Cash and accrual: A dual system of accountability for salient stakeholders by the first Italian higher school of commerce

Abstract

This study considers the accountability practices implemented in the first schools of commerce to effectively communicate with stakeholders. Specifically, it analyses the initial system of accountability implemented by the first Italian higher school of commerce in the nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the use of cash and accrual methods. The microhistorical analysis draws on accountability and stakeholder theories and uses both primary and secondary information sources to investigate the original, hybrid approach adopted by the school, focusing on its dual accountability system. The results section explains the involvement of the government in establishing and recognising the school as a strategic asset for the entire kingdom, contradicting criticisms present in the extant literature; we also examine the innovative accountability process implemented by the school to satisfy the reporting needs of its salient stakeholders. The school was able to apply its accountability competences to implement a dual system, preserving its priorities as based on the relationships between its stakeholders’ needs (the old accountability system), educational skills (teaching the new accountability system) and the wider (national) implications resulting in an improvement of the entire accountability system.

Keywords

accountability stakeholder salience higher school of commerce microhistorical analysis cash accounting accrual accounting

Introduction

A recent stream of historical research has increasingly focused on accountability relationships and the practices of non-owned organisations (i.e. ‘organisations in the nonprofit and public sectors’, Fowler and Cordery, 2015: 128), especially emphasising the need for historical studies on the use of accountability mechanisms implemented in such entities to effectively communicate with stakeholders (Bisman, 2012; Carmona and Ezzamel, 2006; Sargiacomo and Gomes, 2011). This stream of research has been mainly oriented to the analysis of religious organisations. Only a few contributions have focused on the practices, mechanisms and changes related to accountability in education institutions and schools, which only highlights the fact that they remain relatively under-researched in the accounting history literature (Sian et al., 2020). Specifically, those works analysed the evolution of accounting systems in Italian kindergartens (the so-called Asili di Carità, Verona, nineteenth century, in Moggi et al., 2016; Sian et al., 2020) and in primary education at the time of the settlements of Nelson (New Zealand, mid-nineteenth century, in Fowler, 2010; Fowler and Cordery, 2015). Focusing on the accounting history literature on education institutions and schools, Rodrigues et al. (2004, 2007) emphasised the great importance of putting the statutes, practices and curricula of schools of commerce under the microscope. The historical analysis of these schools’ establishment enhances our understanding of how accounting and commercial knowledge developed in Europe in the nineteenth century (Passant, 2019). A few recent studies have considered their different statutes and their first curricula, but no works, as far as we are aware, have analysed the initial accountability mechanisms implemented by the schools of commerce to effectively communicate with stakeholders. The present article aims to fill this gap and focus on such practices, which were both taught and applied by the schools of commerce (Engwall et al., 2010). It answers two calls for historical studies: the first regarding the use of accountability practices implemented in education institutions to effectively communicate with stakeholders (Fowler, 2010; Fowler and Cordery, 2015; Moggi et al., 2016; Sian et al., 2020) and the second concerning the first European schools of commerce (Passant, 2016, 2019; Rodrigues et al., 2004, 2007). The study adopts a microhistorical approach to provide insights into the accounting reporting and conventions implemented by one of the first European schools of commerce (as emphasised in Kaplan, 2014) and the first higher school of commerce in Italy: the Royal Higher School of Commerce, or Regia Scuola Superiore di Commercio (hereafter, the School). The School was established in Venice in 1868 (Royal Decree [R.D.] dated 6 August 1868, no. 4530) at the request of the main local public administration bodies and the newly unified Italian state. In revealing the School's founding and implementation of peculiar accountability practices, our analysis reveals both the accountability competences and the importance of stakeholders’ informational needs at the time of the first schools of commerce. To address these objectives, the study investigates the system of accountability that the School conceived and developed to satisfy the reporting needs of its stakeholders in the first few years after its establishment. It draws on both structured literature reviews and archival searches. The former provides valuable sources of information to examine how previous authoritative literature dealt with the topic of this article, and emphasises the contribution of the present study. The latter provides evidence and permits the implementation of a historical microanalysis, integrating both primary and secondary sources. In this way, the study provides both narrative and interpretational historical research (Previts et al., 1990; Scott et al., 2003). It examines the School's accounting reports (from its establishment in 1868 up to 1873) as well as its events and conventions (as narrative history), relating such accounting practices and events to the School's propensity to satisfy its stakeholders’ informational needs, recalling the theory of stakeholder influences (as interpretational history).

The rest of the article is organised as follows. After a methodological description of the research background, the study outlines the historical context, the founders and the events at the time of the School's establishment. This is followed by a presentation and analysis of the School's accounting reports and practices. The results of these detailed investigations of the archival sources retrieved, according to the theoretical background and the context in which they were kept, emphasise the School's introduction of a peculiar dual system of accountability to respond to its stakeholders’ informational needs. The final part of the article presents a number of concluding remarks.

