Social closure and the incorporation of the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh in 1854

Abstract

The incorporation of the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh in 1854 has been researched from different perspectives without attention to the overall occupational grouping to which the founders belonged. The existence of this larger community of accountants raises the question of whether the foundation involved social closure. The purpose of the paper is to pose and respond to this question by explaining social closure, examining the Society's foundational process for signs of possible exclusion, and observing founders and non-founders to identify differences in characteristics that provide possible explanations for exclusion. Archival evidence of the foundational process and differences in characteristics is consistent with the possibility of social closure without precluding other explanations for the founder and non-founder groupings. The evidence also raises the question of whether the foundation of the Society is completely explained by the external pressures associated with a potential loss of court-related appointments. The findings in the paper are sufficient to encourage further research of social closure in other associational foundations in the early history of modern public accountancy.