This article presents an analysis of the operations of the Peruvian Amazon Company through an acc... more This article presents an analysis of the operations of the Peruvian Amazon Company through an accounting lens. It is suggested that a focus on asset categories augments our knowledge of the company’s exploitation of the land and Indigenous peoples of Amazonia. In particular, the study explores the PAC’s questionable ownership of estates in the Putumayo, what its approach to valuing those estates implied about enslavement, how its treatment of “expenses of conquest” and the inclusion of armaments on the balance sheet indicated the forced subjugation of labor, and how the classification of rubber collectors and their Barbadian overseers as debtors further suggests the practice of debt peonage. Although the findings affirm the utilization of accounting as a facilitator of subjugation, it is shown that in the hands of humanitarians such as Roger Casement, accounting could also be deployed in the pursuit of emancipation.
The paper explores trends in accounting history in the immediate aftermath of what has been descr... more The paper explores trends in accounting history in the immediate aftermath of what has been described as the”golden 1990s”. Recent developments in the subjects of accounting history research are identified. Areas of declining and expanding research activity are discussed as well as changes within established themes and new areas of interest. Challenges confronting the accounting history research community, such as limited interdisciplinary engagement, the “Anglo-Saxon” hegemony and variations in the status of the craft in different nations, are also considered.
Stephen P. Walker and Falconer Mitchell (eds.), Trade Associations and Uniform Costing in the Bri... more Stephen P. Walker and Falconer Mitchell (eds.), Trade Associations and Uniform Costing in the British Printing Industry, 19001963 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997, 216 pp., $55) Reviewed by Gary P. Spraakman York University The authors state their purpose, viz.: This book documents a highly significant development in the history of costing practice in the U.K. - the uniform costing system designed for the members of the British Federation of Master Printers . . during the early twentieth century. Shortly after the launch of the printers' system, industry based uniform costing schemes became popular in the U.K. From 1913 to 1939, 26 such systems appeared, covering key industrial sectors . .. Thus uniform costing technology was potentially a prime influence on early twentieth century costing practice in several industries [p. v]. That purpose gets addressed with four sections based almost entirely on reproduced historical documents from the British Federation of Master Printers (BFMP) and related organizations. The book is actually a bundle of primary documents tied together with an introduction of 14 pages, four one-page section overviews, and a two-page postscript. Although these are important documents for the intended purpose, it was unexpected to be presented with them. In view of their stated purpose, the authors should have incorporated the 50 articles into a coherent analysis rather than reproducing them. BFMP's system of uniform cost accounting was intended to provide U.K. printers with accurate costs which, in turn, were expected to reduce competition and increase profitability. In the introduction the authors briefly describe the geneses of uniform costing and the forces that affected it. Most importantly, they discuss the economic conditions that encouraged the members of the BFMP to seek uniform costing as a means of combating fierce price competition. The assumption was that, if printers knew their "true" costs, prices would rise. The first section, "The Emergence of a Costing Panacea," traces the uniform costing system from 1873 to 1912. The major document themes are the importance of accounting records, cost accounting, and pricing. In one document, "An A.B.C. System of Cost-Keeping," the authors refer to a complete set of books that was "in the room." As those books and forms were "in the room" and not in the book as an attachment, a large part of that document made little sense to a reader The second section, "The Launch of Uniform Costing," presents documents from the 1913 Cost Congress of the BFMP where the uniform costing system was presented to 1,200 attendees. Some of the documents were transcriptions of actual speeches and subsequently punctuated with audience comments in brackets, e.g., "here, here," "loud here, here's," and "loud laughter." Accordingly, documents often contained substantial rhetoric. One important document, "The System Explained," from the first day of the Congress, referred to forms which had been excluded from the book. "The Costing System" was the title of the third section. …
The critical tradition in accounting historiography has come to occupy a prominent place in the d... more The critical tradition in accounting historiography has come to occupy a prominent place in the discipline’s academic scholarship. Some critical literature has confronted the responsibility of accounting and accountants in precipitating contemporary crises, such as the audit failures that spawned Sarbanes-Oxley and the world-wide recession. Certain contemporary issues have long histories, such as the difficulties encountered by women to break the glass ceiling in public accounting, and the suffering of indigenous peoples under the imperialistic yoke. Other episodes in accounting’s long history are seemingly more divorced from the present, but in reality they all have contemporary significance. Slavery in the New World, for example, although abolished more than a century ago, is still rampant in parts of the world, albeit less formally. Critical accounting historians feel it a duty to harken to the "suppressed voices" of the past, those groups of people who had no access to an accounting record – women, persons of color, indigenous populations, alienated proletarians, victims of governmental incompetence and graft, and many voiceless others. Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era draws on the foremost work in this developing literature, both that authored by the co-editors of this volume, and that written by others. Editors Richard K. Fleischman, Warwick N. Funnell, and Steve Walker have written extensively about "the dark side of accounting," gauging the complicity of those performing accounting functions in episodes in human history that are at worst evil and at best reprehensible. The editors have also hand-selected a series of historical and contemporary episodes that have been critically investigated by the wider accounting history community, preceded by a thorough introduction.
