Pub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2020.1717094
G. Patmore, M. Westcott
The renaming of Accounting Business and Financial History to Accounting History Review in 2011 could, at face value, be taken as a narrowing of the journal’s focus toward accounting history. Rather than a restriction in focus, the editor saw it as an opportunity to encourage a connection between accounting history ‘with the intellectual interests of other disciplines and research domains’ (McWatters 2014, 1). It is this process of making connections across disciplines that we have endeavoured to encourage in this special issue. Both students and scholars of business face the task of recording, understanding, and explaining a rapidly changing world. We see the potential to draw upon perspectives and approaches beyond single disciplines to answer many research questions generated by business scholars. As McWatters (2017, 219) notes:
{"title":"Special issue: interdisciplinary historical studies","authors":"G. Patmore, M. Westcott","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2020.1717094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2020.1717094","url":null,"abstract":"The renaming of Accounting Business and Financial History to Accounting History Review in 2011 could, at face value, be taken as a narrowing of the journal’s focus toward accounting history. Rather than a restriction in focus, the editor saw it as an opportunity to encourage a connection between accounting history ‘with the intellectual interests of other disciplines and research domains’ (McWatters 2014, 1). It is this process of making connections across disciplines that we have endeavoured to encourage in this special issue. Both students and scholars of business face the task of recording, understanding, and explaining a rapidly changing world. We see the potential to draw upon perspectives and approaches beyond single disciplines to answer many research questions generated by business scholars. As McWatters (2017, 219) notes:","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74422252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2020.1711527
B. Mees
ABSTRACT Recent studies of private pension provision have stressed the shedding of risk by employers entailed in the international trend away from defined benefit to defined contribution arrangements. In this critical literature, the widespread development towards defined contribution schemes is seen as an exclusively poor outcome for employees as financial risk is pushed onto the members of pension plans. These criticisms have essentially been ahistorical – they are not founded in close analyses of the reforms of the relevant pension arrangements. The first country to undertake a major change from defined benefit (or benefit promise) to defined contribution (or accumulation) plans was Australia. A closer historical examination of the shift suggests that the considerable reforms in occupational pension schemes of the 1980s and 1990s cannot validly be seen, overall, as a regressive outcome for Australian workers. Three fundamental features of the reform of white-collar superannuation emerge from a close historical analysis. First, considerable simplification transpired in what previously had been a largely opaque system of retirement benefits provision. Second, there was a fixing of employer costs in light of the adoption of accrual accounting and an increasing drain on taxpayer funds in public sector schemes. Third, clear evidence of improved financial performance occurred during the reforms.
{"title":"Risk shifting and the decline of defined benefit pension schemes in Australia","authors":"B. Mees","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2020.1711527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2020.1711527","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent studies of private pension provision have stressed the shedding of risk by employers entailed in the international trend away from defined benefit to defined contribution arrangements. In this critical literature, the widespread development towards defined contribution schemes is seen as an exclusively poor outcome for employees as financial risk is pushed onto the members of pension plans. These criticisms have essentially been ahistorical – they are not founded in close analyses of the reforms of the relevant pension arrangements. The first country to undertake a major change from defined benefit (or benefit promise) to defined contribution (or accumulation) plans was Australia. A closer historical examination of the shift suggests that the considerable reforms in occupational pension schemes of the 1980s and 1990s cannot validly be seen, overall, as a regressive outcome for Australian workers. Three fundamental features of the reform of white-collar superannuation emerge from a close historical analysis. First, considerable simplification transpired in what previously had been a largely opaque system of retirement benefits provision. Second, there was a fixing of employer costs in light of the adoption of accrual accounting and an increasing drain on taxpayer funds in public sector schemes. Third, clear evidence of improved financial performance occurred during the reforms.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88167137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1702565
R. Crawford
ABSTRACT Historical scholarship on the advertising industry has largely focused on advertisements that it creates and, to a lesser degree, the agency's relationship with clients. This focus has meant that the finance department and its contribution to the agency’s operations have largely been ignored. This article seeks to address this omission by drawing attention to the work and contribution of the finance department in the advertising agency setting. It focuses on experiences of two trained accountants, who worked for George Patterson, one of Australia’s largest advertising agencies. Lincoln Farnsworth helped build George Patterson from the 1930s to the 1960s, while Russell McLay emerged as a key player in the agency’s subsequent expansion and internationalisation in the 1970s and 1980s. By using oral history testimony and other documentary materials, this article illustrates the growing impact of accounting on advertising agency practices and the advertising business, and highlights the contribution that accounting history offers to historians working in other fields.