Research method

The methodology implemented in the study includes both structured literature reviews and archival searches. First, we carried out two systematic literature reviews¹ in order to examine how previous authoritative literature dealt with the issue under investigation, to highlight any gaps left unresolved and to emphasise the need for the present study. Second, we used the evidence provided by the archival searches concerning the case under examination to conduct a more thorough analysis. Microhistory provides an opportunity to study retrieved informational sources supplemented by relevant literature to provide deep insights into individuals and events (Carnegie and Walker, 2007), involving a reduced scale of observation and bringing out some neglected ‘little facts’ of history (Szijártó, 2002). The adoption of such a microhistorical approach requires retrieving and reviewing all available information sources and integrating primary and secondary ones together (Agostini and Favero, 2017; Fellman and Rahikainen, 2012; Magnússon and Szíjártó, 2013; Williams, 1999). For this article, the primary sources reflect all available information sources retrieved² on the School and the original decrees issued by the Italian government; secondary sources include the few pertinent studies (Agostini and Sostero, 2018; Berengo, 1989; Coronella and Sattin, 2018) that have sought to describe the establishment of the School. The information in them corroborates our interpretations of the primary sources (Scott, 1990; Yin, 2014). Here, they provide evidence of the leading, pioneering role of the School in accounting development (Berengo, 1989; Ferraris Franceschi, 2012; Mills, 1994). With regard to the primary sources, the main document used in this study is the first report prepared by the School, entitled ‘Management Report from August 1868 to March 1873’. It was retrieved from the Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice. Hereafter referred to simply as the Report, it is unique; no similar reports issued by the School over the subsequent 25 years are available. Moreover, no similar reports were issued in the same period by other European higher schools of commerce, to the best of our knowledge. Other primary sources, listed at the end of the article, include documents prepared for the chartering of the School. In particular, the Statute (1868) was published in the Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Italy 225/1868 and subsequently referred to in other documents concerning the School's establishment (Regulations, 1868). It was the first official document regarding the functioning rules of the School. These rules, particularly those related to accounting procedures, were implemented by the Governance (1870), published in the Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Italy (162/1870 and 163/1870). The other primary sources were issued some years after the establishment of the School. Specifically, both News and Data (1871) and News (1881) describe the School, and were intended to be presented, respectively, at the International Maritime Exhibition of Naples (opened on 17 April 1871) and the National Exhibition of Milan (opened on 1 May 1881). This collected information about the first years of the School proved to be particularly relevant for the analysis implemented herein, especially in terms of understanding and analysing the initial documents (i.e. the 1868 Statute and 1870 Governance). Finally, the Extraordinary Report, prepared in December 1873, resulted from the Province of Venice asking the School to provide detailed information about its management.³ It covers various topics, including the ‘Accounts and Administration of the School’, and also encloses a letter (Extraordinary Report, 1873: 50–52) dated 3 August 1873 that the School's governing council sent to the Province of Venice.

The combined analyses of all these retrieved informational sources establish the context in which the Report was prepared, which thereby reveals specific features of the historical case and avoids simplification or generalisation (Levi, 1992). It relies on the collection, triangulation and critical interpretation of different information sources related to the specific case under examination, designed to connect the various events logically and thereby provide an analytically structured narrative (Rowlinson et al., 2014). An in-depth analysis of the relevant sources and specific historical context also allows for an exploratory study of the case and its peculiar features, including aspects overlooked in prior literature (Ermakoff, 2014).

Theoretical framework

The present study aims to examine the initial system of accountability developed by the School, and how it was influenced by the practices and informational needs of its most prominent stakeholders. The study draws on two theoretical frameworks –accountability theory and stakeholders’ salience – and how they are interrelated. Accountability represents a complex, contextual (Deegan, 2009) and relational (Ebrahim, 2016; Hopwood, 1976) concept that, even in the absence of an explicit contract between the organisation and its founders (Gray et al., 1997), enhances trust and implies significant benefits (Cordery and Baskerville, 2011). There are many definitions of accountability (Ebrahim, 2003; Sian et al., 2020), but it can be most simply defined as the ‘way in which an organisation is held to account for its actions’ (Tacon et al., 2017: 687). It is neither static nor neutral (Tinker et al., 1982), because it is the result of the interplay between a range of institutions and interest groups. Therefore, the central issue in the attempt to better understand corporate accountability (Macintosh, 1999) remains the answer to the following question: ‘To whom are corporations accountable?’ (Berle, 1932; Dodd, 1932). This doubt, related to the accountability framework, represents a crucial concern in terms of investigations of the nineteenth century, when the provision of accounts was neither precisely regulated nor codified. A laissez-faire philosophy characterised this period from the point of view of accounting regulations, because, with the exception of a few particular industries subject to more stringent requirements (e.g. banks, railways and insurance companies, as in Parker, 1990), the belief still existed that companies were private affairs only concerning a few people (Game et al., 2020). At that time, companies voluntarily published annual financial statements as a means of satisfying stakeholders’ information needs (Cordery and Baskerville, 2011; Moggi et al., 2016; Napier, 2011). In such a historical context, accountability practices were not the outcomes of legislative rationality, but a means of reflection and the reinforcement of social, political and economic forces, contexts and relationships (Bryer, 1993). These interactions implied that accounting changes occurred according to a theoretical perspective introduced by Bhimani (1993): external institutional forces influenced and shaped accounting transformation, making accounting the result of a complex set of relationships (Gray et al., 1997). In this way, two complementary dimensions emerged for accountability, inducing organisations to both externally interact (to account for their actions) and to internally reflect on their organisational mission and financial performance (Ebrahim, 2003; Sian et al., 2020). The presence of this dual perspective was unexpected in the historical context of the nineteenth century, characterised by the above-mentioned laissez-faire philosophy, a lack of accounting requirements and the absence of a precise definition of ‘stakeholders’ (as introduced by the Stanford Research Institute in 1963, quoted in Freeman, 1984: 31). In spite of this lack of a formal definition and full recognition of stakeholders, organisations in the nineteenth century identified their salient stakeholders as those who ‘really count’ (Mitchell et al., 1997), and who usually coincided with resource providers that demanded greater accountability (Cordery and Baskerville, 2011; Preble, 2005). The responsiveness to prominent stakeholders’ informational needs became a key requirement for such organisations (Morf et al., 2013). The choice of accountability system defined how the organisation communicated information about both organisational activities and value to prominent stakeholders, which in turn helped determine how such stakeholders perceived the organisation and its value-creation processes (Cooper and Owen, 2007; Freeman et al., 2010; Hines, 1988). In this way, the perception and the power of stakeholder priority was able to deeply influence organisations’ accountability and reporting as a means to try to create and maintain dialogue with their stakeholders (Freeman et al., 2010).

