Irish accounting, business and financial history: a bibliographical essay

Historians have engaged with accounting and business archives primarily in the areas of social and economic history. While much economic and social history draws on macro-economic data, micro-level sources have cast new light on old historical problems such as the Great Famine (1845-51) and the development of trade in Ireland and between Ireland and abroad. This paper traces the contributions of historians of Ireland to our understanding of accounting, business and financial history and maps out potential areas of research for accounting and business historians in the light of earlier and current trends in historical research. Adopting a historians' perspective, the paper will also provide a historical background and suggest potential bibliographical and archival sources to present and future accounting and business historians with a view to enhancing and enriching our understanding of the context in which accounting and business is situated in Ireland.     

论企业年金会计主体

企业年金作为一项新兴的社会保障制度越来越受到我国的关注和重视,对企业年金进行会计研究在我国只是刚刚起步。本文从会计主体角度研究企业年金,关键是从会计理论基础和企业年金制度如何有机结合,如何从企业年金的根本出发点进行会计相关的理论和实务研究,提出适合企业年金制度发展的会计主体理论。     

仰望会计星空 静思会计发展

会计理论需要脚踏实地,更要仰望星空。仰望会计星空,时刻不忘会计本性,可以对会计理论与实践发挥动态矫正作用。会计如何切实履行人类经济文明进步导航仪与守护神的历史使命,东西方已有的会计实践已积累的丰富的经验与教训。认真面对并冷静分析现代会计发展至今的历史,审视中国传统会计所体现的独特风格,从而沉着应对信息化崭新社会、技术环境对会计发展形成的现实挑战。在中华民族伟大复兴实践中实现中国"会计强国"之梦,必须虔诚仰望会计星空,方能赢得中国会计发展的大政方略共识。     

Domesday book: An early fiscal,accounting narrative?

Domesday Book is one of the most important documents in English history. It has been much studied by social, economic and institutional historians. At its heart it is an accounting document. Domesday Book of 1086 is regarded as a landmark in accounting history, primarily because it heralded a written system of government accounting in England. It introduced an administrative framework from which eventually the English Exchequer and charge and discharge accounting evolved. Domesday Book was compiled during one of the most significant periods in English History just after the Conquest of England by William I. It reflected new King's need to consolidate his power. The purpose of this article is to examine Domesday Book as an historical accounting record, concentrating in particular, on one shire: Herefordshire. It shows how Domesday Book provided the king with comprehensive information about individual landowning and taxable capacity. In addition, Domesday Book is contextualised within the social and economic conditions of the time. Domesday Book is shown to be a device for royal consolidation, a political expression of royal power and a vehicle to raise taxes. It also provided the administrative and territorial basis upon which the Exchequer's embryonic disciplinary power could be developed.     

The Public Policy Debate on Investors' Need for Disclosure Regulation: Accounting Historians' Help Wanted?*/ LE DÉBAT PUBLIC SUR LES BESOINS DES INVESTISSEURS EN MATIÈRE DE RÉGLEMENTATION DE L'INFORMATION: FAUT‐IL L'AIDE DES HISTORIENS DE LA COMPTABILITÉ?

This paper explores how research in accounting history can contribute to the important public policy debate regarding investors' need for disclosure regulation. Accounting, finance, and economics researchers and practitioners argue for, as well as against, disclosure regulation. The debate remains theoretical, however, because empirical studies are virtually nonexistent. This paper reviews five contexts in which accounting historians can begin a search for empirical insights concerning the costs, benefits, externalities, and effects on stakeholders of disclosure regulation. The paper's investigation of the accounting history literature suggests that accounting historians could improve the quality of the debate and help accommodate broader interests or alternative solutions to financial crises.     

An Interpretive Inquiry of Accounting Practices in Religious Organisations

This paper reports the study of accounting practices as embedded in two religious organisations in Malaysia. The research is an attempt to study accounting practices in a cultural setting that has not been the subject of previous interpretive accounting research. The study also makes a contribution towards the need for accounting research to become more explanatory of accounting as social practice wherein theory is both informed, and is developed by observation. This is achieved by developing grounded theory from the data and is in accordance with recent calls for case studies in accounting research to be more concerned with producing social theories of accounting practice.     

Exploring accounting history and accounting in history

Accounting history, as the history of accounting and the consideration of accounting in history, provides insight into an understanding of accounting in the past, for the present, and into the future. Whilst often viewed as a routine, rule driven practice, the accounting history discipline recognises accounting as having a much wider pervasiveness as social practice and even moral practice. As social practice, accounting affects individual, organisational and societal behaviour. This collection of articles demonstrates the importance of looking at history to provide context and illustrates that understandings of the past lead to comprehension of the present and foresight for the future. The articles in this special issue, international in essence, epitomise the diversity of the accounting history field in exploring accounting in diverse organisations, in investigating accounting in its wider context and in employing different theoretical approaches. In considering the accounting phenomenon that occurred, there is additionally the insight of that which did not occur, the relevance of past events and non-events as an ingredient to better understanding the present and to potentially reshaping the future.The articles explore of the role of actors/agents around accounting and organisational change, how key individuals and networks of individuals, can influence others, both within and external to the organisation, to enact change or prevent change in areas where accounting contributes. It is suggested that these studies could be extended, to consider more widely the influence of the interaction of individuals via prosopographical or similar studies. This collection of articles has global reach, and we make an additional call for more international, interactional or comparative approaches to studies in accounting history. Accounting history studies can further investigate organisational contexts and situations, exploring reporting internally and externally to the organisation and informing current and future accounting and related practices.     