Published reports on censuses of population and the surviving enumeration books on which they wer... more Published reports on censuses of population and the surviving enumeration books on which they were based are key sources for accounting historians. The increasing availability of electronic versions of census enumeration books (CEBs) for Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. offers opportunities for better understanding the history of occupations concerned with the performance of accounting functions. However, census reports and original census documents must be interpreted critically. The paper reports on a study of accountants appearing in the transcribed version of the British CEBs for 1881. It is shown how the published census underreported the number of accountants in Britain and suggests that there are potential inconsistencies in the manner in which accountants were counted. While accounting historians may rely on the high level of accuracy in transcribed versions of the CEBs, transcription errors have been discovered in relation to female accountants, those pursuing occupations spe...
During the period of total war and its aftermath, profound changes occurred in the socioeconomic ... more During the period of total war and its aftermath, profound changes occurred in the socioeconomic and political fabric of Britain. In the face of fundamental change and national crisis the multi-organized accountancy profession was perceived as being archaic and demands emerged for the reform of its institutions. T he paper discusses the attempt to coordinate the profession during the 1940s in the context of the wartime discourse on reconstruction. T he analysis is conducted within a paradigm appropriate to the period and locale of the subject: British corporatism. It is revealed that a peak organization to represent the profession before central government was successfully instituted in the form of a Coordinating Committee. However, an attempt by the Committee to unify the profession behind legislation to secure a legal monopoly of public practice failed due to: the inappropriateness of the constitutional structures of the participant organizations; their inability to subsume particularist agendas; and, a failure to Purchase Export Previous Previous article Next Next article Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution.
Accounting featured prominently in the everyday life and culture of the middle class family in Br... more Accounting featured prominently in the everyday life and culture of the middle class family in Britain during the nineteenth century. T he increasing implementation of accounting techniques in the bourgeois home is considered here in the context of the rationalisation of the household, the threat of insolvency, the prevailing ideology of domesticity, the employment of domestic labour and contemporary systems of household purchasing. It is shown that domestic accounting systems were founded on stewardship and hierarchical accountability and thereby contributed to the operation of masculine domination in the middle class family. Accounting was an instrument for Purchase Export Previous Previous article Next Next article Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution.
Today , uniform cost accounting schemes are no longer in vogue. However in the early part of this... more Today , uniform cost accounting schemes are no longer in vogue. However in the early part of this century they were a salient feature of costing development both in the U. K. and the U. S. A. This paper is concerned with an archival-based study of the earliest and most enduring of the U. K. uniform costing systems-that developed for the printing industry. The focus is not simply on the nature of the costing scheme but on the key factors which initiated and shaped its development. The role of the emergent trade association for the industry and the market (both factor and product) pressures of the time are identified as contingencies associated with the creation and design of the uniform costing system. The use of the new costing system as an informal basis of cartelisation is also explored. The inherent dif ficulties of successfully pursuing cartelisation in the printing sector provide a rationale for the eventual problems which the association experienced in achieving adoption of the costing system by its members. The paper therefore provides a historical analysis of the dynamics of one aspect of management accounting development .
