Access to water has long posed financial and political challenges for urban centres, yet the historical role of accounting in governing and managing water supply remains underexplored. Focusing on nineteenth-century Cork, during a period of urbanisation, industrialisation, and increasing pressure on municipal water supplies, this study examines how accounting operated as a key actor in water governance, management, and conservation. Using actor-network theory (ANT), it examines the relationships between human and non-human actors to show how accounting both shaped and was shaped by evolving networks of water provision. Based on archival records from the 1880s, the analysis reveals accounting not as a passive tool of financial control, but as an active agent in shaping water-related practices and policies. In doing so, the study contributes to accounting history by illuminating the complex actor-networks behind public utility provision, thereby demonstrating the value of applying ANT in historical research. While grounded in history, the findings offer reflections on the ongoing tensions between financial oversight and public resource management.
This article explores the transformation of French capitalism in the 1970s by examining budgetary control practices at PSA (Peugeot SA). Drawing on internal archives and interviews with former executives, it analyses how state-led planning, & eacute;lite networks, and corporate restructuring shaped a hybrid model of management control. Rather than a straightforward 'Americanisation', the system that emerged combined long-term planning logics with increasing financial discipline. The case illustrates how budgetary tools became instruments of organisational control and financial rationalisation, reconfigured through engineering expertise, internal experimentation, and institutional entrenchment. This study contributes to the socio-historical analysis of accounting change and offers insights into the evolving architecture of post-war French capitalism.
This study explores the career journey of the first Indigenous Black woman Chartered Accountant in South Africa, Nonkululeko Gobodo, who qualified in 1987, despite the racism and sexism in that country. We identify the impediments and facilitating factors that shaped her career. This career narrative is constructed using secondary data, followed by an online interaction with Nonkululeko Gobodo and analysis of her personal memoir. Our analysis uses a career crafting model to examine structural and organisational constraints, and the way people develop their careers. Nonkululeko Gobodo crafted a successful professional career despite historic and contemporary gender and race inequalities. A transition from pursuit of personal success to efforts to advance Black women's careers is a feature of this career narrative. The study extends documentation of inequality in accounting through attention to the operation of sexism and racism in South Africa and Nonkululeko Gobodo's strategic responses to professional and social closure in accounting.
This study revisits the question posed by Murray Wells in 1976 of whether accounting has undergone a Kuhnian revolution. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn's model of scientific change, we argue that a paradigmatic shift has taken place in accounting thought and practice over the past 50 years. We trace the gradual displacement of historical cost accounting by fair value measurement, along with the rise of decision usefulness as the primary objective of financial reporting. This transformation, while largely uncontroversial in public discourse, has redefined both the conceptual foundations and practical mechanics of financial accounting. Through a historical analysis of US GAAP and related regulatory developments, we identify five distinct phases of change: pre-paradigmatic plurality, emergence of a dominant paradigm, crisis, revolution, and a return to normal science. We demonstrate how estimation techniques, market-based valuation, and the increased use of present values have transformed the logic and presentation of financial statements. The result is a quiet revolution in accounting that has unfolded incrementally but with profound consequences. We conclude with a reflection on recent developments in financial reporting that may represent the continuation or possible extension of this ongoing transformation.
During the Italian post-Unification period from 1861, Italian accounting scholarship experienced a 'golden age'. The contributions of scholars such as Francesco Marchi, Giuseppe Cerboni and Fabio Besta promoted accounting in Italy to the rank of science. During this flourishing period of new theories and approaches, previously adopted accounting systems were maintained in some businesses' accounting practices and, for a certain period, were taught in professional schools. This applied particularly to the eighteenth-century accounting practices, such as the 'Five General Accounts' system introduced by Edmond Degrange. Using an institutional theory lens, this study explores the case of Rossi & Gagliardi, a Sicilian textile trader, who, despite newer accounting theories and systems promoted by Italian scholars, maintained a Five General Accounts system in a 'residual headway' scenario. A longitudinal analysis of its account books and other information sources from 1870 to 1917 reveals key factors for the maintenance of the Five General Accounts in an adapted form. Within the neo-institutionalist history theory of accounting, a classification of the degree of institutional pressures for change/adaptation of accounting systems is developed and used.
