Accounting History

This article provides an historical account of conditions and actions which gave rise to the decision to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards in Australia. This decision is seen as a ‘moment’ within a much broader movement of history, namely, the emergence of a transnational neoliberal global order comprising networks of multilateral arrangements and strategic alliances, as well as ambiguous but powerful social, political and cultural forces. Those phenomena and their force in the context of accounting standard setting are examined here through a conflation of Castells’ work on globalisation with the strong structuration model of Stones. This article demonstrates the potential of the Stones/Castells theoretical nexus to contribute to future accounting research, not only within the narrow realm of rule-making but more broadly in our attempts to understand and critique the manner in which global neoliberal processes have come to impact contemporary experience.

This article aims to develop our understanding of the political activity of groups and individual key-players leading to the withdrawal of the Statement of Accounting Concepts No. 4 (SAC 4). The study also examines the arguments advanced by opponents of this rule, using archival data and semi-structured interviews. The key findings of the study highlight the importance of highly motivated, influential and passionate stakeholders in lobbying against proposed accounting rules. In addition, this event raises interesting questions relating to our understanding of Capture theory. This article shows how key-players within the standard-setting environment interacted with each other and lobbied to bring about the withdrawal of the mandatory status of SAC 4. This study adds to the academic literature by allowing individual key-players to explain their motivations and activities in their own words.

In this article, we revisit the history of accounting for goodwill in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Japan following the conclusions and predictions of Ding, Richard and Stolowy (2008). We aim at verifying whether the four phases of development of the accounting for goodwill between 1880 and 2005 are actually determined by the global change from a stakeholder model of corporate governance to a shareholder model. An extended time frame of analysis (until 2016) is considered in this study, which includes Japan among the country-specific accounting systems investigated. Our findings do not support Ding et al.’s predictions for Japan and demonstrate a disagreement between those countries which consider goodwill as a depleting asset and those which consider goodwill as a permanent asset. This observation might explain better the current debate concerning international harmonization on goodwill.

The purpose of this study is to construct a historical narrative of the development of the standard-setting in Japan, where the main standard-setting bodies were changed from public to private sector entities. This study specifically examines the unique coexistence of four sets of accounting standards through the lens of legality. My findings show that four sets of accounting standards are formalized into the domestic legal system through the endorsement by the Financial Services Agency of Japan, although differences in the standard-setting processes and patterns of public delegation exist. This finding also suggests an interesting example of hybridization between legally incomplete ex ante delegation to private sector standard-setting bodies and ex post endorsement by the public sector.

This article explores the role of accounting professionals in the emergence of the first set of accounting standards – Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises (ASBE) – in China between 1978 and 1992. Based on a variety of sources drawn from the archives of Chinese language accounting textbooks and highly ranked academic journals, this article reveals how accounting professionals adapted accounting thoughts and practice to fit the demands of the prevailing political ideologies, which facilitated the social conditions essential for the development of ASBE. Drawing on theoretical perspectives on the interplay between accounting and its social context, as pronounced and advocated by Hopwood and his collaborators, this article provides evidence that further demonstrates the social nature of accounting as it was implicated in the broader economic and political transformations in China between 1978 and 1992.

The article aims to examine the history of Vietnam’s accounting practices and standard setting in the context of its transition towards a market-based economy. Vietnam is chosen as a case study because of its unique combination of factors and the accelerated changes occurring in recent years. More specifically, the article has three research objectives: (1) to explore the distinctive stages in the evolution of accounting practices in Vietnam, (2) to explain the institutional pressures that have shaped the evolution of accounting standards in Vietnam and (3) to understand the implications of these historical developments on the changes in Vietnam’s accounting standards. To achieve these research objectives, we employ a theoretical framework that incorporates elements of the institutional theory to the 7Ps model proposed by Carnegie and Napier. This framework analyses the issues under study in terms of the seven dimensions: periods, places, people, practices, propagation, products and profession.

This study explores the events leading up to the origination of public sector accounting standards in Canada by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) and their adoption by the Government of Canada. We interpret these events from the perspective of institutional theory. We find that a long-standing institutionalized practice of self-developed government accounting policies was disrupted by a series of challenges. An influential actor in this process was the Office of the Auditor General of Canada which first pushed for the creation of independent government accounting standards and then pushed the government toward the implementation of the accounting policies developed by the CICA’s public sector accounting standard-setting body. Two CICA studies served to further disrupt the status quo. We also find evidence of the role played by an inter-organization professional network in defining and labeling problems that ultimately resulted in the change.

Phan D, Joshi M and Binh TN (2018) The history of accounting standard setting in an emerging transition economy: The case of Vietnam. Accounting History. First Published January 4, 2018. DOI: 10.1177/1032373217745672

The authors regret that there were errors in the Online First version of the above-mentioned article.