Editorial

Welcome to the August issue of Accounting History for 2024 which includes the confirmation of the 2023 Robert W. Gibson Manuscript Award article – ‘Innovation in accounting historiography: Where to from here?’ co-authored by Carolyn Cordery, Delfina Gomes, Giulia Leoni, Karen McBride and Christopher Napier. The award was presented during the 2024 Accounting and Finance Association of Australian and New Zealand (AFAANZ) Conference dinner. It was voted on by Editorial Board members as well as AFAANZ Accounting History Special Interest Group members. Congratulations to the winners!

This August issue also includes six full articles, the first is a review of Foucauldian theory and the remaining five are empirical articles located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), and the United States (US). These span from the first to twenty-first centuries and examine archives and other data from for-profit, public sector and not-for-profit entities. The authors work variously in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, the United Kingdom (UK) and the US. Mike Jones co-authored the penultimate article and we note with sadness his death on 4 September 2023. He was awarded the BAFA Distinguished Academic Award in 2021 (see obituary at https://bafa.ac.uk/news/notice-the-passing-of-professor-mike-jones.html) and his most recent prior publication in Accounting History (Jones and Stanton, 2021) in the Entertainment Special Issue encouraged our accounting identities to laugh at ourselves through cartoons about Enron.

The issue begins with a structured literature review of Foucauldian perspectives in accounting history by Michele Bigoni, Laura Maran and Zeila Occhipinti. Entitled ‘Of power, knowledge and method: The influence of Michel Foucault in accounting history’, this article systematises the complex ideas of Foucault, with the authors showing how these ideas have been translated to provide a crucial interpretive prism to many studies in accounting history. Through textual analysis of literature, they identify eight key themes: governmentality, disciplinary power, power/knowledge, discourse, biopower, technologies of the self, genealogy and ‘other’. This provides a starting point to address the recurrence of or preference for certain Foucauldian themes in the accounting history literature. The authors note the dominance of governmentality and disciplinary power, while other themes, such as discourse or biopower which are central to Foucault's work, have been paid much less attention by accounting history scholars. Hence the article not only identifies areas for further research but also assists scholars wishing to familiarise themselves with Foucault's work and employ it in their research.

Secondly, Supun Chandrasena and Martin Quinn examine ‘The multiple logics of Buddhist monastery accounting’. Building on prior studies that show accounting in Buddhist monasteries provides detailed accounts and fulfills accountability requirements to rulers and the public, the authors ask: ‘What influenced such practices?’ Examining Ceylonese Buddhist monasteries’ inscriptions from the first to the sixteenth century AD, the article draws on the institutional logics that are likely to have shaped the monasteries’ early accounting thought and practices. Within hybrid, faith-based organisations, institutional logics are complex and sometimes incompatible. While in other organisations, value separation may be controversial, the authors assert that Buddhist monasteries appear to have managed these conflicts well. The study finds mutual dependencies between three institutional logics: devotional, public and private. The authors note that accounting assisted in managing the inherent institutional pluralism by blending features of different logics to build complementarities between them that enabled the stability of monasteries over time.

In the third article in this issue titled ‘World War 2 governmental cost-plus procurement: An Australian case study’, Geoff Burrows, Phillip Cobbin and Jane Hronsky provide insights into an interesting management accounting issue – government procurement of military hardware during wartime. The dilemmas in these situations are highlighted, including the limited number of suppliers and the government's power as the funder of production. The authors ask – how can a ‘fair’ price be set that empowers timely development and production? The article examines the case of DeHavilland Aircraft Pty. Ltd. and the cost-plus contracts used by the Australian Government during World War 2. It tracks learning over the term of the war, due in part to the twinning of the contracts with cost-monitoring provisions. The authors note that, while a cost-plus methodology has limitations in peacetime, governments are likely to default to it when confronted with a major global conflict. Further, opportunities to learn and gain efficiencies in aircraft development are necessary not merely in wartime, but also today.

Lídia Oliveira, Ana Caria and Janaína Almeida examine impression management in annual reports through their article entitled: ‘Managing a story of hope through the President's Letter: The case of Petrobras from 1964 to 1985’. Investigating the narrative and visual images in letters published during Brazil's military dictatorship, the authors argue that assertive impression management tactics helped to promote Petrobras along with the Brazilian nation. Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. – Petrobras – held the state monopoly of oil and natural gas exploration and production and oil refining and was used to reinforce and further government policies through different political regimes. Military control during the two decades studied is reflected in the letters which show a particular political, social, and economic context. Rhetorical manipulation and visual emphasis in the Presidential letters evidence self-promotion, enhancement, entitlement, exemplarity, selectivity and performance comparison that convey a message of ascendancy and optimism, even in periods of crisis and shocks to legitimacy. Simultaneously, the President's letters omit inconvenient truths and damaging events. Thus, impression management promoted Petrobras and provided a legitimate façade for the government.

The next article by Tehmina Khan and Michael Jones is entitled ‘Diverse counter accounts for biodiversity conservation: The case of the High Ross Dam Controversy’. Using the modern-day term of counter-accounts, this article reflects on how civil society used various types of historical counter-accounts to promote resistance and conservation in the fourth stage of construction in the 1970s. The business case promoted for the US-based High Ross Dam was likely to result in biodiversity loss requiring civil society activists to raise public awareness about it. The authors employ Escobar's (1998) theoretical framework of social-political civil society construction to understand this resistance and how it succeeded in bringing about societal change. Further, they divide the counter accounts into both technical and non-technical, with the former reframing calculations and accounting numbers to bring about change. The latter were represented as citizen voices including stories, poetry, and so on. Multiple civil society actors produced these counter accounts which cohered into a strategic tool that halted the projected dam expansion and enabled alternative ecology developments.

The final article of Gary Spraakman, Stephan Fafatas and Davood Askarany examines another context in ‘The Canadian Pacific Railway's diversification strategies: A financial performance story, 1883–2020’. The longitudinal data gathered adds clarity to the ambiguous and inconclusive literature analysing the relationship between diversification and profitability. The quantitative and qualitative data show that, over the decades, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) trialled the full spectrum of diversification strategies: sporadic, modest, and extensive as well as pureplay, or focusing on the railway industry alone. Additionally in this period, the CPR transitioned from extensive political rate regulation to market regulation and the need to return profits to shareholders. Spraakman et al. find that CPR decided to diversify when railway operating income significantly declined as a percentage of railway revenue. Nevertheless, with only two exceptions, diversification was unsuccessful because the identified endeavours lacked any meaningful relationship with other investments or the railway. Hence the research suggests that enhanced financial performance is achievable through pureplay expansion and limited related diversification.

Enjoy the August 2024 issue.