Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

www.elsevier.com/locate/aos

Constructing the global corporation and corporate

constructions of the global: a picture essay
Alistair M. Preston *, Joni J. Young
Graduate School of Management, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1221, USA

Abstract
The constructive potential of text and numbers is now fairly well established in the accounting literature. In this
paper we explore further the constructive potential of images as part of the mediascape of annual reports. We seek to
do this in and through pictures and by establishing a tension between image and text by placing quotes from other
sources throughout the picture essay. To frame the picture essay we re-present how corporations construct themselves
as global entities and in doing so how they construct the global. # 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights
reserved.

Although some would maintain that the ``crucial
takeo€'' period for globalization was the 1880s, it
was in the 1980s that this term acquired a more
urgent currency. During that decade, globalization
became commonly used in intellectual, business,
media and other circles (Robertson, 1990, p. 19).
As one example, Business Week reported in 1991
that globalization was one of the pervading
themes in annual reports that year, a theme that
has persisted throughout the remainder of the
decade. In this pictorial essay, we propose that
annual reports are one site for the representation
and construction not only of the global corpora-
tion but also of the ``global.'' The global, as
represented not only by pictures of the globe, but
also by ¯ows of money, people and technologies,
is constructed as a conceptual arena in which
multi-national business can be conducted.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-505-277-7108; fax: +1-
505-2776471.
The terms, globalization and internationaliza-
tion, have been used in a variety of ways with a
multiplicity of in¯ections. Early debates on globa-
lization emphasized the process of homogenizing
local cultures and societies into a singular global
culture, a process often described as the Amer-
icanization or commoditization of the globe
(Hamelink, 1983; Gans, 1985; Iyer, 1988; Matte-
lart, 1983). However. by the late 1980s, concerns
about homogenization were being eclipsed by
arguments proposing that the process of globali-
zation is one in which ``[c]ultures pile up on top of
each other in heaps without obvious organizing
principles'' (Featherstone, 1995, p. 6), an emphasis
upon a multiplicity of cultures each uniquely
translating or indigenizing global in¯uences. be
they, from America, Europe, Japan, Russia or
from a closer proximity (Barber, 1987; Feld, 1988;
Hannertz, 1987, 1989; Ivy, 1988; Nicoll, 1989). In
this respect, Appadurai (1990, p. 295) argues that
theories of homogenization have failed to consider
``...that at least as rapidly as forces from various

0361-3682/00/$ - see front matter # 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0361 -3 682(98)00066 -X
428 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

Plate 1. Courtesy, Nortel, 1991. Illustration, Doug Fraser.

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map ... simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It
is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives
it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territoryÐPRECESSION OF SIMULACRAÐit is the map that engenders the
territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.
(Baudrillard, 1983, p. 2.)
 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 429

metropolises are brought into new societies, they
tend to become indigenized in one or another way:
this is true of music and housing styles as much as
it is true of science and terrorism, spectacles and
constitutions''.
From the perspective of heterogeneity, how
does one explore the multidimensionality of shift-
ing politics, cultures and economies around the
globe? Within the context of this essay, how can
one begin to theorize representations and con-
structions of the global? Appadurai (1990) o€ers
®ve dimensions of global cultural ¯ow. These are
ethnoscapes (the movement of people and the
changing relationships between people and cul-
tures), technoscapes (the increasingly rapid move-
ment of high and low technologies as well as
mechanical and informational ones), and ®nance-
scapes (the ``blinding speed'' at which global capital
moves in and around the world). These scapes are
not discrete as ``Money ¯ows, political possibilities
and the availability of both low and highly skilled
labor'' interconnect with technology, allowing for
the construction of a multiplicity of globalized
cultures (Appadurai, 1990).

Plate 2. Courtesy, Morton International Inc., 1995. Photographer Tom Tracey.

This is the very point of the map, to present us not with the world we can see, but to point toward a world we might know.
(Wood, 1992, p. 12.)
430 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

These three ¯ows are further represented and carry di€erent nuances than the relatively more
constructed through the images produced in and concrete ¯ows of people, money and technologies.
by mediascapes and ideoscapes. These two scapes Mediascapes produce and disseminate image of

Plate 3. Courtesy, Black & Decker, 1996.

A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 431

Plate 4. Courtesy, Millipore, 1989.

432 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

the globe through media such as ``newspapers,
magazines, television stations and ®lm production
studios'' (Appadurai, 1990, p. 299). Information
and communication technologies allow the dis-
semination of these images, so that audiences with
little direct experience of the represented world are
``more likely to construct `imagined worlds' which
are chimerical, aesthetic, even fantastic objects''
(p. 299) In turn, ideoscapes suggest how these
image contain ideological overlays such as free-
dom rights and democracy and how these also
move around the globe. However, even these ideas
are indigenized as di€erent nation states organize
their political and social arrangements around
them.
Thus, the global cultural ¯ows emanating from
multiple points around the globe intermingle in
varied and unpredictable ways as they are indigen-

Plate 5. Courtesy, Phillips Petroleum Company, 1996. Tony Stone Images.