{"title":"‘But nobody talks to accountants’: the growing influence of the finance department in the advertising agency","authors":"R. Crawford","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1702565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1702565","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Historical scholarship on the advertising industry has largely focused on advertisements that it creates and, to a lesser degree, the agency's relationship with clients. This focus has meant that the finance department and its contribution to the agency’s operations have largely been ignored. This article seeks to address this omission by drawing attention to the work and contribution of the finance department in the advertising agency setting. It focuses on experiences of two trained accountants, who worked for George Patterson, one of Australia’s largest advertising agencies. Lincoln Farnsworth helped build George Patterson from the 1930s to the 1960s, while Russell McLay emerged as a key player in the agency’s subsequent expansion and internationalisation in the 1970s and 1980s. By using oral history testimony and other documentary materials, this article illustrates the growing impact of accounting on advertising agency practices and the advertising business, and highlights the contribution that accounting history offers to historians working in other fields.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79768712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-04DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1686036
Giacomo Manetti, M. Bellucci, L. Bagnoli
ABSTRACT Accounting practices played a fundamental role in the construction of Brunelleschi’s dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence during the fifteenth century. This study examines the accountability practices and government technologies adopted by the Opera del Duomo, the organisation entrusted to build and maintain the Cathedral of Florence, between 1420 and 1436, when the dome was constructed. This research draws on the theories of Foucault and Dean regarding technologies of government within quasi-public administrations to explain historical evidence for the accountability practices supporting Brunelleschi’s dome construction. Through the collected evidence, we identify the application of ‘technologies of government’ hundreds of years before Foucault’s arguments about governmentality. We also describe a system of accountability, especially downward accountability, inspired by religious values that pays attention to users, the local community and other affected constituents as a result of the Opera’s special status as a ‘quasi-public’ (but formally private) administration. Our findings touch on the willingness to account for and report public funding, the presence of checks and balances inside the governance framework, the active engagement of citizens and local partners to achieve consensus, and notions of social responsibility toward the workers who helped to build the dome.
15世纪，在布鲁内莱斯基设计的佛罗伦萨圣母大教堂穹顶的建造过程中，会计实践发挥了重要作用。本研究考察了1420年至1436年穹顶建成期间，受托建造和维护佛罗伦萨大教堂的歌剧院(Opera del Duomo)采用的问责制实践和政府技术。本研究借鉴了福柯和迪安关于准公共行政中的政府技术的理论，以解释支持布鲁内莱斯基圆顶结构的问责实践的历史证据。通过收集到的证据，我们确定了“政府技术”的应用，比福柯关于治理的论点早了数百年。我们还描述了一个问责制，特别是向下问责制，受到宗教价值观的启发，关注用户，当地社区和其他受影响的成分，因为歌剧院作为“准公共”(但正式私人)管理的特殊地位。我们的研究结果涉及到对公共资金进行解释和报告的意愿、治理框架内存在的制衡、公民和当地合作伙伴的积极参与以达成共识，以及对帮助建造圆顶的工人的社会责任观念。
{"title":"The construction of Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence in the fifteenth century: between accountability and technologies of government","authors":"Giacomo Manetti, M. Bellucci, L. Bagnoli","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1686036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1686036","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Accounting practices played a fundamental role in the construction of Brunelleschi’s dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence during the fifteenth century. This study examines the accountability practices and government technologies adopted by the Opera del Duomo, the organisation entrusted to build and maintain the Cathedral of Florence, between 1420 and 1436, when the dome was constructed. This research draws on the theories of Foucault and Dean regarding technologies of government within quasi-public administrations to explain historical evidence for the accountability practices supporting Brunelleschi’s dome construction. Through the collected evidence, we identify the application of ‘technologies of government’ hundreds of years before Foucault’s arguments about governmentality. We also describe a system of accountability, especially downward accountability, inspired by religious values that pays attention to users, the local community and other affected constituents as a result of the Opera’s special status as a ‘quasi-public’ (but formally private) administration. Our findings touch on the willingness to account for and report public funding, the presence of checks and balances inside the governance framework, the active engagement of citizens and local partners to achieve consensus, and notions of social responsibility toward the workers who helped to build the dome.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77493895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-02DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1646460
Pierre D. Gervais, Yannick Lemarchand, C. McWatters
The Colloquium in History of Management and Organizations (JHMO) is the annual, international and interdisciplinary colloquium organised by the French Association for History of Management and Organizations (AHMO). It gathers scholars in history, management studies, sociology, economics and other related fields, who share the historical approach of AHMO research topics: organisations, managerial thought and practice, and the field of management studies. As in previous years, the 25th JHMO is divided into two sessions. The general session is open to any papers dealing with managerial matters using historical methods. The thematic session focuses on ‘paths and networks’.
