Scientific management in the face of economic meltdown?
Managers love spreadsheets. Quantifiable trends. Robust columns of numbers, properly formatted, 
balanced checkbooks. This is business! We’re not guessing, we’re not estimating, we’re taking a scientific approach to management!
Verifiable numbers are supposed to guaranteed better results, fewer scandals, more rational behavior.
In the wake of Enron, Global Crossing, and other book-cookers, the government hastily brought forth the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002, better known as Sarbanes-Oxley. These new, stringent requirements would supposedly protect investors from capitalizing companies that were, in reality, bleeding money while their executives took bonuses from Liberian hedge fund partnerships and the like. I come to understand from financial colleagues that Sarb-Ox is so complex it would make a Jesuit’s head explode.
This complexity was supposed to better results, fewer scandals, more rational behavior.
What’s the future of numbers if the numbers are wrong by hundreds of billions of dollars?
If we can’t manage scientifically, how will we manage when all this is said and done?
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