This paper presents the results of an historical study of disruption in professional service firm... more This paper presents the results of an historical study of disruption in professional service firms. The focal disturbance was the labour depletion crisis that arose from the mass enlistment of staff for military and government service during the First World War. The study draws on the surviving archives of military service tribunals, government papers, the records of professional organisations, and contemporary periodicals to perform a micro analysis of disruption in chartered accountancy practices in Edinburgh. The linked concepts of vulnerability, adaptability and resilience are deployed to explore the impacts of the perturbation. The paper identifies the features that rendered accountancy firms more or less susceptible to the harm wrought by the depletion crisis; explores the adaptive activities pursued by practitioners and professional bodies to moderate the impacts of trauma; and reveals how accounting firms absorbed the disturbance and successfully preserved their institutiona...
German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizi... more German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizing events during the twentieth century. This article explores how firms adapted their accounting information systems during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. It suggests that responses to the crisis focused on system elements identified as key to continuing operations. Initially, firms amended selling and purchasing arrangements, modified financial reporting, and shifted managerial reporting to nonmonetary information. As inflation accelerated, human resources were diverted to maintaining critical functions, especially those related to remunerating labor. While some elements of accounting systems fell into disrepair, there were also examples of innovation.
German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizi... more German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizing events during the twentieth century. This article explores how firms adapted their accounting information systems during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. It suggests that responses to the crisis focused on system elements identified as key to continuing operations. Initially, firms amended selling and purchasing arrangements, modified financial reporting, and shifted managerial reporting to nonmonetary information. As inflation accelerated, human resources were diverted to maintaining critical functions, especially those related to remunerating labor. While some elements of accounting systems fell into disrepair, there were also examples of innovation.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organi... more PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organizations played pivotal roles in a governmental programme of housing reconstruction following a major earthquake in central Italy in 2009. Venturing beyond the boundaries of institutional isomorphism and using a Foucauldian approach, the longitudinal analysis seeks to illuminate accounting and performance challenges and provide insights to the calculative techniques associated with evacuee housing.Design/methodology/approachIn “act 1” this paper investigates the role of a consortium created during the recovery stage of the disaster to construct temporary housing. In “act 2” attention shifts to consortia established for the reconstruction of buildings in devastated communities. The total observation period is 11 years. 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 key-actors. A broad range of official documents was also consulted.FindingsIn the immediate aftermath of the earthquake ...
At elections all the ordinary rules of life are suspended, and gentlemen who at any other time wo... more At elections all the ordinary rules of life are suspended, and gentlemen who at any other time would scrutinize the accounts of their servants with the keenest vigilance, refrain from ascertaining whether the published returns include the total of the cheques which they have signed'. (Courtney 1881, 487
In order to facilitate the development of new research agendas, pioneering authors in AOS embarke... more In order to facilitate the development of new research agendas, pioneering authors in AOS embarked on difficult journeys in search of the interconnections between accounting and the social. Contributions such as Burchell et al (1980) located a number of roles of accounting in society and inspired agenda-shifting historical investigations. However, as Hopwood (1985) recognised, the participation of historians in this project requires reinvestments in theoretical and epistemological thinking. This paper encourages renewed explorations of the concepts that might guide accounting history research seeking to probe the social. Such investments are especially pressing given that notions of 'society' and the 'social' have shifted since the early years of AOS. The study charts the problems of connecting accounting and the social, indicates how social historians have addressed similar issues, and reveals the scope for drawing on other notions of the 'social' that have the potential to extend historical understandings of the roles of accounting in society. The latter is illustrated through a discussion of the interactions between accounting and social control.
Historical and contemporary studies continue to question the accountancy profession's commitment ... more Historical and contemporary studies continue to question the accountancy profession's commitment to the public interest. During periods of national trauma, such as total war, the extent of the profession's pursuit of altruism is thrown into sharp relief. Drawing on role theory, the study examines the emergence and resolution of conflicting expectations of public accountants in Britain during the First World War. While it was initially assumed that the national interest was best accomplished by the enlistment of men from accounting practices for military service, practitioners complained that the resulting depletion of labour adversely impacted on the operation of their firms. This role conflict for leaders of the profession was successfully resolved by the constructio n of an expansive redefinition of accountants' contribution to the national interest. The expertise of accountants in taxation and audit was deemed essential to the successful prosecution of the war. A role transition was achieved. Initially identified as contributors of physical manpower on the field of battle, professional accountants became suppliers of essential 'brainpower', exercised within the office space. In this way, the self-interest of practising accountants was reconciled to the nation's object of winning the war.