{"title":"25th Colloquium of the History of Management and Organizations","authors":"Pierre D. Gervais, Yannick Lemarchand, C. McWatters","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1646460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1646460","url":null,"abstract":"The Colloquium in History of Management and Organizations (JHMO) is the annual, international and interdisciplinary colloquium organised by the French Association for History of Management and Organizations (AHMO). It gathers scholars in history, management studies, sociology, economics and other related fields, who share the historical approach of AHMO research topics: organisations, managerial thought and practice, and the field of management studies. As in previous years, the 25th JHMO is divided into two sessions. The general session is open to any papers dealing with managerial matters using historical methods. The thematic session focuses on ‘paths and networks’.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77851228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-02DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1660190
S. Mckinstry, Kirsten W. Kininmonth, Kenneth Mathieson
ABSTRACT This study provides a history of the introduction and implementation of standard costing at J&P Coats Ltd, the British-based multinational thread manufacturers, between 1925 and 1961. By 1896, the firm had centralised sales and marketing, strategic and treasury management in its head office in Glasgow. The introduction of standard costing was intended to bring financial discipline within each of its home and overseas mills, to add to the central discipline and control which already existed across the company, as well as to facilitate some aspects of central accounting in Glasgow. The study ends in 1961, the year the company merged with Patons and Baldwins, another UK-based textile firm. As a theoretical lens, our history uses institutional theory, as it affects an understanding of the implementation and operation of new management accounting systems. In particular, we explore the concept that the development and use of new accounting systems may well be conditioned by both external and internal ‘institutions’, or ‘ways of doing things’. The Coats study responds to the call for longitudinal analyses of management accounting innovation from an institutional point of view. It shows how institutional factors affected the implementation and use of standard costing within the firm, operating through human actors and changing organisational structures. In addition, the study adds to what is known about the history and chronology of the development of standard costing in the UK, pointing out similarities and differences between what happened at Coats and other adopters. It underscores that what is known about the installation and usage of costing systems would benefit from an understanding of the institutional factors involved.
本研究提供了1925年至1961年间英国跨国线制造商J&P Coats Ltd引入和实施标准成本核算的历史。到1896年，该公司在格拉斯哥的总部集中了销售和市场营销、战略和财务管理。引入标准成本计算的目的是在其国内和海外的每个工厂中引入财务纪律，增加已经存在于整个公司的中央纪律和控制，以及促进格拉斯哥中央会计的某些方面。研究截止到1961年，也就是该公司与另一家英国纺织公司Patons and baldwin合并的那一年。作为一个理论镜头，我们的历史使用制度理论，因为它影响了对新管理会计系统的实施和运作的理解。特别是，我们探讨了这样一个概念，即新会计系统的开发和使用很可能受到外部和内部“机构”或“做事方式”的制约。科茨的研究响应了从制度角度对管理会计创新进行纵向分析的呼吁。它展示了制度因素如何影响公司内部标准成本的实施和使用，通过人力行动者和不断变化的组织结构进行操作。此外，这项研究增加了对英国标准成本发展的历史和年表的了解，指出了科茨和其他采用者之间的异同。它强调，对成本计算系统的安装和使用的了解将受益于对所涉体制因素的了解。
{"title":"The introduction and operation of standard costing at J&P Coats Ltd., 1925–1961: an institutional interpretation","authors":"S. Mckinstry, Kirsten W. Kininmonth, Kenneth Mathieson","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1660190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1660190","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study provides a history of the introduction and implementation of standard costing at J&P Coats Ltd, the British-based multinational thread manufacturers, between 1925 and 1961. By 1896, the firm had centralised sales and marketing, strategic and treasury management in its head office in Glasgow. The introduction of standard costing was intended to bring financial discipline within each of its home and overseas mills, to add to the central discipline and control which already existed across the company, as well as to facilitate some aspects of central accounting in Glasgow. The study ends in 1961, the year the company merged with Patons and Baldwins, another UK-based textile firm. As a theoretical lens, our history uses institutional theory, as it affects an understanding of the implementation and operation of new management accounting systems. In particular, we explore the concept that the development and use of new accounting systems may well be conditioned by both external and internal ‘institutions’, or ‘ways of doing things’. The Coats study responds to the call for longitudinal analyses of management accounting innovation from an institutional point of view. It shows how institutional factors affected the implementation and use of standard costing within the firm, operating through human actors and changing organisational structures. In addition, the study adds to what is known about the history and chronology of the development of standard costing in the UK, pointing out similarities and differences between what happened at Coats and other adopters. It underscores that what is known about the installation and usage of costing systems would benefit from an understanding of the institutional factors involved.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82668208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-02DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1657679
{"title":"Quantification in Accounting History","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1657679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1657679","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73871874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-26DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1657024
Yin Xu, Xiaoqun Xu
ABSTRACT In light of certain conceptual constructs in comparative taxation, this study examines how Chinese tax reformers chose and adopted a particular form of business tax from a variety of tax models and how they justified and implemented the new tax in the political-social-economic conditions of early twentieth-century China. By illustrating a ‘hybrid tax transplant’ at discursive, institutional, and operational levels, or in terms of justification, design, and enforcement of business taxation, it presents a case study of global circulation and national/local adoption and adaptation of a tax model in a changing tax culture in China. The study reinforces the relevance and usefulness of these concepts to historical analyses and interpretations of taxation studies in different countries and offers a comparative case for research in other contexts.
