1,721,054 research outputs found
Accounting history and accounting progress
No full textThe "new" accounting historians that emerged from the mid-1980s characterised their predecessors as relying heavily on a view of accounting as progressive and accounting change as evolutionary. From a social science perspective, progress is a problematic concept, as it implies not just change but also improvement, and thus seems to imply the making of a value judgement. As accounting has become an object of study less as a technical and more as a social phenomenon, consensus as to what constitutes an improvement becomes harder to secure. However, from a perspective grounded in historiography, this paper reviews the use of a concept of progress in the writing of history from the eighteenth century, and analyses its use, together with that of a concept of evolution, in "traditional" accounting history. Appealing to recent developments in the understanding of the role of narrative in history, the paper suggests that the use of narratives of accounting progress should not be ruled out on a priori grounds
The historian as auditor: facts, judgements and evidence
No full textBoth history and auditing are "evidence-based" practices. Accounting historians, who may be skilled in audit as well as historical research, may have special insights into how sources provide evidence to support judgments and opinions. Considerations of evidence by theorists of history may be of relevance to theorists of auditing, and vice versa, The work in this area of recent historiographers Richard Evans, Keith Jenkins and Behan McCullagh is reviewed. McCullagh's claim that fairness as well as truth is central to making historical judgments is shown to resonate with the work of auditors and hence is of particular significance to historians of accounting
Accounts of change: 30 years of historical accounting research
No full textOver the past three decades, a desire to understand the processes of change within accounting, and the contribution made by accounting to broader societal and organizational change, has stimulated a substantial body of historical research in accounting. Labelled as the “new accounting history”, this diverse collection of methodological approaches addressing a wide range of problems has made possible the posing of new questions about accounting’s past. The understanding of what counts as accounting has broadened, a greater awareness of how accounting is intertwined in the social has emerged, voices from below have been allowed to speak, while accounting has been seen to be implicated in wider arenas, with networks of practices, principles and people constituting varieties of “accounting constellations”. The paper reviews the central contribution of Accounting, Organizations and Society to the emergence of the new accounting history, and suggests some directions in which this may develop in the future
The auditor as historian: Reflections of the epistemology of financial reporting
No full textConcern has been growing recently that the modern commercial organisation is becoming less auditable. The volume and complexity of transactions and the opacity of computer-based information systems, coupled with the increased knowledge gap between auditors and clients, make the auditor reliant on evidence whose quality and reliability is open to broad challenges. At the same time, the changing nature of financial reports, from summaries of the past to images of the present and windows on the future, weakens the link between evidence of underlying activities and transactions and their representation in financial statements.This exacerbates the epistemological challenge faced by accountants and auditors: how can financial statements be said to be a faithful representation of an entity, and how can auditors give a well-grounded opinion that the financial statements give a true and fair view? These issues are by no means unique to financial reporting. Similar problems arise in historical research, where historical theorists and practical historians have had to grapple with the nature and status of evidence of the past and the relationship between evidence and historical narratives. By examining contemporary debates within the literature of historiography, insights into comparable issues within financial reporting and auditing should be gained.The paper concentrates in particular on the contribution to the historiographical debate made by Keith Jenkins. Through his books Re-thinking History (1991), On “What is History?” (1995) and Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (1999), and his edited collection The Postmodern History Reader (1997), Jenkins has provocatively challenged more mainstream views of the historian’s relationship with evidence, indeed the nature of historical evidence itself, in ways that raise issues for the conventional understanding of evidence in the audit context. The arguments of Jenkins are contrasted with those of C. Behan McCullagh, whose The Truth of History (1998) explicitly explores the extent to which historical descriptions can be “true and fair”, and thus provides a direct analogy between the task of the historian and that of the auditor. The paper concludes that auditing stands or falls in an epistemological sense with history, in that the statements of auditors bear essentially the same relationship to audit evidence as those of historians bear to historical evidence. If, in a postmodern world,histories that claim to tell a unique “truth” are not just logically impossible but also ethically immoral, then so are financial statements and audit reports
Researching accounting changes in a period of change : theories and methods of accounting history
No full textEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
Accounting for heritage assets: Thomas Holloway's picture collection, 1881–2019