Institutionalising XBRL for financial reporting: resorting to regulation

By integrating and streamlining financial information within and among various organisations, eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) has been developed with a view to enhancing the efficiency, accuracy, and transparency of corporate accounting information. Taking an inter-organisational focus, this paper investigates the process of how XBRL was institutionalised. It explains and offers insights on how institutional arrangements emerge and become relevant as heterogeneous organisations consider adopting accounting innovations while evidence concerning their benefits is unavailable. The original and overall contribution of this study is that it improves current understanding of coal-face actors' perceptions, behaviours, and strategies as they interact in the organisational field and become engaged in developing accounting innovations to produce the macro-level observations documented in existing institutional theory studies.     

The validity of management accounting language games – A pragmatic constructive perspective

To support the development of a pragmatic practice-based theory for management accounting, practice theory offers valuable avenues for understanding the development, role, and effects of tools and techniques used by practitioners. Scholars have identified communication as a critical dimension for analysis, as discourse can govern the production of knowledge and power structures. However, previous research has mainly focused on the role of actors within static environments; how actors justify their actions and goals, compared with other actors; and how they are aligned with or justify new practices relative to existing practices. The pragmatic constructivist framework that underpins this special issue builds on this research but recognises that previous research has paid little attention to how people—when interacting within a dynamic environment—develop and create new types of constructive causality. Importantly, the necessary conditions for people's actions to construct what they intend to remain largely unexplored. Pragmatic constructivism is founded on the recognition that any theory of management accounting must include conceptual devices representing the notion of success, as well as techniques for evaluating the truth aptness of local practices of reality construction, such as those represented by managemen accounting. This special issue aims to theoretically and empirically explore the potential in management accounting for the measurement and governance of constructed causality. The central topic is the role of management accounting in supporting individual and collective actors to effectively construct causal chains that make organisations work. The three articles in this special issue adopt different approaches to combining the pragmatic constructivist framework with additional theoretical frameworks, as well as using different research methodologies. The papers' findings point to the importance of co-authorship in the creation of functioning organisational practices, and suggest that this might be threatened by information technology. Co-authorship involves language games in the form of dialogical interaction between the accountants and other involved actors. This process develops a shared understanding anchored in a fusion of conceptual models that is tied to individual collaborators' local practice.     

The change on the foundations of the Turkish accounting system and the future perspective

Accounting is a social construct and shaped by the society in which it operates. Needs of society are the most important influencing factors in the development of accounting in a country. Though in today's open system societies, the change in the accounting is inevitable, it should not be forgotten that accounting is not only a practice but also a discipline which has got theoretical and historical backgrounds. In this regard, this paper notes the changes in Turkish accounting system from the theoretical and historical perspectives.     

Enhancing the Accessibility of Accounting and Business Archives: The Role of Technology in Informing Research in Accounting and Business

The application of advanced digitization technologies to accounting and business archives has created new opportunities for accounting and business historians. The joint American Accounting Association and European Accounting Association Task Force (2006–2010) that examined digitization confirmed this. This paper explores these opportunities, along with some attendant challenges and cautions, with reference to the digitization of two significant archives located in Australia. The first is the archive of CPA Australia, a professional accounting association that has its beginnings in 1886 and which today has over 132,000 members. The second is the archive accumulated by the pre‐eminent accounting scholar Raymond Chambers during his long and extraordinarily productive tenure at the University of Sydney. Studies of surviving business records, biography and institutional history provide examples of scholarship that is enabled by digitization technology and which has the capacity to inform contemporary issues and debates.     

Concepts of cost and profit in Chinese agricultural treatises: with special reference to Shengshi Nongshu and Pu Nongshu in the seventeenth century

This article analyses the use of the concepts of cost and profit in Chinese agricultural treatises. Special attention is given to the agricultural works Shengshi Nongshu and Pu Nongshu in the seventeenth century. The analysis shows how Chinese people applied the concepts of cost and profit to agricultural production. This paper also analyses the reasons for the lack of further progress of Chinese accounting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It concludes that Chinese accounting reached its peak in the Ming and Qing dynasties under a feudal framework and that accounting development has been strongly associated and constrained by its social environment, including political and cultural constraints.     

New development: Managing and accounting for sustainable development across generations in public services—and call for papers

Social and environmental justice across generations is a fundamental attribute of sustainable development. In this article, which is also a call for papers for a future theme in Public Money & Management (PMM), we develop our case for further research on how governments and public service organizations seek to address sustainable development in their decision-making processes. We believe that accounting for social and environmental aspects is an underdeveloped area of research and practice that is worthy of further critical enquiry. We therefore call on researchers and practitioners to submit their research to a themed issue of PMM on managing and accounting for sustainable development in public services.     

