ABSTRACT
This chapter undertakes an analysis of corporate reporting which helps to explain polarising of performance into traditional, organisational accounting-based performance and societal, external performance. As a consequence management accounting and performance measurement, either through accounting or through other means, within the organisation remains divorced from the semiotic of external reporting. One of the purposes of the corporate report therefore is the creation of the myth of the unified culture of the actors on the semiotic stage – in other word the common cultural bond of identity between the authors of the script and the audience. Nevertheless it is clear that the authors of the corporate reporting script have sought to bolster the dialectic through a separation of the two parts of the script themselves. From the analysis undertaken so far this seems surprising as there appears to be no reason to undertake this activity to ensure the creation and maintenance of this dialectic.