Recent studies of publication patterns in accounting history portray a myopic and introspective d... more Recent studies of publication patterns in accounting history portray a myopic and introspective discipline. Analyses reveal the production and dissemination of accounting history knowledge which focus predominantly on Anglo-American settings and the age of modernity. Limited opportunities exist for contributions from scholars working in languages other than English. Many of the practitioners of accounting history are also shown to be substantially disconnected from the wider community of historians. It is argued in the current paper that interdisciplinary history has the potential to enhance theoretical and methodological creativity and greater inclusivity in the accounting history academy. A practical requirement for this venture is the identification of points of connectedness between accounting and other historians. An analysis of publications with accounting content in Historical s reveals increasing interest among historians in the history of accounting. This substantial litera...
Drawing on Parkin's (1979) concept of dual closure, this paper examines the attempt to secure the... more Drawing on Parkin's (1979) concept of dual closure, this paper examines the attempt to secure the regulation of the accountancy profession in post-unification Italy. The state's establishment of a class of 'expert accountants' in 1865 represented an imperfect closure of the profession. In consequence, a chain of closure attempts ensued. These ventures involved shifting constructions of dominant and subordinate occupational groups and the deployment of diverse strategies to achieve usurpationary and exclusionary forms of closure. The study reveals that the achievement of state regulation of the profession in 1906 reflected the successful pursuit of usurpationary closure by a subordinated group within the accountancy field. However, it also points to the failure of the profession's efforts to make incursions into the jurisdictions of higher status occupations, especially lawyers, who wielded considerable sociopolitical power in newly unified Italy. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, the paper confirms the complexity and uncertain outcomes of closure projects in the accountancy profession.
This article presents an analysis of the operations of the Peruvian Amazon Company through an acc... more This article presents an analysis of the operations of the Peruvian Amazon Company through an accounting lens. It is suggested that a focus on asset categories augments our knowledge of the company’s exploitation of the land and Indigenous peoples of Amazonia. In particular, the study explores the PAC’s questionable ownership of estates in the Putumayo, what its approach to valuing those estates implied about enslavement, how its treatment of “expenses of conquest” and the inclusion of armaments on the balance sheet indicated the forced subjugation of labor, and how the classification of rubber collectors and their Barbadian overseers as debtors further suggests the practice of debt peonage. Although the findings affirm the utilization of accounting as a facilitator of subjugation, it is shown that in the hands of humanitarians such as Roger Casement, accounting could also be deployed in the pursuit of emancipation.
The paper explores trends in accounting history in the immediate aftermath of what has been descr... more The paper explores trends in accounting history in the immediate aftermath of what has been described as the”golden 1990s”. Recent developments in the subjects of accounting history research are identified. Areas of declining and expanding research activity are discussed as well as changes within established themes and new areas of interest. Challenges confronting the accounting history research community, such as limited interdisciplinary engagement, the “Anglo-Saxon” hegemony and variations in the status of the craft in different nations, are also considered.