No full textIn recent years, there has been a debate about whether the owners of “heritage assets” should include them on their balance sheets. We present a longitudinal study of the collection of 77 pictures donated by Thomas Holloway to Royal Holloway College between 1881 and 1883. We draw on archival material to analyse accounting practices for Holloway's picture collection, finding that the collection remained effectively invisible as an accounting object until 1999, when accounting requirements for heritage assets were first applied. We use Jean Baudrillard's “orders of simulacra” to study the relationship between accounting signs and their referents, and we draw on Bruno Latour's notion of “matters of concern” to investigate how changes in the accounting sign render the referent a complicating, agitating and provoking “matter” in different ways. The Royal Holloway financial statements currently present the picture collection by an accounting sign that we suggest is a “counterfeit” (signifying the money that could, counterfactually, be made from selling the paintings) but not a “simulation” (creating a hyperreality detached from the referent). This relationship between the sign and the referent makes up the ontological status of “assets” in accounting reports, rendering assets capable of triggering actual (rather than hyperreal) material effects
Multimodality and the messy object: exploring how rhetoric and materiality engage
Get PDFWe respond to the call for more research into the entanglement between multiple (including non-visual and non-verbal) modes of communication within organizations by exploring the relationships between rhetoric and materiality. We draw on archival sources concerning the Founder’s Building at Royal Holloway College (1874-1897). We discuss the building as a multimodal material object, inherently multiple, fluid, and messy: the Founder’s Building is open to multiple encounters with sociality through multiple modes of communication. We find that such ‘messiness’ explains how the spatial, aural, sensual and visual modes embedded in a material object engage with each other, as well as with other visual, verbal and numerical modes, in the crafting of rhetoric: different modes sustain and oppose each other and evolve through absences and presences. We find that the messiness of material objects explains the engagement between rhetoric and materiality: materiality can limit or augment rhetoric, and materiality and rhetoric can co-evolve as the ‘rhetors’ (such as the founder and the governors of the College) and their audiences (such as students, visitors, and tax authorities) attempt to transform the object (the Founder’s Building) into always something else, even an absent object
Social Reporting by Islamic Banks
No full textThe last 30 years have witnessed the appearance and rapid expansion of Islamic banking both inside and outside the Islamic world. Islamic banks provide their customers with financial products that do not violate Sharia, the Islamic law of human conduct. Islamic banks now operate in Western countries such as the UK and USA, as well as most of the Islamic countries. In countries such as Pakistan and Sudan, the whole banking systems have been changed to comply with Sharia. The social role is very important for Islamic banks, and is specified or at least mentioned in many banks’ articles of association. The importance of the social role of these banks has led some researchers to describe Islamic banks as “banks having asocial face”. This role is mainly a reflection of the importance that the Islamic principles upon which these banks operate give to social issues.In this paper, we extend the rich literature on social reporting. Applying the Islamic principles to which the Islamic banks subscribe, we develop a benchmark set of social disclosures appropriate to such banks. We then compare the actual social disclosures contained in the annual reports of 29 banks operating according to Islamic principles (located in 16 countries) to this benchmark. The comparison takes the form of a disclosure index measuring the extent to which each bank’s social disclosures met the benchmark. In addition, we undertake content analysis to measure the volume ofsocial disclosures. The results of the analysis suggest that social reporting by Islamic banks falls significantly short of our expectations for entities whose operations are based on Islamic principles. In addition, the banks tend to disclose only those items that help to construct a positive image, such as matters relating to charity and Zakah (an Islamic religious tax). However, Islamic banks tend not to disclose issues that are potentially important to the users of financial statements but that may have a negative effect, such as transactions regarded as unlawful from the Islamic perspective. The results of the analysis also suggest that banks required to pay Zakah, provide more social disclosures than banks not subject to Zakah
Social reporting by islamic banks
No full textThe last thirty years have witnessed the appearance and rapid expansion of Islamic banking both inside and outside the Islamic world. Islamic banks provide financial products that do not violate Sharia, the Islamic law of human conduct. The Islamic principles upon which the banks claim to operate give an important role to social issues. Applying these principles, we develop a benchmark set of social disclosures appropriate to Islamic banks. These are then compared, using a disclosure index approach, the actual social disclosures contained in the annual reports of twenty-nine Islamic banks (located in sixteen countries) to this benchmark. In addition, content analysis is undertaken to measure the volume of social disclosures. Our analysis suggests that social reporting by Islamic banks falls significantly short of our expectations. The results of the analysis also suggest that banks required to pay the Islamic religious tax Zakah provide more social disclosures than banks not subject to Zakah
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