The Routledge Companion to Accounting History

John Richard Edwards, Stephen Walker, John Richard Edwards, Stephen P. Walker, Stephen Walker, John Richard Edwards, Stephen P. Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781032236643
• eBook ISBN: 9781351238861
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Accounting
• Index: Business

The Routledge Companion to Accounting History presents a single-volume synthesis of research in this expanding field, exploring and analysing accounting from ancient civilisations to the modern day.

No longer perceived as the narrow study of how a mysterious technique was used in past, the scope of accounting history has widened substantially. This revised and updated volume moves beyond the history of accounting technologies, accounting theories and practices and the accountants who applied them. Expert contributors from around the world explore the interfaces between accounting and the economy, society, culture and the polity. Accounting history is shown to offer important insights into such disparate phenomena as the evolution of capitalism, control of labour, gender and family relationships, racial exploitation, the operation of religious organisations, and the functioning of the state.

Illuminating the foundation and development of accounting systems, this updated, classic book opens the field to a new generation of accounting scholars and historians around the world.

PART I

The discipline

1

Structures, territories and tribes

Stephen P. Walker

Overview

The aim of this chapter is to explore the development and current status of accounting history as a sub-discipline. The terrain of accounting history is mapped by surveying the institutions which characterise and legitimate its pursuit. In particular, the chapter examines the emergence of disciplinary organisations for accounting historians, the increasing number of conferences on the subject, the growth in accounting history publications and the pedagogical claims advanced by advocates of accounting history education. The principal intellectual currents which have run through these disciplinary structures are explored in Chapter 2 and the development of the subject areas of accounting research which they have helped to sustain are reviewed in Chapter 3.

It is shown that progress in some areas of disciplinary endeavour (such as establishing specialist journals and conferences) has been more marked than in others (such as creating enduring and inclusive organisations and integrating accounting history into the curriculum). The chapter begins by discussing the expansion of accounting history research, locating its disciplinary territory and exploring some of the features which define the ‘academic tribe’ of accounting historians (Becher and Trowler 2001: 23–4).

The growth of accounting history

According to Becher and Trowler (2001: 14):

Disciplinary growth can be measured by the number and types of departments in universities, the change and increase in types of HE courses, the proliferation of disciplinary associations, the explosion in the number of journals and articles published and the multiplication of recognized research topics and research clusters.

Similarly, Clark (1996) suggests that the growth of a discipline may be discerned by tracking the expansion of the institutions surrounding it. In particular, the growth of academic departments and units, degree programmes and courses, disciplinary associations, disciplinary journals, the existence of recognised research topics and related research clusters. While one would be hard pressed to identify university departments of accounting history and degree programmes on the subject, courses on various aspects of the history of accounting do feature. Further, various organisations represent the practitioners of accounting history, several specialist journals exist and operate in traditional and web-based formats, and an increasing number of articles on accounting history are published in specialist and general accounting journals. There is also an increasing plurality of research themes and some research centres have been established (Walker 2006).

Although its advocates frequently relate the pedagogical and practical utility of knowledge of the subject, accounting history is not a field of study which grew in response to societal or professional calls for its inclusion in the curriculum. The growth of accounting history is more usefully interpreted as a response to various developments in higher education in recent decades. These include massification and the attendant expansion of academic knowledge, the increasing fragmentation of disciplines and the career-enhancing potential of academic specialisation in the context of the ‘research imperative’ (Blau 1973: 190–8; Clark 1987: 197–210, 1996; Metzger 1987; Henkel 2000: 29–145). A Marxist interpretation of this scene perceives the proliferation of accounting histories as a consequence of the commodification of history and historians under advanced capitalism. This interpretation perceives the expansion of histories as the production of self-referential signifiers in the interest of capital (Cooper and Puxty 1996).

More conventionally, the growth in accounting history research is explicable as both reactive and substantive. It is reactive in that the expansion of the sub-discipline represents a response to the increased demand for accounting labour and the consequential growth of vocationally relevant higher education in accounting and business. Educational expansion has been serviced by a rapid increase in the numbers of university staff teaching accounting. In the UK, for example, the number of accounting academics more than doubled in the 20 years to 2004 (Brown et al. 2007). Those who instruct the student population have been increasingly urged to comply with the institutional priority of pursuing research and publication (Gray and Helliar 1994; Whittington 1995; Wallace 1997; Beattie and Goodacre 2004). Accounting history represents one research specialism which attracted increasing numbers of accounting academics (Matthews 2017). However, the expansion of accounting history has also been substantive, or knowledge-led (Metzger 1987). Its growth illustrates the extension of the accounting research agenda beyond its technical core. This broadening in the scope of academic accounting has been attended by the dignification of a number of specialisms and the advancing status of the interdisciplinary study of the discipline, including its history (Elzinga 1987).