Literature review

As noted in the introduction, we conducted two systematic literature reviews permitting the (1) positioning of this work in its (corresponding) stream of research, (2) interpretation of evidence provided by the information sources retrieved and (3) demonstration of the ultimate contribution of the study.

First (i.e. positioning), this article focuses on the accountability practices implemented by a non-owned organisation (as defined in Fowler and Cordery, 2015: 128) to effectively communicate with its stakeholders. Some recent literature (Bisman, 2012; Carmona and Ezzamel, 2006; Sargiacomo and Gomes, 2011) has emphasised the need for historical studies about these accountability practices, especially in education institutions and schools (Fowler, 2010; Fowler and Cordery, 2015; Moggi et al., 2016; Sian et al., 2020). The systematic literature reviews, however, revealed that no works have analysed the initial accountability systems conceived and implemented by the first European schools of commerce – even though their establishment has been recognised as crucial for understanding how accounting developed in Europe in the nineteenth century (Passant, 2016, 2019; Rodrigues et al., 2004, 2007).

Second (i.e. interpretation), such initial accountability systems could be based on the use of cash or accrual methods. At the time of the School's establishment, as detailed in the next section, the implementation of double-entry bookkeeping was still encountering considerable difficulties, and single-entry financial bookkeeping remained entrenched in many Italian public administration bodies. Our analysis combines contextual (Deegan, 2009) and relational (Ebrahim, 2016) dimensions of accountability, because change is both contextual and dependent on external (in particular social and political) forces. In this way, the choice of an accountability system may either represent an attempt to satisfy stakeholders’ needs for comprehensive information (Dar, 2014) or reveal the existence of power struggles due to accounting differences (Cordery and Baskerville, 2011; Mitchell et al., 1997). Scott et al. (2003) examined the historical case of two publicly funded hospitals (New South Wales, 1857–1975), and concluded that stakeholders’ power may indeed exert influence over accountability practices, but this influence only becomes operational if there are specific incentives explaining the alternative implementation of accrual and cash accounting. Indeed, developing an accounting and reporting system that incorporates salient stakeholders’ informational needs requires extensive effort, and its success also depends on material conditions, such as the presence of adequate expertise and resources in the organisation (Henri, 2006). For example, efforts to identify desirable information collection, aggregation and distribution methods must account for specific material arrangements, such as data systems and reporting formats; these, in turn, require adequate technical expertise, and reflect the organisation's particular epistemic beliefs about what information is valid or credible. Such issues are especially pressing in a historical context such as the School's establishment, which lacked any specific regulations or standard procedures about either the accounting system or reporting conventions (Lister, 1981). More specifically, in reference to the convention of accounting periodicity, a persistent dilemma had existed between flexibility and uniformity (Littleton and Zimmerman, 1962; Yamey, 1979). Until the nineteenth century, few businesses embraced the convention of regular accounting periodicity, thus performing it on a 12-month basis (Luther, 2003). At the time the School was established, accounting periodicity simply represented a procedural convention that could be influenced by various factors – temporal uniformity, temporal flexibility and timely information, related to specific accountability needs – all of which could have influenced the form of the Report.

Third (i.e. contribution), the existence and application of accountability practices and accounting conventions at the time of the School's establishment should not be taken for granted, but investigated based on their cognitive justification, constructed in social interactions that combined organisations’ and stakeholders’ diverse needs, according to the aforementioned theoretical framework. The choice of a precise accountability system was therefore not static and neutral, but instead the result of an evolutionary process of combined accounting conventions and social institutions (Takatera and Sawabe, 2000).

The context and events: a historical case

This section provides insights into the context in which the School was founded, as well as its origins and organisational structure, as evidenced by the variety of archival sources listed previously. The first part briefly examines and describes the historical, social and political context of Italy's post-unification period, when the School was established. Then, the interests and contributions of the founders are considered in relation to the School's establishment. Finally, an investigation of the case notes reveals how the consecutive presence and composition of three committees affected the development of a governance policy within the institution.