The relation of language to painting is an in®nite relation. it is not that words are imperfect, or that, when confronted by the
visible, they prove insuperably inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other's terms: it is in vain that we say what we see;
what we see never resides in what we say. And it is in vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors, or similes,
what we are saying ... . (Foucault, 1973, p. 9.)
 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 433

Plate 6. Courtesy, General Data Com Industries Inc., 1990. Ted Betz Graphics.
[We] set up the world up as a picture... [and arrange] it before an audience as an object on display to be viewed, investigated and
experienced. (Gregory, 1994, p. 34.)
434 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

ized (i.e. accepted, rejected, resisted and translated)
at speci®c locales. In this respect, Appadurai's
choice of the common sux, scapes, is fortuitous
for this essay. Not only does it possess a strong
visual sense in that it places emphasis on per-
spective(s), but it also avoids connotations of
directionality and determinism. His use of the
term, scape, suggests both the importance of mul-
tiple points of view and the impossibility of a single
point of view. He o€ers a Ptolemaic grid through
which we may view the world simultaneously from
di€erent vantagepoints rather than imposing upon

Plate 7. Courtesy, Collins and Aikman Corporation, 1996. Photographer, Roger Ball.

Although the grid that Ptolemy proposed, and those that Mercator later imposed, share the mathematical uniformity of the
Renaissance perspective grid, they do not share the positioned viewer, the frame, and the de®nition of the picture as a window
through which an external viewer looks. On these accounts the Ptolemaic grid, indeed cartographic grids in general. must be
distinguished from, not confused with, the perspectival grid. The projection is, one might say, viewed from nowhere. Nor is it to
be looked through. It assumes a ¯at working surface. (Alpers, 1983, p. 138.)
 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 435

Plate 8. Courtesy, Abbott Laboratories, 1988. Photographer, Mark Joseph.

In e€ect to construct an identity, to know who you are, you need to know who you are not, and the material excluded or con-
®ned to the boundaries may continue to exhibit a fascination and allure, and to stimulate desires. (Featherstone, 1991, p. 82.)
436 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

us a single Euclidean point of observation.
The purpose of this paper is not to trace these
¯ows nor to trace their e€ects, but rather to con-
sider the ways in which annual reports operate as
mediascapes and ideoscapes and thereby represent
and construct the global through images and
image/texts of people, technologies, and money.
We regard annual reports as mediascapes and
ideoscapes in that they deliberately seek. through
various textual, visual and numerical strategies, to
invite or incite the viewing subject to accept, as
real, corporations representations both of them-
selves as global entities and of the global. In this
respect, they o€er possibilities for constructing
``imagined worlds'' and locating the corporation
within them. Yet, annual reports, which encom-
pass a gallery of images and texts, not only repre-
sent global cultural ¯ows but also overlay them
with ideological meanings. In annual reports, the
global is often seen as an opportunity for expand-
ing markets, as a site for capital investment and a
source of increased earnings. For example, in
annual reports, we ®nd phrases such as:
The New Market Order is global. (Northern
Telecom, 1991, p. 16.)
[T]he Company's joint ventures and acquisi-
tions around the world have leveraged
MEMC's capital resources as well as its abil-
ity to get products to customers. (MEMC,
1995, p. 12.)
We have a leading presence in the three lar-
gest health care markets in the world and now
have the critical mass to take advantage of
huge opportunities in developing markets.
(Pharmacia and Upjohn, 1995, p. 19.)

Plate 9. Courtesy, Pharmacia and Upjohn, 1995. Photographer, Bruce Dale.

Just what can be expected or understood from photographs? I will argue that, culturally, not very much can be understood
about Navajo from photographs of them. But certainly something can be understood of photographers, of the various ways the
West privileges photographs, and of the way Navajo photographically appear to the West. Photographs of Navajo mirror the
West's desire and ambition, its obsession and pathology ... (Faris, 1996, p. 12.)
A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 437

Plate 10. Courtesy, Motorola Inc., 1995.

Plate 11. Courtesy, The Coca-Cola Company, 1991.

438 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

Pitney Bowes is ready for the opportunities
that will be created in the expanding interna-
tional markets of the 1990s. (Pitney Bowes,
1989, p. 12.)
In the following picture essay, we have arranged
the images into various scapes, three of which are
borrowed from Appadurai; namely, ethnoscape
(Plates 8±13), technoscape (Plates 14±18) and ®nan-
cescape (Plates 19±22). In the case of ®nancescapes
we have included the ¯ow of products around the
world which in turn generates cash ¯ows. We have
also added a fourthÐthe landscape (Plates 1±7) in
order to better encompass the diversity of image/
texts found in annual reports. In this essay, the
landscape refers to the possibilities for represent-

Plate 12. Courtesy, Corning, 1989. Photographer, Robert Baker.