Stephen P. Walker and Falconer Mitchell (eds.), Trade Associations and Uniform Costing in the Bri... more Stephen P. Walker and Falconer Mitchell (eds.), Trade Associations and Uniform Costing in the British Printing Industry, 19001963 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997, 216 pp., $55) Reviewed by Gary P. Spraakman York University The authors state their purpose, viz.: This book documents a highly significant development in the history of costing practice in the U.K. - the uniform costing system designed for the members of the British Federation of Master Printers . . during the early twentieth century. Shortly after the launch of the printers' system, industry based uniform costing schemes became popular in the U.K. From 1913 to 1939, 26 such systems appeared, covering key industrial sectors . .. Thus uniform costing technology was potentially a prime influence on early twentieth century costing practice in several industries [p. v]. That purpose gets addressed with four sections based almost entirely on reproduced historical documents from the British Federation of Master Printers (BFMP) and related organizations. The book is actually a bundle of primary documents tied together with an introduction of 14 pages, four one-page section overviews, and a two-page postscript. Although these are important documents for the intended purpose, it was unexpected to be presented with them. In view of their stated purpose, the authors should have incorporated the 50 articles into a coherent analysis rather than reproducing them. BFMP's system of uniform cost accounting was intended to provide U.K. printers with accurate costs which, in turn, were expected to reduce competition and increase profitability. In the introduction the authors briefly describe the geneses of uniform costing and the forces that affected it. Most importantly, they discuss the economic conditions that encouraged the members of the BFMP to seek uniform costing as a means of combating fierce price competition. The assumption was that, if printers knew their "true" costs, prices would rise. The first section, "The Emergence of a Costing Panacea," traces the uniform costing system from 1873 to 1912. The major document themes are the importance of accounting records, cost accounting, and pricing. In one document, "An A.B.C. System of Cost-Keeping," the authors refer to a complete set of books that was "in the room." As those books and forms were "in the room" and not in the book as an attachment, a large part of that document made little sense to a reader The second section, "The Launch of Uniform Costing," presents documents from the 1913 Cost Congress of the BFMP where the uniform costing system was presented to 1,200 attendees. Some of the documents were transcriptions of actual speeches and subsequently punctuated with audience comments in brackets, e.g., "here, here," "loud here, here's," and "loud laughter." Accordingly, documents often contained substantial rhetoric. One important document, "The System Explained," from the first day of the Congress, referred to forms which had been excluded from the book. "The Costing System" was the title of the third section. …
The critical tradition in accounting historiography has come to occupy a prominent place in the d... more The critical tradition in accounting historiography has come to occupy a prominent place in the discipline’s academic scholarship. Some critical literature has confronted the responsibility of accounting and accountants in precipitating contemporary crises, such as the audit failures that spawned Sarbanes-Oxley and the world-wide recession. Certain contemporary issues have long histories, such as the difficulties encountered by women to break the glass ceiling in public accounting, and the suffering of indigenous peoples under the imperialistic yoke. Other episodes in accounting’s long history are seemingly more divorced from the present, but in reality they all have contemporary significance. Slavery in the New World, for example, although abolished more than a century ago, is still rampant in parts of the world, albeit less formally. Critical accounting historians feel it a duty to harken to the "suppressed voices" of the past, those groups of people who had no access to an accounting record – women, persons of color, indigenous populations, alienated proletarians, victims of governmental incompetence and graft, and many voiceless others. Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era draws on the foremost work in this developing literature, both that authored by the co-editors of this volume, and that written by others. Editors Richard K. Fleischman, Warwick N. Funnell, and Steve Walker have written extensively about "the dark side of accounting," gauging the complicity of those performing accounting functions in episodes in human history that are at worst evil and at best reprehensible. The editors have also hand-selected a series of historical and contemporary episodes that have been critically investigated by the wider accounting history community, preceded by a thorough introduction.
Published reports on censuses of population and the surviving enumeration books on which they wer... more Published reports on censuses of population and the surviving enumeration books on which they were based are key sources for accounting historians. The increasing availability of electronic versions of census enumeration books (CEBs) for Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. offers opportunities for better understanding the history of occupations concerned with the performance of accounting functions. However, census reports and original census documents must be interpreted critically. The paper reports on a study of accountants appearing in the transcribed version of the British CEBs for 1881. It is shown how the published census underreported the number of accountants in Britain and suggests that there are potential inconsistencies in the manner in which accountants were counted. While accounting historians may rely on the high level of accuracy in transcribed versions of the CEBs, transcription errors have been discovered in relation to female accountants, those pursuing occupations spe...
