Accounting History

Prior empirical research in the accounting and finance literatures has often neglected the role of the state in corporate governance, preferring instead to study relationships between shareholders and directors and the effects of various corporate governance mechanisms on the economic performance of companies. In contrast, accounting and business historians have often examined the legal systems, rules, and regulations that control business enterprises, thereby acknowledging the existence of persistent interactions between the state and business entities through time. The purpose of this article is to illustrate, through a discussion and analysis of several ways in which the state has enacted its role in corporate governance, that state regulation and supervision of business entities has been both commonplace and necessary for the maintenance of a stable economic system.

The accounting history literature expounds the role of imperial connection on the transfer of Western accountancy concepts and practices to developing countries. An emerging theme within this literature is the shift in imperial power from Britain to USA over the last century and the ramifications of this shift on accountancy globally. Using a framework developed by prior research for investigating the transfer of accountancy across countries, this study examines historical developments of accounting practice, education and professional training in Ethiopia (from 1905 to 2011) in the light of the country’s interactions with Britain and the USA. These interactions facilitated Ethiopia’s continued importation of British accountancy practice and professional training contemporaneously with importation of accounting education from the USA. Over the past two decades, Ethiopia has been undertaking accounting reforms as part of economic policy reforms in pursuit of neo-liberal economic ideals. In response to shifting priorities of transnational actors, Ethiopia continued trialling policy initiatives that are yet to yield a stable equilibrium with coherent links of accounting education, practice and professional training.

The London and General Bank case is well known in auditing history. Less familiar are some of the characters involved in the group of companies financed by the Bank and its sister institution, the Liberator Building Society. At the centre of the group was a Victorian rogue, Jabez Spencer Balfour, who ensured that only those he could dominate and manipulate were chosen to take part in his complex and fraudulent schemes. Two chartered accountant brothers were drawn into Balfour’s web. One of these, Morell Theobald, had an interest in the supernatural, although his claims about supernatural activities were disputed and he was more or less branded a fraud and a liar by fellow spiritualists. Using correspondence between Balfour and Theobald and between Theobald’s wife and the Home Secretary, we reveal insights to the psychology of the main character in the scheme and one of his weak-willed disciples. The evidence shows that Theobald knew enough about accounting and finance to realize that the strategy adopted by Balfour could not be sustained.

The Company Act of July 1867 introduced a new actor into the life of French limited companies: the statutory auditor. It defined the assignment of this new character but gave free rein with regard to auditor recruitment. The aim of this article is to show how this new legal obligation would be implemented. To this end, this article presents the 1867 Act and the French economic, social and political context. It describes the lowly position of professional accounting organisations, their lack of prestige, the predominance of secrecy in business, and an ethos of individualism. To illustrate the actual practice of statutory auditing, this article studies the archives of two major industrial companies of that period: Pont-à-Mousson and Saint-Gobain. These archives show that the auditors were closer to the directors than the proxies of shareholders. In turn, this led to the auditors remaining tied to business secrecy and their independence was challenged.

This article examines the evolution of the information provided by El Alcázar, a private Spanish company, over the period 1928–1993. This information includes: Memoria, that is, qualitative information contained in the annual report, which is a Management Report to shareholders; the minutes of the Board of Directors; and the minutes of the Shareholder General Meeting. We apply a longitudinal thematic content analysis with the aim of understanding how the content of these documents adapts to the different institutional settings experienced by the company. Following Meyer (1986), different environments may determine the amount of accounting information a particular company produces beyond the variation determined by its intrinsic technical needs. The period studied bears witness to a number of relevant institutional conditions involving deep social, economic, cultural and political changes. The results show that these documents change between the stages identified in response to the pressures of different institutional environments.

Accounting artefacts are a useful source of information on the history of accounting techniques. However, as this article discusses and demonstrates, they can also contain rich narrative that provides additional historical insight. This article describes a journey of discovery to understand the contextual historiography surrounding an accounting artefact, looking at how the artefact came into being and its ramifications for the two main protagonists: a Creek Chief, Hillis Hadjo, and a British Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Nicolls.