{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp09_archetype_breadth150_20260804","cell_id":"modular_decomposition__accounting_auditing","arm":"BREADTH_PROBE_ONE_SHOT","candidate_id":"modular_decomposition__accounting_auditing__P1","proposal_index":1,"version":0,"title":"Contract-Bounded Modules for a Multi-Entity Consolidation Close","problem":"A multi-entity financial consolidation is maintained as one entangled workbook and review process in which trial-balance normalization, foreign-currency translation, intercompany eliminations, ownership adjustments, top-side journals, and disclosure tie-outs share formulas, assumptions, and reviewers. A change to one accounting treatment can therefore require broad re-performance, while responsibility for discrepancies crossing those concerns remains ambiguous.","actors":["Group controller","Consolidation accountants","Subsidiary controllers","Accounting policy owner","Financial-statement preparers","Internal or external audit reviewers"],"observable_state":"The same workbook cells or scripts perform multiple accounting responsibilities; reviewers must inspect unrelated sections after a local change; subsidiary submissions arrive in inconsistent forms; cross-module discrepancies are discovered near final tie-out; and exceptions lack an accountable owner.","consequence":"Local corrections have an uncertain review scope, reconciliation defects surface late, and the organization cannot establish which bounded responsibility produced or should resolve a consolidation difference.","affected_objective":"Produce a complete, internally consistent, reviewable consolidated financial statement package while preserving traceability from subsidiary balances through adjustments to reported amounts.","intervention":"Rebuild one bounded shadow version of the consolidation close as responsibility-coherent modules: source-ledger normalization, currency translation, intercompany matching and elimination, ownership and non-controlling-interest accounting, top-side adjustments, and statement/disclosure tie-out. Give each module a steward, keep its local calculations and evidence inside its boundary, and require a versioned interface packet specifying inputs, outputs, accounting-policy references, control totals, exception codes, preparer approval, and reviewer approval. Reintegrate the modules through compatibility checks and whole-package invariants, including balanced consolidated debits and credits, traceability to submitted trial balances, elimination-pair resolution, and agreement between statements and disclosures.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Entangled whole","domain_realization":"The monolithic consolidation workbook and review process mixes several accounting responsibilities and change reasons."},{"archetype_element":"Responsibility partitioning","domain_realization":"Normalization, translation, eliminations, ownership accounting, top-side adjustments, and reporting tie-out each become a coherent module."},{"archetype_element":"Module boundary","domain_realization":"Each module owns its calculations, evidence, exceptions, and approvals but may consume or emit data only through its defined interface packet."},{"archetype_element":"Interface contract","domain_realization":"Every handoff declares account and entity identifiers, currency and period, policy version, control totals, exception status, lineage, and approval state."},{"archetype_element":"Encapsulation","domain_realization":"A module may change its internal worksheets or procedures without forcing unrelated modules to inspect those details, provided its contract and shared invariants remain satisfied."},{"archetype_element":"Module steward","domain_realization":"A named accounting owner maintains each module and resolves defects attributed to its responsibility."},{"archetype_element":"Integration policy","domain_realization":"Automated compatibility checks, cross-module exception review, and final statement-level tie-outs verify that locally completed work recomposes into a coherent consolidation."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"separation_of_policy_and_execution","role":"The accounting policy owner supplies versioned treatment rules and required outputs, while module stewards execute calculations and document evidence without silently redefining policy.","counterfactual_removal":"If policy and execution remain mixed inside worksheets, local implementation choices can alter group accounting treatment without a visible interface or accountable decision."},{"mechanism_slug":"organizational_team_boundaries","role":"Responsibility-aligned stewardship assigns each consolidation concern to an accountable preparer-reviewer pair while preserving shared close objectives.","counterfactual_removal":"Without module stewardship, boundaries remain labels and cross-boundary discrepancies continue to have no reliable resolution owner."