidence accounting then it will be immune from embarrassment (hence the doubt shown as a ? in the future column)
Conculsion
Score
Although the "Legislate" route involves powerful players, they are fickle, and the subject rather esoteric. It is doubtful if the government could focus its attention for long enough for this to happen.
Here the problem lies in getting to the dilemma in the first place, that is in getting the press motivated to headline the story of Confidence Accounting, rather than something with more short-term urgency. Hence I have not assigned particularly large numbers to the options It is hard to imagine Confidence Accounting coming to the top of the government's ajenda. Even if the attention is got, there is still the problem of maintaining the government's attention for long enough to get something to happen. Confidence Accounting is a somewhat esoteric subject, and even the specialist financial press may have difficulty capturing headlines with it.. It is also a long term non-immediate solution to some financial problems, so may fail to get government or press attention due to other "crocodiles closer to the boat".
