Current Trends in Accounting History

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Current Trends in Accounting History

• Steve Walker
• Cardiff Business School
• Accounting History in Ireland Explorations and
  Opportunities
• DTI, 12 November 2004

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Topics of Presentation

• Expansion of accounting history research
• Changing research themes
• Interdisciplinary perspectives on accounting
  history
• Politics of the craft, threats and opportunities

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1. Expansion of Accounting History

• Publication outlets
• Conferences
• Practitioners

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2. Changing Research Themes

• Traditional subject matter
• Areas of decline and growth
• Major projects in the 90s
• Shifts within established themes
• Relatively new ventures

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Traditional Subject Matter (Previts et al, 1990)

• Biographical
• Institutional
• Development of thought
• Critical histories
• General histories
• Databases
• Historiography

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Areas of Decline and Growth (Edwards, 2004)

• Decline
• Accounting in pre-industrial contexts (dramatic
  decline)
• Financial accounting theory and techniques
• Growth
• Accountancy profession
• Cost and management accounting
• Historiography
• Auditing (regulation, objectives)
• Corporate accounting (regulation, failures)

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Major Projects 1990s (Fleischman and
Radcliffe, forthcoming, AHJ)

• Cost accounting and managerialism
• Accounting historiography and methodology
• Professionalisation (UK, US, Aus)
• Biographical studies (UK, US, Aus)
• Railway, other transport accounting
• Accounting regulation
• Oral histories

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Shifts within Established Themes

• Management accounting
• Ancient accounting
• Accounting and capitalism
• Accounting Profession
• Gender
• Biographies
• Research methods and writing styles

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Relatively New Ventures

• CIAH
• Accounting and the state
• Social histories of accounting
• Colonialism and racism
• Accounting scandals
• Taxation

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Forthcoming Special Issues

• Accounting Business Financial History
• Accounting History in Germany
• Accounting History in Italy
• Women, Accounting and Finance
• Accounting History
• Accounting and Religion in Historical Perspective
  
• Historical Perspectives on Accounting and Audit
  Failure in Corporate Collapse
• Race and Gender in Accountings Past

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3. Interdisciplinary Perspectives

• Literary history
• Military history
• Economic history
• Transport history
• Gender history
• History of Religion
• Art history

• In addition to business history, accounting
  historians increasingly venture into
• Social history
• Political history
• Architectural history

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Interdisciplinary Perspectives

• But limited horizons of accounting historians in
  relation to cross-disciplinary collaboration and
  publication.
• Despite potential mutual benefits of knowledge
  transfer and collaboration

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A Detached Sub-Discipline?

• accounting history is increasingly dominated by
  writers in English discussing private-sector
  accounting in English-speaking countries of the
  19th and 20th centuries (Parker, 1993).
• a relatively insular international accounting
  history research community dominated by a small
  number of institutions and authors (Carnegie and
  Potter, 2000)

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A Detached Sub-Discipline?

• ABFH authors have relied upon a very narrow
  literature, with almost 50 per cent of all
  citations deriving from ten leading accounting
  and accounting/business history journals
  (Anderson, 2002)
• Only 7 of citations in accounting history
  articles published in 1990s were to papers in
  history journals (Carmona, 2003)

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Collaborative Potential

• Many studies by historians of territories
  unexplored by accounting historians eg Central
  and Eastern Europe, South America, Africa.
• Accounting history dominated by research on
  western industrial economies and modernity.
• Accounting research by historians reveal
  potential for studies of accounting in
  pre-industrial, rural societies, government and
  administration, educational, military, transport,
  medical and social settings.

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4. Politics of the Craft
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Structural Issues

• US dominance of AAH but accounting history
  research progressing faster elsewhere
• Accounting historians have had a hard road to
  travel in the US. For nearly two decades now,
  history articles have not been welcomed by
  journals of the perceived highest echelon
  (Fleischman and Radcliffe, 2003)
• Result declining membership of AAH, especially
  in US.

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Other Issues

• Accounting history organisations and journals
  dominated by North America, UK and Australia.
  Accommodating active non-English speaking
  community in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy.
• Too many specialist journals?
• Forms of publication.
• New v. old history.
• Does accounting history have to inform the
  present?