{"title":"Global circulation and local adaptation of tax models: business tax in China, 1931–1949","authors":"Yin Xu, Xiaoqun Xu","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1657024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1657024","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In light of certain conceptual constructs in comparative taxation, this study examines how Chinese tax reformers chose and adopted a particular form of business tax from a variety of tax models and how they justified and implemented the new tax in the political-social-economic conditions of early twentieth-century China. By illustrating a ‘hybrid tax transplant’ at discursive, institutional, and operational levels, or in terms of justification, design, and enforcement of business taxation, it presents a case study of global circulation and national/local adoption and adaptation of a tax model in a changing tax culture in China. The study reinforces the relevance and usefulness of these concepts to historical analyses and interpretations of taxation studies in different countries and offers a comparative case for research in other contexts.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74631570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1651350
K. Clarke, J. Flanagan
ABSTRACT This study looks at the relationship between accounting and legal practitioners in nineteenth-century England and Wales through the application of comparative, sociological occupational-status metrics to observe the changing relative social status positions of these disciplines from 1821 to 1911. The study uses an approach to attributing occupational status based on the methods developed by Nam and Powers utilising existing nineteenth-century datasets to assign status to a range of occupational groupings. The data generated measures of relative occupational status and the magnitude of the differences, along with the education and earnings status metrics, for the occupational groups labelled Accounting and Legal, both prior to and after the establishment of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. The measurements of relative status confirm the impact of changing legislation and a better-educated workforce on the status of the élite of accounting and the pressure they felt to professionalise their activities to differentiate their status from the burgeoning educated workforce attracted to accounting as an occupational discipline.
{"title":"A comparative analysis of the relative occupational status of lawyers and accountants in nineteenth-century England and Wales","authors":"K. Clarke, J. Flanagan","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1651350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1651350","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study looks at the relationship between accounting and legal practitioners in nineteenth-century England and Wales through the application of comparative, sociological occupational-status metrics to observe the changing relative social status positions of these disciplines from 1821 to 1911. The study uses an approach to attributing occupational status based on the methods developed by Nam and Powers utilising existing nineteenth-century datasets to assign status to a range of occupational groupings. The data generated measures of relative occupational status and the magnitude of the differences, along with the education and earnings status metrics, for the occupational groups labelled Accounting and Legal, both prior to and after the establishment of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. The measurements of relative status confirm the impact of changing legislation and a better-educated workforce on the status of the élite of accounting and the pressure they felt to professionalise their activities to differentiate their status from the burgeoning educated workforce attracted to accounting as an occupational discipline.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90081910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2019.1607169
D. Matthews
ABSTRACT In the recent political and academic debate over social exclusivity and inequality in Britain, accountancy has come in for specific criticism. The Milburn panel on fair access to the professions concluded that accountancy has seen the greatest decline in social mobility. Through the use of a postal questionnaire of members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), this study challenges this assessment by demonstrating that historically the ICAEW has always had a significant proportion of members from the lower middle and working classes. However, in recent decades there has been an increase in the proportion from the upper middle class and a decline in those from the lower classes. This shift was not due to educational changes such as the decline of grammar schools or the rise of the graduate profession but resulted from the reduced role of medium- and small-sized firms in recruitment and training and the rise in importance of the largest accounting firms which have always tended to take on trainees from higher social backgrounds.
{"title":"Social class and social mobility among ICAEW members from the interwar period to the present day","authors":"D. Matthews","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2019.1607169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2019.1607169","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the recent political and academic debate over social exclusivity and inequality in Britain, accountancy has come in for specific criticism. The Milburn panel on fair access to the professions concluded that accountancy has seen the greatest decline in social mobility. Through the use of a postal questionnaire of members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), this study challenges this assessment by demonstrating that historically the ICAEW has always had a significant proportion of members from the lower middle and working classes. However, in recent decades there has been an increase in the proportion from the upper middle class and a decline in those from the lower classes. This shift was not due to educational changes such as the decline of grammar schools or the rise of the graduate profession but resulted from the reduced role of medium- and small-sized firms in recruitment and training and the rise in importance of the largest accounting firms which have always tended to take on trainees from higher social backgrounds.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75713843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：