This study analyses access to positions on the board of directors in early Portuguese joint-stock companies during the mid-eighteenth century, with a focus on the Pernambuco and Para & iacute;ba Company from 1759 to 1780. It challenges the conventional notion of objectivity in corporate governance, revealing discrepancies between the formal statutory criteria and actual practices. The research utilises archival documents to assess the eligibility of elected individuals and investigates exclusionary practices, particularly in relation to gender biases. Despite meeting formal eligibility requirements, female shareholders faced significant obstacles in securing leadership roles. Informal factors, such as familial networks and insider connections, played a substantial role in determining access to board positions, with the original & eacute;lite group appointed by the Crown maintaining control. This highlights the illusion of objectivity in corporate governance. By positioning accounting records as narrative tools, the study underscores their role beyond mere financial transactions, documenting the underlying structures of social exclusion. This study sheds light on the complexities of inequality and power relations within historical business contexts, challenging existing narratives about eighteenth-century corporate governance and providing insights into similar dynamics in modern organisations.
The Mayor of Christchurch recently proposed hosting a future Commonwealth Games, justifying his proposal by recalling the last Games held in the city in 1974. While arguing that these had been 'good', he also noted that they 'broke the city'. This study asks whether it is appropriate to use a past event for current purposes by reference to recent historiography. It then sets out the 1974 context in which the Games took place. An extensive review of archival data considers what the accounting for the 1974 Commonwealth Games might tell us about the financial, but also social, success or otherwise of that event. The research contributes to (accounting) historiography by challenging a simplistic use of the past to justify present action. It also adds to the literature on accounting and culture by using accounting data to enhance our understanding of the past. In particular, it demonstrates how past financial reports, appropriately contextualised, can speak to current public policy proposals.
This study builds on Austrian business cycle theory and empirical evidence to explore how macroeconomic conditions, investment decisions, and fair value accounting interact and contribute to economic crises. The German crash of 1873 serves as an early example of irrational exuberance, marking the decline of peak classical liberalism in German-speaking countries. We argue that liberal reforms, especially in corporate law, culminated in the abolition of the government concession or licence system in 1870, leading to a fundamental change in accounting rules and the adoption of fair value accounting. Our empirical analysis suggests that this shift led to an increase in dividend payments, paid out of capital instead of realised income. Following the dramatic expansion of the German money supply due to French reparations after the Franco-Prussian War, low interest rates - combined with the market-oriented accounting regime - fuelled unprecedented speculation, ultimately culminating in the system's collapse in 1873. Our study contributes to the understanding of the interplay of macroeconomics and accounting, offering practical implications for policymakers and standard setters while drawing historical parallels to the 2008 global financial crisis.
Combining private initiatives with public interest was a defining feature of nineteenth-century European economic policy, particularly in the development of railway systems. In the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Robert Stephenson - renowned as the 'king of the railways' - played a pivotal role in advancing a railway network linking Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence. His report, emphasising financial feasibility, strongly influenced the government's decision to prioritise private capital and management for this transformative project. Governmentality and research into legitimisation strategies further our understanding of the interaction of political discourse, banks and investors interests, local communities' aspirations, cultural & eacute;lites and bourgeoisie consent for the project of such a railway system across Tuscany. Based on governmentality and legitimisation theory, this study demonstrates how accounting practices, represented by Stephenson's report, legitimised and drove the railway initiative in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, aligning political objectives, investor confidence, and community aspirations. By revealing the strategic use of financial data to shape consensus, the research provides new insights into the political impact of accounting and its critical role in fostering infrastructure development in Tuscany.
The British railway 'mania' of 1845-1846 remains a puzzle. Building on Marx's observation that it was a 'great railway swindle', Bryer proposed a 'swindle hypothesis' that underlying this 'mania' was a 'social conspiracy' by the London wealthy, who orchestrated the boom and bust, centrally by not defining profit, allowing directors to manipulate accounts and 'swindle' investors, who incurred large losses. This study examines counter-arguments that directors did not systematically manipulate accounts by employing Marx's theory of crises and new evidence to explain the 'mania'. It investigates a revised hypothesis, that the 'social conspiracy' of history, Britain's transition from landed, commercial and money capitalism, to industrial capitalism, produced the conditions that facilitated the 'swindle' underlying the 'mania'. The transition increased the forces of production, multiplied by railways, which generated intra-class conflict during the 1840s over the 'mode-of-exploitation' between the dominant 'gentlemanly' and emergent 'industrial' capitalists. Basing regulation on gentlemanly capitalists' political economy allowed railway directors to resist a falling rate of profit, 'swindling' investors by unscrupulously understating depreciation. The author supports this story by reanalysing accounting history and comparing actual with required charges derived from modelling aggregate capital expenditures, and concludes that the revised hypothesis should be on accounting historians' agenda.
