Enhancing Organizational Global Hegemony with Narrative Accounting Disclosures: An Early Example

Abstract

Transnational corporations (TNCs) have been an important element in the development of globalisation practices. This paper explores politically related narrative accounting disclosures made by an early TNC (Shell), and analyses how these disclosures might have been used as part of a strategy aimed at protecting and enhancing the political and economic hegemony of Shell (and other oil industry TNCs) in relation to the power of nation states, at a time when Shell was transforming into a TNC. Using a theoretical framework drawn from classical political economy of accounting, it identifies patterns of disclosure consistent with a corporate strategy of protecting and advancing the power and wealth of capital in a global corporation with little regard to the impact this might have had on individual states.

Key words:

• Narrative accounting disclosures
• transnational corporations
• globalisation
• political economy of accounting

Notes

1. In the mid 1950s, when it became apparent that future energy demands in the UK would grow much faster than supply, the UK government actively worked to expand many sources of energy—including nuclear and indigenous coal, but also had policies of converting many electricity generating stations from coal to oil.

2. This arrangement was granted a secret dispensation from domestic anti‐trust laws by the US government as being necessary for US security interests.