Embracing ambiguity in management controls and decision-making processes: On how to design data visualisations to prompt wise judgement

Abstract

Making decisions when managing organisations always involves the constant management of ambiguity and a great deal of complexity due to uncertainties and the intrinsic political nature of every decision-making processes. This paper argues that in order for management accounting to deal effectively with this ambiguity and uncertainty, both must be embraced, not suppressed, by the design of data visualisations produced by management controls as aids to the decision-making processes. Drawing on studies in rhetoric, alongside others on the rhetorical and communicative power of images and visualisations, this paper identifies a series of principles that can contribute to the development of a visual rhetorical framework to inform the design of data visualisation (e.g. dashboards, business reports). The need to conceive of data visualisations beyond their representational function, and the principles that are identified, are then illustrated through the visual rhetorical analysis of a complex dashboard utilised in the programme management of the construction of a large airport terminal. The paper ends with an outline of a research agenda for the future design of data visualisation in accounting, and beyond.

Keywords:

• business knowledge
• data visualisations
• rhetoric
• risk
• ambiguity
• uncertainty
• unknown unknowns
• wisdom
• major programme management

Acknowledgements

The present paper is based on the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales’ Annual PD Leake lecture, delivered in November 2016. I wish to thank Robert Hodgkinson, Rick Payne and Gillian Knight for their support, comments and patience in the whole process. My thanks also go to Tristan Price for his insightful remarks and commentary. I also would like to thank Edel Christie, Peter Madden, Matthew Riley and Richard Walker at Arcadis for their time and for granting access to me, Rebecca Vine and Paul Nightingale, who later helped me to access the wider research material made available as part of a joint project on managing major programmes. Thanks also go to Cristiano Busco, Marian Gatzweiler, Shaul Hayoun, Carmelo Mazza, Sven Modell, Neil Pollock, François-Régis Puyou and Matteo Ronzani who have provided readings and insightful comments. I have also benefited from the gracious advice of Mary Carruthers and Barbara Maria Stafford in navigating the complexities of rhetoric, aesthetics and echo objects. Tony Graham, with his Magrittean understanding of major programmes and warship building has helped me to frame the lecture and influenced this paper and other activities of mine. He deserves my thanks, along with the participants of the Major Project Leadership Academy of the UK Cabinet, who have made me fully understand notions such as complexity and ambiguity. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I have explored elsewhere, drawing on Carruthers (2015), how accounts (Quattrone 2015a), excel sheets and matrixes (Busco and Quattrone in press) operate a mechanism of compression (i.e. reducing complex phenomena to calculable signs) and augmentation (i.e. interrogating what cannot be represented in the sign and therefore in the calculable space). In analysing the dashboard of London Heathrow T2b, I will return to this mechanism to explore how it rhetorically works in visual terms.