Characterising the accounting history tribe and locating its territory

The fragmentation of academic disciplines into research sub-disciplines and specialisms is certainly not unique to accounting. The discipline of history has not only witnessed the emergence of economic, social and cultural history but, in recent decades, the further splintering of each sub-discipline (Eley 1979; Marwick 1989: 72–141; Jordanova 2000: 34–46; Vincent 2001: 133–67). However, it would be wrong to perceive the growth of accounting history as a manifestation of subject dispersion and the emergence of new specialisms in the discipline of history. Accounting history emanates from the broadening terrain of accounting. The pathways to academic careers in accounting history are diverse but are predominantly characterised by undergraduate, postgraduate and/or professional education in accounting rather than history, though on occasion, both. Thus from an early stage disciplinary associations and various authors in accounting history have felt obliged to instruct entrants to the field on the historical research methodologies which are absent from an accounting education (Gaffikin 1981; Parker and Graves 1989; Fleischman et al. 2003).

The disciplinary habitation of accounting historians in accounting rather than history is also indicated by other institutional factors. The great majority of accounting historians reside in the accounting and finance departments of business schools and everyday interaction tends to be with colleagues in these fields. Its practitioners tend to identify themselves as operating in the discipline of accounting but belong to a research community that specialises in history. The instructional mission of accounting historians is grounded in accounting rather than history and the sustainability of the specialist courses they offer depends on attracting students following accounting rather than history programmes. In the absence of departments of accounting history the institutional focus of its practitioners is the research conference, the accounting history association and sometimes the research unit. Examples of the latter have included the Accounting and Business History Research Unit at Cardiff University, which commenced in 1988, and the Centro de Estudos de História da Contabilidade (Accounting History Research Centre) of the Portuguese Association of Accountants which was formed in 1996 (de Serra Faria 2008).

The institutional and disciplinary locus in accounting rather than history is confirmed by an examination of the research environment. In the UK Research Assessment Exercise accounting history fell within the orbit of the sub-panel on accounting and finance as opposed to history (RAE 2002, 2009). In the more recent Research Excellence Framework, along with accounting and finance, it falls within the scope of the sub-panel on Business and Management Studies. In the assessment of 2014 the sub-panel specifically identified accounting history as an area within accounting and finance where ‘substantial scholarship’ is demonstrated (REF 2015). Further, the publication media favoured by accounting historians are conditioned by those which confer greatest esteem in accounting – articles in high ranking journals tend to be the vehicle for the communication of new knowledge in accounting history rather than the monograph favoured by historians.

In addition to their career tracks being located in the disciplinary structures of accounting rather than history, accounting historians as a whole tend not to engage with the wider history community. Relationships with near neighbours, such as business historians, are often explored (Johnson 1975; Boyns and Edwards 1990; Fridenson 2007) and accounting historians have a presence in the journals of that sub-field. However, while there are notable exceptions, they seldom publish in history journals and often appear disinclined to embark on research collaborations with historians (Walker 2005). Despite its undoubted potential to do so, accounting history has not impacted on the historical mainstream in the way that, for example, women’s history has. It does not feature in history textbooks, fire debates in the greater history literature or induce questions in the sister discipline about the nature and pursuit of history. On the occasions when historians, popular or professional, venture into the world of accounting, their outputs are often critiqued for insufficient engagement with the research produced by accounting historians and questions are raised about why such works seldom emanate from those best placed to author them (Carnegie and Napier 2013; Vollmers 2015).

Given the general lack of interdisciplinary communication between accounting and other historians, it is not surprising that perceptions of the scope and character of accounting history appear to differ according to whether the stance is internal or external to the craft. For accounting historians the potential scope of their subject is multidisciplinary and vast, and embraces research based on data which may be documentary or oral, qualitative or quantitative. For historians, accounting history is more likely perceived as a progeny of business history, a specialism which focuses on mysterious calculative techniques manifested in sources such as invoices, ledgers and balance sheets.

It would be wrong to suggest that the boundaries between accounting and other historians are closed. There are undoubtedly cross-disciplinary influences which suggest that accounting history is a ‘hybrid field’ (Dogan 1997). However, the communication is substantially unidirectional and involves more borrowing than lending. Accounting historians import methodologies and historiographical discourses from history and its sub-disciplines. Accounting history increasingly draws on standards in history when establishing and reinforcing the benchmarks of quality research in its own domain. These attributes are generally considered to emanate from comprehensive evidence gathering (accounting historians as auditors have an affinity with historians on this matter; Napier 2002; Walker 2004), contextualisation, thorough literature review, analytical rather than descriptive writing, high quality narrative and addressing the ‘so what’ question. Whereas accounting historians have frequently been compelled to legitimate their research by illustrating its relevance to modern day accounting issues and policy making, as in history, good accounting history is increasingly recognised as meritorious when it advances understandings and encourages debate about the past.

Accounting history is thus best understood ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: synthesis and engagement
• PART I: The discipline
• PART II: Technologies
• PART III: Theory and practice
• PART IV: Institutions
• PART V: Economy
• PART VI: Society and culture
• PART VII: Polity
• Index