Post-modernism ... operates as a Euro-American western hegemony, whose global appropriation of time-and-place inevitably
proscribes certain cultures as `backward' and marginal while coopting to itself certain of their cultural `raw' materials. Post-
modernism is then projected onto these margins as normative, as a neo-universalism to which `marginal' cultures may aspire,
and from which certain of their more forward-looking products might be appropriated and `authorised'. (Adam & Ti€en, 1991,
p. viii.)
 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 439

ing and manipulating the physical terrain. This
scape includes maps and images of the globe as
well as citiscapes, monuments and tourist sites
that are often seen a synonymous with particular
places around the world. Although we have orga-
nized these in ages and the accompanying quotes
into these categories, we recognize that the images
faun in annual reports do not always ®t neatly int
a single scape. For example, Plate 10 could as
easily be de®ned as a technoscape and Plate 3
could also have been a ®nance or productscape.
This paper is not only about showing pictures.
It is also about the representational and con-
structive qualities of images by themselves or in
combination with text. The constructive potential
of texts and numbers is now fairly well established
within the accounting literature. Borrowing from
a variety of literary and social theories, the
articulable in accounting has been and continues
to be interrogated and deconstructed as to its
role in representing and constructing rather than
merely re¯ecting the real. Only recently has the
visual been included in the accounting literature.
However, there is a long and lively debate in the
visual arts literature emphasizing the ``con-
structed'' rather than ``found'' quality of images
(Jay, 1996, p. 3).
Curiously, visual theory itself has until recently
been largely informed by what has been termed
the linguistic turn in philosophy and social theory
(Mitchell, 1994). Within this turn, the tools of
semiotic discourse and textual analysis already
found in the accounting literature have also been
applied to images. Mitchell (1994, p. 14) comments
that the visual arts are now regarded as ``sign sys-
tems informed by conventions that paintings,
photographs, sculptural objects and architectural
monuments are fraught with `textuality' and

Plate 13. Courtesy, The Coca-Cola Company, 1988.

Leaps, discontinuities, regressions, and deferred actionÐI can think of no more appropriate description of the way we receive
the contemporary image environment. The meanings that govern us are not arrived at by ``a simple one-way road.'' (Burgin,
1996. p. 36.)
440 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

Plate 14. Courtesy, Raytheon, 1994.

Computer-aided design, synthetic holography, ¯ight simulators, computer animation, robotic image recognition, ray tracing,
texture mapping, motion control, virtual environment helmets, magnetic resonance imaging, and multispectral sensors are only a
few of the techniques that are relocating vision to a plane severed from a human observer. (Crary, 1992, p. 1.)
 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 441

`discourse' ''. However, in the past few years, the
acceptance of language as the master metaphor for
interpreting all forms of representation has been
challenged and an e€ort has been made to estab-
lish a ``pictorial turn'' based on emerging models
of spectatorship and visuality. Rather than aban-
doning or abolishing language, proponents of the
``pictorial turn'' seek to open up a space between
image and text or between the discursive and ®g-
ural in order to explore the complex interplay
between the visual and articulable (the seeable and
sayable) or between ``visuality, apparatus, institu-
tions, discourse, bodies and ®gurality'' (Miller,
1994, p. 14).

Plate 15. Courtesy, Micron Technologies Inc., 1988.

Working up a sweat is no longer in style .... [but] hard labor has not been eliminated. It merely has been shifted out of sight to ...
other countries where wages are low and unions nonexistent. (Bolton, 1989, p. 261.)
442 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

Plate 16. Courtesy, Praxair, 1995.

 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 443

The relationship of image and text is particu-
larly important for annual reports. The images
often are either surrounded by or overlaid with
text. Such combinations of text and image are
common. Indeed, Victor Burgin (1982, p. 51)
states that ``we rarely see a photograph in use
which is not accompanied by language''. In
image/texts, the relationship between the word
and the image is inescapable. These mixed media
invite the viewing subject to read the image and
decipher or interpret its (often intentional
though never ®xed or unitary) meaning, trans-
lating the picture into words. However, a rela-
tion between images and words is not limited to
image/texts. As Burgin (1982 p. 51) notes, ``even
the uncaptioned art photograph is invaded by
language in the very moment it is looked at''. As
we attempt to interpret its meaning, associate it

Plate 17. Courtesy, Beckman and Cary Henrie, 1995.

... if, in their turn, visibilities are never hidden, they are none the less not immediately seen or visible. They are even invisible so
long as we consider only objects, things or perceptible qualities, and not the conditions which open them up. And if things close
up again afterwards, visibilities become hazy or blurred to the point where `self-evident' phenomena cannot be grasped by
another age ... . (Delcuze, 1988, p. 57.)
444 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

Plate 18. Courtesy, United Technologies, 1995.

