Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the historiographic writings for accounting concerned with the craft of researching and writing history, published in the English-language, across a period of 30 years from 1983 to 2012. The study’s aim is three-fold: first, to review the literature pertaining to the writing of accounting history and to identify key developments and trend…
Recent years have witnessed an explosion in the academic literature of accounting history, not only in the English language but throughout the world.This growth has manifested itself not just in the number of publications but in the topics examined, research approaches adopted, and range of theoretical perspectives applied to the study of accounting through its history. Indeed,accounting histo…
Explanatory investigative studies of surviving business records of bygone eras have provided valuable insights into accounting development and have extended our understanding of the nature of accounting as practised today (for example, Boyns, 1993; Edwards and Boyns, 1992; Fleischman and Parker, 1991). In an Australian study of surviving pastoral business records (1841-1900), Carnegie (1993a) …
Purpose – The purpose of this Australian case study, set in the 1960s, is to comprehensively examine the responses of the two major professional accounting bodies to a financial/corporate/regulatory crisis necessitating the defence of the profession’s legitimacy. Design/methodology/approach – This historical paper draws on surviving primary records and secondary sources and applies th…
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to a special issue commemorating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ). Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides the background to the special issue and a summary of the articles appearing across the following pages. It features five retrospective/prospecti…
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to revisit the special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal published in 1996 on the theme “Accounting history into the twenty-first century”, in order to identify and assess the impact of the special issue in shaping developments in the accounting history literature, and to consider issues for future historical research in accou…
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the circumstances and implications of an episode of accounting change arising from the extended use of accrual accounting within the Australian public sector. The matter under scrutiny is the reporting of the library collections of Australia’s public universities as assets in general purpose financial reports. Design/methodology/approach…
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at the adoption of double entry bookkeeping at the Royal Treasury, Portugal, on its establishment in 1761 and the factors contributing to this development. The Royal Treasury was the first central government organization in Portugal to adopt double entry bookkeeping and was a crucial first step in the institutionalisation of the technique in …
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend the work of Carnegie and Walker and report the results of Part 2 of their study on household accounting in Australia during the period from the 1820s to the 1960s. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a microhistorical approach involving a detailed examination of actual accounting practices in the Australian home based on 18 set…
Purpose – Beyond the public world of work, the home provides an arena for examining accounting and gender in everyday life. This study aims to examine household accounting in Australia from the early nineteenth to around the mid-twentieth century. Design/methodology/approach – The study comprises two parts. The first part, as reported in this paper, presents evidence on household accoun…