364 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS
creating an underlying competitiveness in organizations, the preoccupation with
the ‘‘bottom line’’ is seen to discourage technological innovation and investments
in operational capability (e.g. Hayes & Abernathy, 1980; Johnson & Kaplan, 1987).
ER, it seems, has adopted this vocabulary just as those organizations that have it
are being exhorted to move towards longer-term, more strategic appreciations of
time. In the railway, assets have long lives and the lead-time on capital investment
is also long. To some extent the maintenance of the infrastructure is inevitably
compromised by its new culture. Quite possibly with innovations in transport,
the railway network will be an irrelevance in 50 years’ time; on the other hand, it
may not be. The green lobby, in particular, might argue that it is sensible to keep
options open in a way that at present may not be possible.
Postscript
The process of change in ER continues. The regional management structure is today
being dissolved. The operational side of the railway is currently being reorganized
and assimilated into the Businesses. The crafted accounts representing the railway
as a series of businesses have now permeated through management structures
and systems to operations on the ground. The railway quite literally has become
its businesses. There are no longer any regional General Managers, no vestiges
of the railway culture...or are there? High up on a building above one of
the main-line termini, out of sight except to observant motorists on a nearby
flyover, there is a residue of the past: a large illuminated logo – the logo of a
pre-nationalization railway.
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