Faced with such (mis)perceived injustice – and once relationship is clinched and victim is "hooked" – narcissist tries to minimize his contributions. He regards his input as a contractual maintenance chore and unpleasant and inevitable price he has to pay for his Narcissistic Supply.

After many years of feeling deprived and wronged, some narcissists lapse into "sadistic generosity" or "sadistic altruism". They use their giving as a weapon to taunt and torment needy and to humiliate them. In distorted thinking of narcissist, donating money gives him right and license to hurt, chastise, criticize, and berate recipient. His generosity, feels narcissist, elevates him to a higher moral ground.

Most narcissists confine their giving to money and material goods. Their munificence is an abusive defense mechanism, intended to avoid real intimacy. Their "big-hearted" charity renders all their relationships – even with their spouses and children – "business-like", structured, limited, minimal, non-emotional, unambiguous, and non-ambivalent. By doling out bounteously, narcissist "knows where he stands" and does not feel threatened by demands for commitment, emotional investment, empathy, or intimacy.

In narcissist's wasteland of a life, even his benevolence is spiteful, sadistic, punitive, and distancing.

We can see then than one of clearest ways of measuring efficiency is audit: a systematic and controlled method of verifying externally that all systems within an organisation are operating in most efficient manner. If they are not, then inefficient or financially overburdening elements can be identified and steps taken to correct this. The audit has many peculiarities, with its’ explosion over years, we can see that as extensiveness of these cultural processes increases, patterns of behaviour change with it. However, as Shore and Wright point out, audit is not a voluntary scheme. Therefore we are constructing an idea of an efficient, professional person using coercion (2000). Perhaps one of most damaging aspects of implementing an audit is its’ effect on trust. Although Douglas (1992) implies that bureaucratic systems are employed when, essentially, trust has broken down, Shore and Wright’s argument would suggest that their utilisation actually works to break down trust relationships even further. Therefore it seems that these imposed methods of checking and verification have consequences that are more far-reaching than simply keeping accountant happy. As audit and concepts behind it become commonplace, so cultures change, and new moral codes are created with it.

References

Douglas M. Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. 1992; London, Routledge.

Foucault M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison. 1975; London, Penguin Books Limited.

Illich I. The Right to Useful Unemployment and it’s Professional Enemies. 1978; London, Marion Boyars Publishers Limited.

Power M. The Audit Explosion. 1994; London, Demos.

Power M. The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. 1997; Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Shore C and Wright S. Coercive Accountability: The Rise of Audit Culture in Higher Education. IN Strathern M (Ed) Audit Cultures. 2000; London, Routledge.

Strathern M. New Accountabilities: Anthropological Studies in Audit, Ethics and Academy. IN Strathern M (Ed) Audit Cultures. 2000; London, Routledge.