The historical, social and political context of Italy

The School was established as one of the first Italian answers to a national need at a time of profound economic change and administrative reforms. From a social and political perspective, Italy's difficulties after its unification in 1861 were substantial. The recent unification of Italy implied the need ‘to make the Italian people’ (Hom, 2013), despite a context of genuine social and economic backwardness. Moreover, the drive towards national unity highlighted the need for new economic administration, reflecting a definitive departure from the previous configuration of small states and kingdoms (Sargiacomo et al., 2012). In this context of rapid economic change, there were calls for widespread improvements in business education (Scarpellini, 2008), especially in the north of Italy (Canestri and Ricuperati, 1976). The same need is also visible in the historical literature on a European level (Passant, 2016): the early 1850s were characterised by a period of economic growth lasting some 20 years, which created new needs among companies in terms of professional recruiting. These economic stakeholders (i.e. companies faced with new recruiting needs) required workers with a high level of business and technical education. The middle of the nineteenth century and the new demands it brought marked a turning point in terms of formal business teaching, with the first higher schools of commerce being developed (Engwall and Zamagni, 1998). It was only in the late nineteenth century that higher level commercial education began in Europe, with the bulk of its growth occurring towards the turn of the twentieth century (Engwall et al., 2010). Indeed, some schools of commerce in European countries were, in reality, effectively secondary schools, despite their designation as ‘higher’; this was particularly the case in France and Germany (Redlich, 1957). The School was one of the first ‘real’ examples of European support for commercial education (Longobardi, 1927; Redlich, 1957). A strong Italian conviction arose that public education (especially technical–commercial education) could decisively stimulate development, but the education provided by technical institutes was no longer adequate to establish a new state (Toniolo and Ciocca, 1978). From the beginning, the School was conceived as a national rather than a regional institution (Grunzweig, 1977; Kaplan, 2014; Renouard, 1999). It embraced a Southern model (led by France and Belgium), and offered a curriculum similar to that of the world's first business school, the École Supérieure de Commerce (ESCP), which had been established in Paris in 1819 (Blanchard, 2009). Despite their common goal, the origins of these initial higher schools, in Paris and Venice, differed greatly. The ESCP was initially privately financed (Blanchard, 2009), whereas the School adopted the Belgian model of the Antwerp Institute (Kaplan, 2014) and was initially independent, funded by contributions from different entities (Agostini and Sostero, 2018).

The founders

The foundation of the School was initially proposed by the Province of Venice (News and Data, 1871: 1–57), which was the first to recognise the new needs among companies in terms of professional recruiting (Passant, 2016). This first founder immediately announced its intention to involve the Municipality of Venice, the Chamber of Commerce of Venice and the Italian State (to which Venice had been annexed two years before) in the financing and endowment of the School.

The first three parties (i.e. the Province of Venice, the Municipality of Venice and the Chamber of Commerce of Venice) deliberated over their support for the initiative, and formed a mixed commission, chaired by the provincial councillor, Edoardo Deodati. He was commissioned to draw up a detailed project to be submitted to the Italian government. The initiative was welcomed by the Minister of Public Education (who was also the head of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce), who, in turn, presented a report to the King of Italy (Regulations, 1868: 3–6). This led to both the approval of the Statutes of the School (Royal Decree dated 6 August 1868, no. 4530) and the allocation of annual funding (from the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce). As a result, the Province of Venice agreed to pay an annual allowance of 40,000 lire and to administer the scientific material. The Municipality of Venice committed to an annual allowance of 10,000 lire and granted the use of a convenient site for the School to conduct its affairs (the palace Ca’ Foscari); it also administered non-scientific material. The Chamber of Commerce of Venice also agreed to write a check for at least 5,000 lire. These three initial founders shared a common feature in that they applied the same accounting system, functioning as three public administration bodies, (geographically) closely located within the young Kingdom of Italy. Indeed, Venice, which had been under Austrian domination until 1866, strongly resisted double-entry bookkeeping by maintaining public administration that used single-entry methods (‘Kamerales Rechnungswesen’), which was the norm in the Habsburg Empire. The Cambray-Digny Law, establishing the use of double-entry bookkeeping in Italian public administration, was only approved in 1869 (Astuti, 1966; Izzo, 1962), and its application encountered considerable resistance, despite efforts by two leading Italian accounting scholars, Giuseppe Cerboni and Fabio Besta (Coronella, 2007; Lazzini, 2006). At the time of the School's establishment, therefore, no codified form existed for providing accounting information; the Kingdom of Italy continued working to harmonise the accounting systems of its public administration bodies, which had followed different procedures in the various states before Italian unification (Lazzini, 2006). The establishment of the (first) school of commerce in Venice (a city annexed by the Kingdom of Italy only two years previously) was an attempt to confirm not only the existence of the recently unified country of Italy, but also Italian primacy in accounting, especially compared to the Habsburg Empire⁴ (Trampus, 2018). For this reason, in addition to the three founding entities, the (national) Italian government contributed to the financing of the School with a grant of no less than 10,000 lire (Statute, 1868: Article 3). This fourth stakeholder was destined to become even more relevant; a royal decree containing amendments and additions to the Statute of 1868 (Article 8, approved by King Vittorio Emanuel II on 15 December 1872), established an annual subsidy of 25,000 lire from the government (News, 1881: 121–122). It recognised the School's strategic importance for the entire Kingdom of Italy (Longobardi, 1927; Redlich, 1957; Renouard, 1999; Toniolo and Ciocca, 1978). The foundation of the School represented a cornerstone for the dissemination of accounting and economic studies (Lazzini et al., 2018); it soon became a unique national site of intense debate in accounting, as well as the host institution for prominent accounting scholars (Longobardi, 1927; Sargiacomo et al., 2012; Viganò, 1998). The School also served as a point of reference for the emergence of other Italian higher schools of commerce in subsequent years, and through this role, it largely defined the academic recognition and distinction of commercial studies. It was the initial proto-faculty of economics in Italy, which had not previously included any university-type institutes dedicated to commercial studies (Coronella and Sattin, 2018). Consequently, the School represented one of the first examples of ‘public’ business schools, given the involvement of the Italian government in establishing the School together with the other three public founders. This provides evidence of an important but neglected aspect of accounting research (Passant, 2016; Rodrigues et al., 2007). In the mid-nineteenth century, some European governments started to take a direct interest in commercial education by establishing their first public business schools.