During the period of total war and its aftermath, profound changes occurred in the socioeconomic ... more During the period of total war and its aftermath, profound changes occurred in the socioeconomic and political fabric of Britain. In the face of fundamental change and national crisis the multi-organized accountancy profession was perceived as being archaic and demands emerged for the reform of its institutions. T he paper discusses the attempt to coordinate the profession during the 1940s in the context of the wartime discourse on reconstruction. T he analysis is conducted within a paradigm appropriate to the period and locale of the subject: British corporatism. It is revealed that a peak organization to represent the profession before central government was successfully instituted in the form of a Coordinating Committee. However, an attempt by the Committee to unify the profession behind legislation to secure a legal monopoly of public practice failed due to: the inappropriateness of the constitutional structures of the participant organizations; their inability to subsume particularist agendas; and, a failure to Purchase Export Previous Previous article Next Next article Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution.
Accounting featured prominently in the everyday life and culture of the middle class family in Br... more Accounting featured prominently in the everyday life and culture of the middle class family in Britain during the nineteenth century. T he increasing implementation of accounting techniques in the bourgeois home is considered here in the context of the rationalisation of the household, the threat of insolvency, the prevailing ideology of domesticity, the employment of domestic labour and contemporary systems of household purchasing. It is shown that domestic accounting systems were founded on stewardship and hierarchical accountability and thereby contributed to the operation of masculine domination in the middle class family. Accounting was an instrument for Purchase Export Previous Previous article Next Next article Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution.
Today , uniform cost accounting schemes are no longer in vogue. However in the early part of this... more Today , uniform cost accounting schemes are no longer in vogue. However in the early part of this century they were a salient feature of costing development both in the U. K. and the U. S. A. This paper is concerned with an archival-based study of the earliest and most enduring of the U. K. uniform costing systems-that developed for the printing industry. The focus is not simply on the nature of the costing scheme but on the key factors which initiated and shaped its development. The role of the emergent trade association for the industry and the market (both factor and product) pressures of the time are identified as contingencies associated with the creation and design of the uniform costing system. The use of the new costing system as an informal basis of cartelisation is also explored. The inherent dif ficulties of successfully pursuing cartelisation in the printing sector provide a rationale for the eventual problems which the association experienced in achieving adoption of the costing system by its members. The paper therefore provides a historical analysis of the dynamics of one aspect of management accounting development .
This paper presents the results of an historical study of disruption in professional service firm... more This paper presents the results of an historical study of disruption in professional service firms. The focal disturbance was the labour depletion crisis that arose from the mass enlistment of staff for military and government service during the First World War. The study draws on the surviving archives of military service tribunals, government papers, the records of professional organisations, and contemporary periodicals to perform a micro analysis of disruption in chartered accountancy practices in Edinburgh. The linked concepts of vulnerability, adaptability and resilience are deployed to explore the impacts of the perturbation. The paper identifies the features that rendered accountancy firms more or less susceptible to the harm wrought by the depletion crisis; explores the adaptive activities pursued by practitioners and professional bodies to moderate the impacts of trauma; and reveals how accounting firms absorbed the disturbance and successfully preserved their institutiona...
German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizi... more German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizing events during the twentieth century. This article explores how firms adapted their accounting information systems during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. It suggests that responses to the crisis focused on system elements identified as key to continuing operations. Initially, firms amended selling and purchasing arrangements, modified financial reporting, and shifted managerial reporting to nonmonetary information. As inflation accelerated, human resources were diverted to maintaining critical functions, especially those related to remunerating labor. While some elements of accounting systems fell into disrepair, there were also examples of innovation.
German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizi... more German corporations are characterized as having been adaptable in the face of numerous traumatizing events during the twentieth century. This article explores how firms adapted their accounting information systems during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. It suggests that responses to the crisis focused on system elements identified as key to continuing operations. Initially, firms amended selling and purchasing arrangements, modified financial reporting, and shifted managerial reporting to nonmonetary information. As inflation accelerated, human resources were diverted to maintaining critical functions, especially those related to remunerating labor. While some elements of accounting systems fell into disrepair, there were also examples of innovation.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organi... more PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organizations played pivotal roles in a governmental programme of housing reconstruction following a major earthquake in central Italy in 2009. Venturing beyond the boundaries of institutional isomorphism and using a Foucauldian approach, the longitudinal analysis seeks to illuminate accounting and performance challenges and provide insights to the calculative techniques associated with evacuee housing.Design/methodology/approachIn “act 1” this paper investigates the role of a consortium created during the recovery stage of the disaster to construct temporary housing. In “act 2” attention shifts to consortia established for the reconstruction of buildings in devastated communities. The total observation period is 11 years. 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 key-actors. A broad range of official documents was also consulted.FindingsIn the immediate aftermath of the earthquake ...
