While the role of accounting as a calculative practice in political governance has been widely examined in the accounting literature, its application within socialist contexts remains relatively underexplored. This study investigates the accounting practices employed in the People's Commune during Maoist China, illustrating how accounting calculations, through mechanisms such as planning, monetisation, and the work-point system, were instrumental in facilitating state-led political governance. By translating a fragmented agricultural economy into standardised quantitative measures, accounting enabled mass-scale governance and reinforced the political authority of the state. This study also contributes to the field of agricultural accounting by providing empirical insights into the implementation of calculative practices within a collectivised socialist framework.
This article provides insights into the shifting and permeable character of auditing and is based on analysis of 214 auditing examination papers in the archives of Certified Practising Accountants Australia for the period 1889–1952. Utilising the theoretical concept of ‘boundary-work’, we position examination papers as key discursive documents for articulating the competencies required of candidates at the time of their candidature. In contrast to conventional depictions of auditing as being mainly concerned with fraud and error detection and financial statement verification, we show that advisory work was a key theme in almost one third of all the questions studied. Interestingly, the notion of auditor independence was entirely absent from the examination regime. The analysis also shows that the emphasis on advisory work began to decline in the late-1930s as the boundary-defining knowledge and competencies associated with auditing began to narrow towards an almost exclusive focus on the audit as independent attestation.
The relationship between accounting and empire, and between accounting and capitalism, has attracted considerable scholarly attention. This article examines the intersections of these three forces – accounting, capitalism and imperialism – through the study of Jewish accountants in Mandate Palestine. It argues that the British authorities introduced legal accounting requirements modelled on their own economic context, but that these frameworks were ill-suited to the local economic realities of Palestine. The British colonial state and the commercial economy shaped a political-economic environment that hindered the development of a robust accounting profession. Within this context, Jewish accountants made repeated efforts to professionalise and legitimise their field, efforts that ultimately fell short. Through this case study, the article illustrates how the professionalisation of accounting was deeply entangled with both imperialist structures and capitalist transformations.
