Accounting History

Early research into accounting history publishing patterns indicates researchers were predominately male, working for Anglophone universities and were researching private sector accounting in Anglophone countries. However, recent research suggests this may be changing. Extending and expanding the earlier research of Williams and Wines (2006), the purpose of this paper is to examine publication patterns in the New Series of Accounting History from 1996 to 2015. There has been growth in the journal’s thematic coverage and its global and gender representation. It also reports that while temporal and geographical coverage has expanded, there has been little change in the degree of international collaboration. Although much has been achieved over the past 20 years of Accounting History, there are a number of emerging topics and developing fields of historical enquiry that could be addressed in future volumes, together with research that interfaces accounting with the wider business, political, social and legal historical space.

This biographical study presents a portrait of Robert William Gibson (1931–2014), who spent the bulk of his academic career at the University of Melbourne, the Gordon Institute of Technology and Deakin University, spanning the period 1960 to 1993. Gibson was a prominent researcher of the historical development of regulated company accounting and in exploring issues in contemporary financial reporting. He stimulated curiosity as an accounting educator across a range of subjects, especially accounting theory. Gibson was an editor of accounting history publications, specifically as joint editor of the Accounting History Newsletter (1980–1989) and as editor of the initial or first series of Accounting History (1989–1994). His active life and productive academic career are examined in this study, which includes an outline of his administrative leadership at Deakin University, and his often long-lived voluntary roles beyond higher education institutions, which continued into his retirement. The recognition afforded to Gibson’s all-round contributions to accounting academia is also outlined.

This article analyses the experience of the Uniconti Commission in setting rules of uniform costing in Italy during World War II (WWII). This initiative was promoted by the Italian Fascist government and the Confederazione dell’Industria (Industry Confederation) in 1941. The purpose of the study is to investigate the process of setting the uniform costing rules and “why” and “how” they were designed. This is done according to a Foucauldian perspective that allows the problematization of accounting as a complex phenomenon, the emergence and functioning of which is linked to context and dependent on the interplay of different influences. Starting from the aims inspired by the totalitarian ideology of the government that promoted the Commission, the analysis is grounded on archival primary sources and provides perspectives on the making of new accounting rules by examining the interplay among participants in the process. The article provides evidence of the complex interplay between knowledge, techniques, institutions and ideology in setting accounting rules in a totalitarian context, marked by a prevailing role of ideology and state in the regulation of the economy.

Most accounting literature based on the Foucauldian frame has explained the role of accounting in the imposition of a governmental programme over a population, without considering the consequences in terms of resistance. This paper analyses the state power exerted over populations by means of accounting and also the role of accounting in cases of contestation and resistance towards the various agents of government. To this end, we have studied the enactment, implementation and fall of the Instrucción de Intendentes (Instruction for Intendants) of 1718 in Spain, the roles of the different actors involved, and how accounting was used to defend these conceptions. The change in government by means of accounting is an example of what Foucault identified as the dynamic of discourses.

The Lisbon School of Commerce, established in 1759, was important in the diffusion of knowledge about accounting in Portugal and the Portuguese Empire. Although scholarly literature has canvassed the reasons for the school’s creation, and has profiled its first two teachers, little is known about the manuscripts that were dictated in classes, or the early textbooks used. This paper fills this void by exploring three manuscripts used in the Lisbon School of Commerce that are indexed at the National Library of Portugal and the University of Coimbra Library. Two important insights emerge. We show how Souza and Sales used the technical and the rhetorical dimension of accounting to diffuse new accounting practices; and we reveal why manuscripts were dictated and why they were used in the classroom. In doing so, we explore how double entry bookkeeping (DEB) was taught and we highlight how Souza and Sales helped to diffuse DEB knowledge in Portugal.

Nobes & Parker’s book, Comparative International Accounting, has been the standard text on international accounting outside the US since the 1980s. The contents and structure have changed greatly over successive editions (the thirteenth was published in 2016) mainly to take account of shifts in political and economic power, globalization in various guises and rapid advances in technology. Its authors have also been influenced and helped by the comments of contributors, reviewers and publishers. Research, by the authors and others, has informed the content of the book. Writing textbooks (or indeed most sorts of books) is argued to be a legitimate and useful academic activity, but one for which the incentives are in decline.