This study investigates the issues of accountability and solvency in the early modern period by focusing on a religious entity, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, and on its peripheral branches, the commissariati. The Custody was a sort of long-distance international proto-corporation that had to periodically prove its good administration to the Roman Curia while keeping a certain margin of autonomy and independence. The analysis of the commissariati's accounting records, which registered all transactions and were periodically sent to Rome for scrutiny, shows how these documents were crafted to serve the friars' own narrative of their tenure, to promote their endeavours, and to reach a precarious balance between economic solvency, administrative flexibility, and decisional autonomy. The drafting of their balances, for instance, was partially altered to show always minimally positive values. The flexibility of the charge-and-discharge system helped to reach this goal. The research is based on the records of the commissariati of Naples, Messina, and Genoa that were sent for auditing between 1654 and 1687. The Custody's sources of revenues, along with the credit instruments in play, shed further light on the multiple entanglements between religious and secular authorities on local and global scales in this period.
This study provides insights into the role played by institutionalism in the process of making innovations to the governance and business model used by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore (OSMF) during the sixteenth century. Our research relies on institutional theory and archival analyses in an effort to explore how the transition from the Florentine Republic to the Duchy influenced the control structure of the OSMF, which was the organisation that was responsible for the construction and maintenance of the cathedral of Florence, as well as its sources of revenues and costs. In response to pressure from Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, the OSMF transformed into a quasi-public organisation that was financed primarily by private funds from the sale of timber from the Casentino forest, whereas public funding from taxes began to play an increasingly marginal role. The contributions of this study are threefold: (i) it improves our understanding of the relationships among legitimacy theory, coercive isomorphism, and the governance of quasi-public organisations in the sixteenth century; (ii) it innovatively applies the contemporary notion of business models to the institutional context of the late Italian Renaissance; and (iii) it offers a framework for diachronic analyses of financial statements and the corresponding use of accounting as a tool in efforts to explore social history.
This article examines the accounting logic of the first State budget law of the Kingdom of Italy, approved in November 1861 shortly after the country's unification. The analysis reveals that the legal provisions dedicated to accounting themes, while limited in number, contain elements of great significance. Namely, these provisions indicate that the budget was nominally based on a cash logic, yet contained early traces of an accrual logic. Particularly significant are the provisions that defined revenues and expenses as the causes of financial inflows and outflows, and those that distinguished these flows based on the degree of recurrence - permanent or transitory - of their underlying cause. Drawing on Pellegrino Capaldo's theory on the appropriate accrual principle applicable to the State budget, the analysis suggests that the 1861 budget law of the Kingdom of Italy foresaw a possible route that accrual budgeting and accounting could take in central government - one that was not taken, but which may be interesting to reconsider.
This study examines, in a more precise manner than previously, how the financing choices of the managers of Japanese textile companies influenced their respective company's depreciation practice under the relatively lax accounting regulations of 1910s Japan. As a general rule, depreciation expenses were placed in a subordinate position to net income in order to maintain dividend payments. In this situation, reliance on long-term funds raised through the issue of corporate bonds could have eased the pressure from the shareholders for dividends, which could have led, in turn, to a more active recognition of depreciation expenses. Through an empirical analysis using a fixed-effects model based on panel data, we provide evidence that essentially supports this argument. Thus, the choice of financing methods should be included as an additional factor that has affected the development of corporate depreciation practice in the Japanese textile industry in the early twentieth century, especially during WWI.
Through the centuries, policymakers have paid particular attention to the provision of cereals. Thus, central and local governments adopted accounting technologies and calculative practices to control the flow of cereals, especially in times of famine and plague. Theoretically framed by 'early governmentality', this study explores accounting and calculative practices within a mercantilist dimension with a focus on disciplinary mechanisms in the 'Magnifica Patria', an area controlled by the Venetian Republic from the late-sixteenth to early-eighteenth centuries. This analysis contributes to the research on the interplay between accounting, the state, and local authorities in the government of food. It offers insights into how calculative practices, supported by accounting tools and disciplinary mechanisms, reshaped the conduct of grain market actors within a political domain crucial for maintaining social equilibrium.