Development of the school's governance policy

When the 1868 Statute was issued, a ‘mixed’ organisational commission was mandated to develop the School's conduct.⁵ The fourth article of the 1868 Statute declared that, after an initial period, the School was to be managed by the director, together with a different council composed of six delegates.⁶ The transitional regulations of the 1868 Statute indicated that the mixed commission would exercise all tasks assigned to the board, until it had completed all the necessary measures to allow the School to open for the beginning of the first school year. Lectures began in December 1868 (Berengo, 1989), so, by that date, the mixed commission would have had to pass control to the board, representing the first governance change from the mixed commission to the first board with six delegates. Subsequent statutory changes (introduced by the Royal Decree dated 15 December 1872) raised the government subsidy (from 10,000 to 25,000 lire) and enlarged the board (also called the governing council) with the addition of two representatives appointed from the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. This shift in the composition of the board marked a second change of governance between the end of 1872 and the beginning of 1873. These two planned governance changes, established in the Statute, influenced the accounting reporting of the School.

Analysis: report content and accounting procedures

The title ‘Management Report from August 1868 to March 1873’ itself reveals that the Report did not refer to a strictly annual period (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The first page of the Report (courtesy of the Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice).

The Report itself comprises two parts, the first pertaining to a five-year period (1868–1872) and the second to the first quarter of 1873, concluding with a definitive financial statement at the end of March 1873.⁷ The accounting periodicity of the Report thus appears immediately peculiar, prompting further consideration of the possible reasons. Moreover, it contrasted with the School's own prescribed accounting procedures: the Governance (1870: Chapter IV) defines periodicity among such accounting procedures, stating that a budget of the revenues and expenditures had to be drafted and approved each year by the governing council; the administration had to proceed on a calendar-year basis; and the annual accounts had to be closed every year on 31 December.

The Report is based on the cash accounting system; it therefore includes a budget based on inflows and outflows of resources (not a revenue-and-cost budget) prepared according to budgetary accounting criteria.

The first part (or account), pertaining to the period 1868–1872, is divided into five sections, A–E. Section A (Inflow of resources; Figure 2) refers to the values of multiple inflows: those to be collected (i.e. budgeted inflows), collected and deferred, and those subject to reimbursement, reimbursed, and waiting to be reimbursed.

Figure 2.

The first account: The first page of section A (inflow of resources from 1868 to 1872) (courtesy of the Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice).

Section B (Outflow of resources; Figure 3) includes the values of expenditures to be made (i.e. budgeted expenses), outflows made (i.e. expenses incurred in the period), deferred outflows, outflows subject to reimbursement, repaid outflows and expenses yet to be repaid.

Figure 3.

The first account: The first page of section B (Outflow of resources from 1868 to 1872) (courtesy of the Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice).

Section C summarises the inflows and outflows of resources. Section D contains general cash accounting (Figure 4), including collections and payments for each individual year from 1868 to 1872, and the cash balance as of 31 December 1872. Finally, Section E presents the financial statements as of 31 December 1872, including reports on assets (receivables and cash balance) and liabilities (debts and residual assets).

Figure 4.

The first account: section D (General cash account from 1868 to 1872) (courtesy of the Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice).

Detailed appendices to the various sections included references, indicating that individual items in the final accounts had been grouped together to give the total values shown. Specific detailed accounts pertained to various School expenses (e.g. salaries, library, etc.). Each appendix also presented, in red, a reference to supporting documents, volumes of which were kept in the archives of the School, at the disposal of any of the founding bodies that had a desire to inspect them (Extraordinary Report, 1873: 51).

The second account, pertaining to the first quarter of 1873, then presented inflows and outflows related to the deferred flows at the end of December 1872, before indicating inflows and outflows of the first quarter of 1873. The residual assets that appeared in the Liabilities Section of the Report for the period ending 31 December 1872 therefore did not represent equity; this accounting item was instead a projected cash balance. The second part of the Report used an articulation similar to that of the first part, but it was more complex, with sections dedicated to the management of deferred flows of resources. It closed with the final balance of all accounts at the end of March 1873.

The inclusion (especially in the aforementioned Sections A and B) of items related to deferred inflows (of resources) and deferred outflows (of resources) demonstrates that the Report used a commitment-based budgetary accounting system. In this way, the School's founders were able to read and examine the accounting information of the School in the same way they were used to doing in the reports of their own institutions, thanks to the use of the same reporting modalities (Table 1). Specifically, they were used to finding the following in the accounting reports for each category of inflows and outflows of resources: the amounts envisaged in the budget, the amounts already collected/paid, the amounts of deferred inflows/outflows, and other information about the inflows to be reimbursed and outflows to reimburse. Moreover, such stakeholders were also used to examining details about final cash balances and residual assets (projected cash balance) at the end of the period in the same accounting reports of their own institutions. For this reason, the Report also collected and provided similar such accounting information (Table 2).

Table 1.

The first account: A five-year summary of inflows and outflows (1868–1872).