}],"causal_chain":["Distinct accounting responsibilities currently share calculations, evidence, and review paths in one consolidation artifact.","Partitioning by cohesive responsibility and change reason gives each concern a bounded locus of calculation, evidence, and ownership.","Versioned interface packets make recurring dependencies and handoffs explicit without exposing every internal worksheet detail.","Module stewards can investigate or revise local logic while compatibility checks identify affected interfaces.","Whole-package invariants and final tie-outs test whether the modules still compose into balanced, traceable financial statements.","If these conditions hold, the scope and owner of a local consolidation discrepancy become observable without treating the entire close as one undivided investigation."],"baseline":"The existing monolithic consolidation workbook remains the system of record: subsidiary data, adjustments, eliminations, and reporting outputs are linked through shared tabs or scripts, and reviewers determine change scope by inspecting the workbook broadly and relying on preparer knowledge.","nearest_rivals":["A standardized subsidiary reporting template, which regularizes inputs but does not partition the consolidation responsibilities or assign their interfaces and owners.","Automated intercompany reconciliation, which addresses one calculation or exception class but does not decompose the whole consolidation process.","A close checklist, which sequences tasks but may leave calculations, dependencies, and ownership entangled.","Access controls and workbook protection, which restrict changes but do not create locally coherent accounting modules.","Separate workbook tabs labeled by topic, which are only visual rearrangement if formulas, decisions, ownership, and review paths still cross them implicitly."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The intervention is specifically modular decomposition only if an accounting-treatment change can be localized to a coherent responsibility, its cross-boundary effects can be identified from declared contracts, and system-level tie-outs can validate recomposition. Merely adding templates, automation, checklists, or labeled tabs does not satisfy that claim.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The group controller may authorize a shadow-process pilot; the accounting policy owner retains authority over accounting treatments; designated posting approvers retain authority over ledger entries; and auditors retain independent authority over audit conclusions.","authorized_first_step":"Re-perform one already closed consolidation period in a read-only shadow workspace using the proposed modules and compare its lineage, exceptions, approvals, and final control totals with the archived close.","excluded_actions":["Posting journals to any live ledger","Changing approved accounting policies","Replacing the production consolidation process","Modifying archived audit evidence","Representing the pilot as auditor-approved","Allowing a module steward to approve their own material adjustment"],"halt_rollback":"Stop the pilot if source-to-report traceability is lost, a module emits an unbalanced or unexplained output, access restrictions fail, or the shadow result cannot reproduce the approved consolidated totals. Preserve the production process unchanged and discard the shadow workflow after retaining only the authorized evaluation record."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"A dependency map may show that the proposed responsibilities require continuous joint recalculation and judgment, so explicit boundaries add handoffs without permitting meaningful local reasoning or change.","problem_falsifier":"The problem is falsified if archived change and review records show that local consolidation changes already have bounded impact, explicit ownership, declared handoffs, and reliable final integration checks despite the shared workbook.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is falsified for this setting if the shadow re-performance cannot reproduce the approved package, requires reviewers to reopen most module internals for ordinary exceptions, leaves cross-boundary discrepancies ownerless, or creates more unresolved handoffs than locally contained investigations.","risks":["Arbitrary module cuts may separate calculations that require joint accounting judgment.","Hidden dependencies may survive outside the interface packets.","Over-modularization may create excessive preparation and review handoffs.","Local module completion may obscure a material whole-statement inconsistency.","Stable contracts may ossify an unsuitable decomposition or outdated policy representation.","Specialized stewardship may create silos or weaken end-to-end understanding.","Parallel shadow handling of financial data may create access, retention, or version-control exposure."]},"next_evidence_step":"For one archived period and a small, controller-selected subset of subsidiaries, map every dependency in the existing consolidation artifact, instantiate the six proposed module contracts in a read-only shadow workspace, and replay one documented historical adjustment. Record which modules and interfaces must change, whether each exception has one owner, whether declared control totals detect incompatibilities, and whether the shadow package reproduces the approved final statements. This step tests tractability and recomposition only; it does not estimate production effect size.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Not assessed because runtime isolation prohibits inspection of other proposals or experiment cells.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Initial one-shot candidate generated from the supplied archetype and domain record."],"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"evidence_changes":[],"claim_changes":[]}}