Abstract
The February 2020 issue is the first to be produced under the new joint editors. We would like to take the opportunity to thank our predecessors as editors of Accounting History, Brian West and Garry Carnegie, for their leadership of the journal over a 25-year period. There are seven articles in this issue written by authors drawn from Australia, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and the United Kingdom that cover a variety of time periods (377 BCE to 1955), geographic locations (Australia, Ceylon, Japan, Italy and New Zealand) and contexts.
The first four articles all, at some point, encompass accounting within the medieval period. The first article, by Kumarasinghe and Samkin, examines how kings in Ceylon used stone inscriptions between 377 BCE and the late sixteenth century to ensure that they presented a positive or favourable impression of themselves to those they ruled. The authors argue that these stone inscriptions acted as an intimidatory impression management strategy, which promoted a particular view of their activities to their subjects including the social work undertaken, the utilisation taxes and the donations made to social and educational institutions.
Still with a focus on Asia, Sankoji explores how accounting is used to exert power in a religious context by examining the income and expenditure reports of the Komyo-ko-gata of the Buddhist Toji Temple in Japan from 1427 to 1532. Sankoji employs both synchronic and diachronic analytical approaches and Giddens’ structuration theory to examine the relationship between power and accounting. The research reveals that the most important purposes that the income and expenditure reports fulfilled were the documenting of loans and the enforcement of a ‘one-tenth’ policy. The accounting system also promoted the preservation of non-hierarchical relationships and the lending operations to ensure the survival of the organisation.
Similarly, in the middle ages, Adamo, Alexander and Fasiello consider the relationship between time, commercial activities and accounting information, utilising the medieval Italian socio-economic context. The main objective of their article is to comprehend and clarify how, when and why accounting periodical information was implemented and developed in Italy. They encourage others to consider the importance of the concept of time in their research.
In another medieval, fourteenth-century study, Gurskaya, Kuter and Sangster explore the formation of a profit reserve in a merchant’s (Francesco di Marco Datini) accounting records between 1392 and 1400. Employing logical–analytical modelling, the authors examine the introduction and use of the reserve accounting in the Pisa (Italy) ledger and the changes made to the reserve entries and the way the account was used during the period of study.
The last three articles in this issue focus on the lives of people, either as an individual or as a group. The fifth article, by Vidwans and Cohen, examines Goldin’s argument that the character of female labour force involvement has moved from evolution in the work they did to a continuing revolution in what they do. As such, Vidwans and Cohen investigate how a group of New Zealand accounting professionals have redesigned their careers and restructured their lives by making slight changes that cannot be classified as either transformational or revolutionary. The changes they did make were influenced by social and institutional forces and in the main, re-confirmed traditional career patterns and, to some extent, gender role expectations. They conclude that Goldin’s revolution has yet to be achieved in the context of the accounting profession.
The sixth article is a biography by Masiero. The article evaluates how economist and landowner, Leone Wollemborg (1859–1932), employed face-to-face narrative accountability to manage impressions and obtain the trust and engagement of potential external stakeholders to help fund rural credit cooperatives – a new organisational model that Wollemborg had developed and implemented to solve the credit issue affecting the northern Italian rural population. Masiero argues that Wollemborg was an individual, who, through his actions, made a difference within his own social context by being an ‘accountable self’.
The last article, by Cobbin and Burrows, is also biographical and examines the lifelong career of Sir Edwin Van-Der-Vord Nixon, who played a key role in the development of the accounting profession in Australia between the 1890s and the mid-1940s. This study explores Sir Edwin Van-Der-Vord Nixon’s contribution to the seminal events that underlie the emergence of accounting in Australia to its advanced state of professionalisation by the end of World War II. It also details his personal characteristics that allowed him to be part of those events and outlines his life as a practicing accountant, an accounting educator at the University of Melbourne and a member of a variety of government appointments.