Summary of inflows	Inflows to be collected	Collected inflows	Deferred inflows	Inflows subject to reimbursement	Reimbursed inflows	Inflows yet to be reimbursed
Funding	387,660.00	347,660.00	40,000.00	-	-	-
Tuition fees	40,470.00	31,814.00	8656.00	-	-	-
Interest	4,215.31	3,737.91	477.40	-	-	-
Deposited funds	-	6,051.04	-	6,051.04	-	-
Reimbursements to the School	-	1,370.47	-	-	-	-
Total lire	432,345.31	390,633.42	49,133.40	6,051.04	-	-
Summary of outflows	Expenditures to be made	Outflows made	Deferred outflows	Outflows subject to reimbursement	Repaid outflows	Expenses yet to be repaid
Expenses related to the School's foundation	56,490.07	56,462.24	27.83	-	-	-
Annual management expenses	281,128.93	280,174.85	962.98	8.90	8.90	-
Reimbursable expenses	-	7,073.00	-	7,073.00	-	7,073.00
Expenses related to stocks for later accounting	-	400.00	-	400.00	-	400.00
Expenses related to items to be resold	-	1,770.00	-	1,770.00	1,361.57	408.43
Expenses related to interest-bearing bonds	-	12,496.00	-	12,496.00	-	12,496.00
Total lire	337,619.00	358,376.09	990.81	21,747.90	1370.47	20,377.43

Table 2.

The second account: The final balance of all accounts at the end of March 1873.

Assets			Liabilities
Deferred inflows			Deferred outflows
until December 1872	33,616.00		until December 1872	10.30
1st quarter 1873	9,764.00		1st quarter 1873	92.41
		43,380.00			102.71
Expenses yet to be repaid to the School			Inflows yet to be reimbursed
until December 1872	7,038.00		until December 1872	6,051.04
1st quarter 1873	2,522.98		1st quarter 1873	1,822.06
		9,560.98			7,873.10
					7,975.81
Warehouse stocks		400.00
Items to be resold		407.43
Bonds		12,496.00
			Residual assets; account		98,880.89
Cash			balance
Surplus of 1872 account	46,830.22
Deficit of 1873 account	6,217.93
		40,612.29
	Lire	106,856.70		Lire	106,856.70

Discussion: dual accountability according to stakeholders’ informational needs

This section relates the results of the literature review to the narrative history concerning the School's Report, contextual events and accounting conventions based on a variety of archival sources, according to a theoretical framework that combines accountability and stakeholder salience (Fowler, 2010; Sian et al., 2020). In this way, both the narrative and the interpretational historical research streams can emerge (Previts et al., 1990; Scott et al., 2003).

The central issue in the attempt to understand accountability, according to its contextual (Deegan, 2009) and relational (Ebrahim, 2016) dimensions, concerns the answer to the following question: ‘To whom are corporations accountable?’ (Berle, 1932; Dodd, 1932; Macintosh, 1999). As detailed in the ‘Context and Events’ section of the Report, three public entities were identified as the founding bodies of the School: the Province of Venice, the Municipality of Venice and the Chamber of Commerce of Venice. In addition, the national government contributed to financing the School, becoming an increasingly salient fourth stakeholder. These resource providers (Statute, 1868: Article 2) were the School's main initial stakeholders, because they had more power and legitimacy than others (Governance, 1870: Chapter IV). As a result, the School paid attention to their needs, requirements and expectations to ensure the continuing provision of financial resources, its organisational survival and the attainment of its own objectives. The School's salient and initial stakeholders possessed a number of common features: they were all public administration entities, proximally (geographically) located in Venice, and applied the (same) single-entry financial accounting system, which was the same as the one (‘Kamerales Rechnungswesen’) implemented by the Austrian Empire before the annexation of Venice. The School's founders represented the prominent recipients of the Report (Governance, 1870: Chapter IV, 25–26), which was prepared applying a single-entry financial accounting system similar to that of the School's founders. The School therefore seemingly avoided the use of double-entry bookkeeping. On the one hand, the School's choice to apply the commitment-based budgetary accounting system according to the informational needs of its salient stakeholders is in line with the results of the extant literature (Camara et al., 2009; Preble, 2005) and recalls the historical case of the two publicly funded hospitals (New South Wales, 1857–1975) examined by Scott et al. (2003). Limited to this conclusion, the School's case would have represented an archival-based study providing a precious historical example of financial reporting that complied with the salient stakeholders’ accountability system. On the other hand, the School’s decision to apply the commitment-based budgetary accounting system is truly notable because the aforementioned information sources retrieved emphasise the School's propensity for encouraging the use of double-entry bookkeeping in actively trying to harmonise the different accounting practices applied by public administration bodies prior to unification (Lazzini, 2006). These sources highlight the School's role as the first institute of higher education in commerce in Italy to have and develop specific competences in this area (Kaplan, 2014; Berengo, 1989: 10). In summary, while the School prepared its own Report by applying a single-entry financial accounting system like that of its founders, it was teaching its own students the principles of accrual basis accounting so that they could apply them in future commerce (News and Data, 1871: 105–106), promoting (in Italy) the use of double-entry bookkeeping.