At elections all the ordinary rules of life are suspended, and gentlemen who at any other time wo... more At elections all the ordinary rules of life are suspended, and gentlemen who at any other time would scrutinize the accounts of their servants with the keenest vigilance, refrain from ascertaining whether the published returns include the total of the cheques which they have signed'. (Courtney 1881, 487
In order to facilitate the development of new research agendas, pioneering authors in AOS embarke... more In order to facilitate the development of new research agendas, pioneering authors in AOS embarked on difficult journeys in search of the interconnections between accounting and the social. Contributions such as Burchell et al (1980) located a number of roles of accounting in society and inspired agenda-shifting historical investigations. However, as Hopwood (1985) recognised, the participation of historians in this project requires reinvestments in theoretical and epistemological thinking. This paper encourages renewed explorations of the concepts that might guide accounting history research seeking to probe the social. Such investments are especially pressing given that notions of 'society' and the 'social' have shifted since the early years of AOS. The study charts the problems of connecting accounting and the social, indicates how social historians have addressed similar issues, and reveals the scope for drawing on other notions of the 'social' that have the potential to extend historical understandings of the roles of accounting in society. The latter is illustrated through a discussion of the interactions between accounting and social control.
Historical and contemporary studies continue to question the accountancy profession's commitment ... more Historical and contemporary studies continue to question the accountancy profession's commitment to the public interest. During periods of national trauma, such as total war, the extent of the profession's pursuit of altruism is thrown into sharp relief. Drawing on role theory, the study examines the emergence and resolution of conflicting expectations of public accountants in Britain during the First World War. While it was initially assumed that the national interest was best accomplished by the enlistment of men from accounting practices for military service, practitioners complained that the resulting depletion of labour adversely impacted on the operation of their firms. This role conflict for leaders of the profession was successfully resolved by the constructio n of an expansive redefinition of accountants' contribution to the national interest. The expertise of accountants in taxation and audit was deemed essential to the successful prosecution of the war. A role transition was achieved. Initially identified as contributors of physical manpower on the field of battle, professional accountants became suppliers of essential 'brainpower', exercised within the office space. In this way, the self-interest of practising accountants was reconciled to the nation's object of winning the war.
Recent studies of publication patterns in accounting history portray a myopic and introspective d... more Recent studies of publication patterns in accounting history portray a myopic and introspective discipline. Analyses reveal the production and dissemination of accounting history knowledge which focus predominantly on Anglo-American settings and the age of modernity. Limited opportunities exist for contributions from scholars working in languages other than English. Many of the practitioners of accounting history are also shown to be substantially disconnected from the wider community of historians. It is argued in the current paper that interdisciplinary history has the potential to enhance theoretical and methodological creativity and greater inclusivity in the accounting history academy. A practical requirement for this venture is the identification of points of connectedness between accounting and other historians. An analysis of publications with accounting content in Historical s reveals increasing interest among historians in the history of accounting. This substantial litera...
Drawing on Parkin's (1979) concept of dual closure, this paper examines the attempt to secure the... more Drawing on Parkin's (1979) concept of dual closure, this paper examines the attempt to secure the regulation of the accountancy profession in post-unification Italy. The state's establishment of a class of 'expert accountants' in 1865 represented an imperfect closure of the profession. In consequence, a chain of closure attempts ensued. These ventures involved shifting constructions of dominant and subordinate occupational groups and the deployment of diverse strategies to achieve usurpationary and exclusionary forms of closure. The study reveals that the achievement of state regulation of the profession in 1906 reflected the successful pursuit of usurpationary closure by a subordinated group within the accountancy field. However, it also points to the failure of the profession's efforts to make incursions into the jurisdictions of higher status occupations, especially lawyers, who wielded considerable sociopolitical power in newly unified Italy. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, the paper confirms the complexity and uncertain outcomes of closure projects in the accountancy profession.
Uploads
Papers by Stephen Walker