 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 445

Plate 19. Courtesy, Harcourt General, 1996. Tony Sharp Images.

My reading tells the story of these little calculations, at the moment when the threat of the Incalculable surges forth, when the
crack breaks open.
Then, there will be elsewhere. (Cixous, 1994, p. 31.)
446 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

with other images or describe it, language comes
into play.
We have arranged the pictures and quotations
in the manner we have, not so much to impose a
singular viewpoint [although we inevitably have
imposed some viewpoint(s)], as to disrupt the
connections between the discursive and ®gural in
annual reports. This allows for alternative connec-
tions to be forged between image and text as well as
the making of alternative representations and con-
structions of`global corporations and the global.
In order not to impose too ®rmly our own
viewpoint(s), but unable to remain entirely silent.
we limit our commentary on the images to the
following few paragraphs. Our focus will be on the
constructive potential of images and on the ten-
sion between homogeneity and heterogeneity in
annual reports.
The constructive potential of images is most
starkly demonstrated in the series of images we
de®ne as landscapes. In almost all of the images,
the world is being worked upon from the outside.
The corporations stand in a world apart from the
global, measuring it, (Plate 1), using it as a game
board (Plate 2), remapping and rearranging it
(Plates 4 and 6), and packaging it (Plate 3). Even
in Plate 7, which is a more gentle. even romantic,
representation of the world, it is nevertheless
opened up and presented for view from the out-
side. The exception is the citiscape of Tokyo at
night (Plate 5). In annual reports Tokyo is almost
always represented at night; as if suggesting that
the Orient never sleeps. In the use of citiscapes, as
well as monuments such as the Ei€el Tower or Big
Ben in other annual reports, the designers rely on
stereotypes to represent the foreignness of the
image both suggesting the global reach of the cor-
poration and constructing the global in terms of
these stereotypes. In this respect, the world is at
once both familiar and knowable.

Plate 20. Courtesy, Chiquita Brands International, 1991. Photographer, Mark Joseph.
The Process of Globalization suggests simultaneously two images of culture. The ®rst image entails the extension outwards of a
particular culture to its limits, the globe. Heterogeneous cultures become incorporated and integrated into a dominant culture
which eventually covers the whole world. The second image points to the compression of cultures. Things formally held apart are
now brought into contact and juxtaposition. Cultures pile on top of each other in heaps without obvious organization principles.
(Featherstone, 1995, p. 6.)
 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449 447

Ethnoscapes rely heavily on stereotypes. The
images in this series connote foreignness through
di€erence and in this sense corporations appar-
ently represent (but also inevitably construct)
indigenous cultures. However, it is the loaf of
French bread and the sign ``BOULANGERIE''
(Plate 8), the pagoda atop the new Beijing railway
station (Plate 10), the colorful dresses (Plate 11),
the Japanese windows and table (Plate 12). and
the pushcart and bicycle transport (Plate 13) that

Plate 21. Courtesy, Strate Street Corporation.

448 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449

place these images in a foreign or global context. homogeneous despite their di€erent ethnicities.
The people in the images. in terms of their Indeed, all of these people might be seen in any
appearance and apparent well-being, are quite major US metropolis. Only in Plate 9 do we see a

Plate 22. Courtesy, Whirlpool Corporation, 1989: in 1989 after market became the world market.
 A.M. Preston, J.J. Young/Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 427±449
more emphatic di€erence. Corporations tread a
careful path between constructing and e€acing
di€erence or between heterogeneity (the construc-
tion of indigenous cultures) and homogeneity (the
construction of a single global culture) in the con-
struction of themselves as global corporations and
of the global itself.
The e€acement of di€erence is repeated in one
of the technoscapes. In the case of the oil re®nery
(Plate 14) only the title, pointed out by the diag-
onal line of the crane's boom, informs the viewing
subject that this is a non-US investment. Technol-
ogy is o€ered as a means of e€acing di€erence.
Otherwise in this series, technology envelopes the
world (Plate 17), captures and re-presents it
(Plate 15), molecularizes and universalizes it
(Plate 16), and transforms it from the analogue
into the digital (Plate 17). The world is worked
upon and transformed; in this case, by technology.
In the ®nancescapes di€erence is further e€aced.
In Plate 21, except for the Japanese signs, this
could be a supermarket anywhere in the world.
The image suggests the homogenizing forces of the
global markets, with only a token gesture to the
possibility of indigenization. In the ®nancescapes,
the notion of working upon the world is also
reinforced. The world is transformed into a ``Glo-
bal Washing Machine'' (Plate 22), translated into
currency (Plates 21 and 22), and inscribed upon
(Plate 19).
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