This divergence, however, turned out to only be apparent and due to accountability needs (as defined in Ebrahim, 2003; Tacon et al., 2017). The contradiction was resolved thanks to our retrieval of the Extraordinary Report (1873: 30–31). This reveals that for internal management purposes, the School indeed followed accrual basis accounting principles. This information source discloses the presence of accounts that were closed and approved monthly, together with a complete double-entry accounting system, adjusted and necessarily balanced at the end of each year, with ledgers and other accounting books. In this way, we found that the Report was the result of an ex post re-elaboration in terms of commitment-based budgetary accounting to give it an appropriate form for external reporting (Governance, 1870) and to match the form of the reporting used by the School's salient stakeholders. The same prominence of stakeholders’ accountability needs is also evident in the School's introduction of accounting conventions. The Report's peculiar accounting periodicity seems to contrast with the School's prescribed accounting procedures (Governance, 1870: Chapter IV). According to these internal procedures, the accounting report should have been prepared to provide information to the founders starting from 31 December 1868, proceeding on a calendar-year basis, and closing annual accounts every year on 31 December. As is also evident in the title of the Report, the accounting periodicity of the Report refers to a five-year period,⁸ while the second account only pertains to the first quarter of 1873. The School therefore seemingly embraced flexibility in the convention of accounting periodicity, providing evidence on the persistent dilemma between flexibility and uniformity (Littleton and Zimmerman, 1962; Luther, 2003; Yamey, 1979). Indeed, the retrieval of the Extraordinary Report (1873) reveals the reasons for both the peculiar closing date (31 March 1873) and the long timeframe (a five-year report)⁹: there was only one change in governance and the governing council was only constituted in April 1873. This information reverses the hypotheses about the (two) changes in governance foreseen in the 1868 Statute.

Discovery of the implementation of a dual accounting system (based on accrual accounting for internal purposes and commitment-based budgetary accounting for external reporting), the Report periodicity, and the timing of the replies in the Extraordinary Report (1873), interpreted according to the theoretical background and the literature results, provides the main contribution of this study. When combining narrative and interpretational historical research about the prominence of stakeholders’ accountability needs (Bhimani, 1993; Cooper and Owen, 2007), it shows that accountability was neither static nor neutral (Tinker et al., 1982) at the time of the establishment of the first European schools of commerce.

Three main perspectives of analysis can be derived from this important result.

First, the School's accountability practices are explicitly related to the goal of providing relevant information to its salient stakeholders (Morf et al., 2013). In spite of the lack of a formal definition of ‘stakeholders’ (later provided in Freeman, 1984, 2010) at the time of the School's establishment, organisations nevertheless identified those who would ‘really count’ – that is their salient stakeholders (Mitchell et al., 1997; Moggi et al., 2016; Napier, 2011). This approach suggests a precise focus on resource provision (Alam, 2006; Cordery and Baskerville, 2011; Preble, 2005). It is strictly dependent on the relational (or social) role of accountability (Bryer, 1993). This means it cannot be considered a pure set of techniques (Hopwood, 1976), because external institutional forces influence and shape accounting transformation, making it the result of a complex set of relationships (Bhimani, 1993; Gray et al., 1997). The School's case integrates stakeholder theory and an accountability framework, showing how accounting practices resulted from the interaction between stakeholders’ power (founders and resource providers still applying cash accounting) and organisational beliefs (teaching and promoting accrual accounting).

Second, the dual accountability system implemented by the School (internal and external, accrual and cash) is truly innovative: it is different from that previously described in the literature (Game et al., 2020; Parker, 1990), which focused on the alternative implementation of either cash or accrual accounting (Scott et al., 2003). It has an important role in displaying the organisation's competences, resources and priorities (Henri, 2006). It was not only a means of providing information (Sian et al., 2020): such an innovative and complex accountability system provides effective evidence of the two complementary scopes (broadly addressed in previous literature, e.g. Ebrahim, 2003) to both externally interact (accounting for their actions) and internally reflect on their organisational mission and financial performance. In this way, this study deepens the duality between cash and accrual accounting, considering its origins. In addition, it makes a contribution by highlighting the technical aspects of accounting practices, particularly regarding the adoption of accrual and cash basis methods, which has traditionally represented a fundamental dichotomy (without the possibility of coexistence) and still needs to be historically investigated in financial reporting (Scott et al., 2003). The choice of the School's dual accounting system is neither static nor neutral, being the result of an evolutionary process of combined accounting conventions and social interactions (Takatera and Sawabe, 2000).

Finally, this coexistence in the School's initial accountability system of both cash and accrual methods recalls the idea of hybrid accountability as a configuration incorporating various forms of accounting communication and knowledge. This concept was introduced in the accounting literature to address the collision between Western and non-Western perspectives on accountability (Peng and Brown, 2016), but can also be beneficially applied to this study to highlight further insights. On the one hand, the hybridisation of accountability methods raises new forms of accounts and reporting in the attempt to satisfy stakeholders’ needs for comprehensive information, as detailed above. On the other hand, the theory of ‘hybrid accountabilities’ (Dar, 2014) suggests a possible and coexistent attempt by the School to resist the stakeholders’ reporting model. It reveals how power struggles (Cordery and Baskerville, 2011; Mitchell et al., 1997) are key to explaining why certain accounting practices (those applied by the resource providers as an obsolete legacy of the Austrian Empire's control, in the School's case) take precedence over others. The hybridisation of accounting methods implies the remodelling of accountability as a fractured concept, with a need to understand and resolve tensions between accounting differences. The solution the School sought out and chose demonstrates its attitude to applying accounting knowledge and competence to elaborate such a system of hybrid accountability.

Concluding remarks

This study investigated the accountability system implemented by the School after its establishment in the mid-nineteenth century, providing evidence of the contemporary use of cash and accrual methods. The microhistorical analysis was set within a theoretical framework that combines accountability and stakeholder theories, emphasising the impact of both stakeholder influence and organisational attitudes on such accountability choices. The article contributes to the accounting history literature in several ways.

