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There is a scene in a play by Euripides in which Medea, the central character, persuades Jason, her husband, to be the unwitting participant in her plot for revenge. This scene illustrates a facet of finance and accounting expertise because it shows how narrative, including finance and accounting, provides ontological security; a belief in the security of reality and the predictability of outcomes. The Chorus in the play suggests that Jason is “so sure of destiny”. What makes the scene particularly interesting is that it carries a second meaning, which is absolutely clear to the audience, and which has tragic consequences, of which Jason is “so ignorant”. This possibility of a second meaning suggests dangers in accepting a superficial understanding of any narrative. In turn, this shows the need for a knowledge of the history and characters from which any single scene, or finance and accounting report or calculation, is constructed. Provides quotations from practitioners which illustrate ways in which they see finance and accountancy as narrative and the ways in which they succeed and fail to imbue any accounting scene with characters and history.

Research on weighting of measures often examines only one incentive at a time (usually bonus) and provide mixed findings regarding the relevance of non-financial performance (NFM) measures to evaluate and reward long-term time horizon employees. Using proprietary data from an auto dealership organization, we show that financial measures (FM) are weighted more for bonus than they are weighted for merit raise and promotion but NFM are weighted more than FM for merit raise and promotion. Thus, the temporal orientations of the measures and incentives seem to be aligned: the short-term (long-term) nature of FM (NFM) parallel’s the time horizon of the incentives. Next, our exploratory research questions find that for bonuses, both FM and NFM exert similar levels of significant and positive influence on junior and senior managers. But for promotions, the influence of FM is insignificant for both groups. In contrast, the influence of NFM on promotions is not only significant for both groups but is significantly greater for junior managers than it is for senior managers. That is, the evaluations of NFM for senior managers are less influential on their promotion than they are for junior managers suggesting that promotions for senior managers are often based on factors other than their formal performances.