The Evolution of Bookkeeping in China: Integrating Historical Trends with Western Influences

This article reviews the development of Chinese single-entry bookkeeping, the emergence of Chinese double-entry bookkeeping and evolutionary trends from single entry to double entry. It identifies the invention and basic nature of Chinese double-entry methods which have reflected cultural changes from within the society. Given this historical perspective, conclusions are drawn about the nature of social and economic change in China and the impact of outside cultural influences. Of particular importance to the timing of progress is the primitive form of double entry entitled Three Feet. This had its gestation about the same time as European innovations were occurring in response to economic and cultural changes which sponsored bookkeeping methods as described by Pacioli. A critical question for examination at present is whether cultural evolution in China can yet support complete integration of its own accounting principles and fundamental philosophies with Western accounting methods. This has proved to be difficult in the past.     

Cost accounting standard and cost accounting systems in Japan. Lessons from the past - recovering lost traditions

This paper aims to show two things. The first is how Japanese culture has contributed to the development of Japanese cost accounting history. The second is to reveal the research possibilities of cost accounting history. This paper also reviews the salient features of several important examples of these aspects of cost accounting practice in Japan. It therefore explores, through some practical illustrations, how and why Japanese cost accounting differs from that found in the West.     

Social and environmental accounting,organisational change and management accounting: A processual view

Consistent with calls for in-depth studies of social and environmental accounting and reporting (SEAR) intervention (Bebbington, 2007, Fraser, 2012, Contrafatto, 2012), our paper focuses on the interrelationship between organisational change and SEAR practices, as well as the involvement of management accounting in such organisational dynamics. Drawing insight from both Laughlin (1991) and Burns and Scapens’ (2000) theoretical frameworks, we explore the processes of change through which SEAR practices become elevated to strategising status, in the context of broader organisational and extra-organisational developments, but we also illuminate how institutionalised assumptions of profit-seeking limit the extent to which broader sustainability concerns become infused into day-to-day business practice. Our paper highlights the importance of management accounting in facilitating and shaping the cumulative path of SEAR practices (and sustainability more generally); however, we also heed caution against uncritical reliance upon conventional management accounting tools. The following paper extends our understanding of SEAR practices as cumulative process over time, an awareness of the potential limits to such developments in profit-seeking organisations, and stresses a need to be circumspect when involving management accounting.     

Career growth opportunities and employee turnover intentions in public accounting firms

This study examines the role of career growth opportunities in explaining turnover intentions of junior auditors in public accounting firms via a survey of them. Prior studies in applied psychology and organisational behaviour argue that employees and their organisations have a social exchange relationship in which employees and organisations provide reciprocal benefits to each other. Extending this research, this paper proposes that career growth opportunities represent a critical benefit to lower level employees in accounting firms. When these employees believe that their firm provides this benefit, they reciprocate with stronger commitment to the firm which, in turn, leads to lower turnover intentions. This study also seeks to identify the causes or antecedents of employee beliefs about career growth opportunities. Two antecedents are proposed: the effectiveness of the firm's training programmes; and, the organisational prestige of the firm. Results of path analysis suggest that both training effectiveness and organisational prestige enhance employee beliefs about the career growth opportunities offered by the public accounting firms, which, in turn lead to higher commitment and lower turnover intentions.     

CRITICAL THEORY AND ACCOUNTING HISTORY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

This paper briefly examines the contributions that postmodern (critical) research has made to the historical accounting literature and the opportunities that this new body of literature has created for traditional historical researchers. I suggest that the “new history” that has rendered the “familiar strange” has provided new understanding of our discipline that should be welcomed by all historians. The paper briefly examines two areas, the emergence of double entry bookkeeping and cost accounting, to demonstrate the new insights that critical historians have provided to what has been considered a settled agenda. I conclude by noting that the diversity critical research has added to the accounting history research should be celebrated, but caution that we not engage in the modernist strategy of trying to find a “certified path to knowledge.” Accounting history will be enhanced if our community adopts the values–tolerance, willingness to listen, and respect for alternative views–ithat have enabled researchers in other disciplines to flourish.     

Budgetary change at a university: A narrative inquiry

This paper reports the results of a qualitative case study of an Australian University's implementation of a new budget model. To inform our research, we developed a theoretical framework by drawing from neo-institutional sociology, old institutional economics and technical-rational choice. A narrative inquiry was employed to elicit the stories of participants' experiences of the budgetary change in its socio-political and institutional contexts. Through this narrative inquiry, we depart from prior institutional management accounting change studies which have presented change steered by external pressures for conformity and/or legitimacy. Our study shows how budgeting, as a management accounting tool, can be viewed as a rational myth conferring social legitimacy upon organisational participants and their actions. Further, we demonstrate that the emergence of a new management accounting practice is attributed to the demands of technical-rational imperatives, and the existence of internal rationalised dynamics and norms. We highlight and analyse the role and ability of organisational actors to create budgetary change in an institutionalised higher education environment.