Empirically, the narrative presented here sheds further light on the origins of schools of commerce (Rodrigues et al., 2004, 2007), focusing on the School's establishment and accounting practices in a relevant, non-Anglo-Saxon setting (Carmona, 2004). Moreover, the archival sources that we retrieved have not thus far been presented in an English-language journal and are unique, as no similar accounting reports were issued in the same period by other European higher schools of commerce, to the best of our knowledge.

At the theoretical level, the interpretational history provided here emphasises how the accountability system adopted was able to satisfy stakeholders’ informational needs, answering calls in the literature (Bisman, 2012); at the same time, much remains to be learned about the relationship between stakeholders and accountability reporting from a historical perspective (Carmona and Ezzamel, 2006; Sargiacomo and Gomes, 2011), especially concerning educational institutions (Fowler, 2010; Fowler and Cordery, 2015; Moggi et al., 2016; Sian et al., 2020). Drawing on the insights of the theoretical framework adopted, the present study also reassesses what was then considered to be ‘public’ involvement in the establishment of such schools of commerce: the role of European states has been largely neglected in the literature analyses, as a sign of criticism regarding their minimal or even non-existent involvement in formulating national business-education systems (Passant, 2016). However, the influence of public stakeholders clearly emerges in the analysis of the School's initial accountability practices. Examining the initial accounting practices taught and those applied by the School, the study deepens the analysis of the duality that exists between cash and accrual accounting, considering its origins and the historical possibility of coexistence of these two accounting methods. In this way, the article makes a contribution to understanding this fundamental dichotomy, which still needs to be historically investigated in financial reporting (Scott et al., 2003). Both accountability competences and social priorities emerge in the analysis, based on the relations among stakeholders, the School's educational goals, and the wider (national) interests of both the School and its stakeholders.

Nevertheless, the study is not free from limitations, which suggest room for further research in the same area. First, the present analysis covers a single school of commerce and provides insights regarding Italy. Microhistories from other under investigated contexts (Carmona, 2004) may provide further evidence on the initial accountability systems of other schools of commerce. Indeed, few studies have dealt with the pioneering governmental efforts to establish commercial education in a European context throughout the nineteenth century (Passant, 2019). Second, as described in the ‘Research methods’ section, the retrieved primary archival sources describe and detail the (external) Report as being based on a cash accounting system, while the School's internal accrual accounting system is described only within the Extraordinary Report (1873). We were unable to obtain additional primary sources to provide more detailed information on the dual accounting system and the methods used for accrual-cash integration. It would therefore be interesting to identify and analyse additional historical cases (other than those of the School) of dual accountability systems, investigating not only their features, but also the reasons behind their implementation. Finally, further research into the School's accountability would also provide more evidence of its economic and financial performance at the time of its establishment, considering that the Report highlights significant ‘Civanzo’ (residual assets) in that period. With regard to this finding, the Extraordinary Report (1873) also offers interesting interpretations, enabling researchers to focus on specific management issues such as the effect of teachers’ salaries on the School's expenses.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This work relied heavily on the ‘Management Report from August 1868 to March 1873,’ retrieved from the Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice by Dr Corò Carla (Referent of the Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice), as well as the information contained in the ‘Extraordinary Report'(1873), obtained with the invaluable help of Dr Sattin Antonella, Referent of the Historical Archive Sector of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Marisa Agostini

Ugo Sostero

Notes

Primary sources

Extraordinary Report (1873) Relazione straordinaria sull’andamento della Scuola presentata all’Onorevole Consiglio Provinciale di Venezia da Edoardo Avv. Deodati e Sebastiano dr. Franceschi, membri del Consiglio Direttivo della Scuola, e in esso Rappresentanti il Consiglio Provinciale (1873). Florence: Le Monnier. Available at .

Governance (1870) Regolamento della Regia Scuola Superiore di Commercio. In the Official Gazette 162 (1870) and in the Official Gazette 163 (1870).

Management Report from August 1868 to March 1873 (the Report) Resoconto della Gestione tenuta dall’Agosto 1868 al Marzo 1873. R. Scuola Superiore di Commercio. Archives of the Metropolitan City of Venice, Serie ottocentesca, fascicolo ‘Regia scuola superiore di Commercio’.

News (1881) Notizie raccolte dal Consiglio direttivo della Scuola e presentate alla Esposizione nazionale di Milano aperta il 1° maggio 1881 (1881). Florence: Tipografia di G. Barbèra. Available at .

News and Data (1871) Notizie e dati raccolti dalla Commissione organizzatrice per la Esposizione internazionale marittima di Napoli aperta il 17 aprile 1871 (1871). Venezia: Tipografia del Commercio di MarcoVisentini. Available at .

Official Gazette 225 (1868) Gazzetta ufficiale del Regno d’Italia n. 225, 19 agosto 1868. Florence: Tipografia Eredi Botta.

Official Gazette 162 (1870) Gazzetta ufficiale del Regno d’Italia n. 162, 14 giugno 1870. Florence: Tipografia Eredi Botta.

Official Gazette 163 (1870) Gazzetta ufficiale del Regno d’Italia n. 163, 15 giugno 1870. Florence: Tipografia Eredi Botta.

Regulations (1868) Ministero d’Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio (1868) Ordinamento della Regia Scuola Superiore di Commercio in Venezia. Florence: Tipografia di G. Barbèra. Available at

Statute (1868) Statuto Organico della R. Scuola Superiore di Commercio in Venezia. In the Official Gazette 225 (1868).

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