Accounting History 2001 Napier

5/20/2018 Accounting History 2001 Napier

1/26

http://ach.sagepub.com/Accounting History

http://ach.sagepub.com/content/6/2/7The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/103237320100600202

2001 6: 7Accounting HistoryChristopher J. Napier

Accounting history and accounting progress

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

Australia and New ZealandThe Accounting History Special Interest Group of the Accounting and Finance Association of

can be found at:Accounting HistoryAdditional services and information for

http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://ach.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

What is This?

- May 1, 2001Version of Record>>

at Universiti Utara Malaysia on February 15, 2014ach.sagepub.comDownloaded from at Universiti Utara Malaysia on February 15, 2014ach.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://ach.sagepub.com/content/6/2/7http://ach.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://ach.sagepub.com/content/6/2/7http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepublications.com/http://www.sagepublications.com/http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.aaanz.org/http://www.aaanz.org/http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://ach.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://ach.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://ach.sagepub.com/content/6/2/7.full.pdfhttp://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://ach.sagepub.com/content/6/2/7.full.pdfhttp://ach.sagepub.com/content/6/2/7.full.pdfhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://ach.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://ach.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.aaanz.org/http://www.aaanz.org/http://www.aaanz.org/http://www.sagepublications.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/content/6/2/7http://ach.sagepub.com/


2/26

Accounting history and

accounting progressChristopher J. Napier

University of Southampton

Abstract

The 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, asit 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.

Keywords: history; accounting history; progress; evolution; narrative.

7

at Universiti Utara Malaysia on February 15, 2014ach.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/


3/26

Acknowledgements: An earlier version of this paper was presented as a plenary address at the secondAccounting

History International Conference, Osaka, Japan, 8-10 August 2001, and the author would like to thank those

attending the conference for their valuable comments. The author is grateful to Garry Carnegie and an

anonymous reviewer for detailed suggestions for improvement; any remaining errors remain his own

responsibility.

Address for correspondence:

Christopher J. Napier

School of Management

University of Southampton

Highfield

Southampton

SO17 1BJ

United KingdomTelephone: +44 (0) 23 8059 5318

Facsimile: +44 (0) 23 8059 3844

Email: [email protected]

8

Accounting History NS Vol 6, No 2 - 2001

http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/http://ach.sagepub.com/


4/26

1. Introduction

Anthony Hopwood, in his critique of historical accounting research The

Archaeology of Accounting Systems (1987), characterised most of the historical

studies in the field published by the mid-1980s as having adopted a rather

technical perspective delineating the residues of the accounting past rather than

more actively probing into the underlying processes and forces at work

(Hopwood, 1987, p.207). As Hopwood perceives it, accounting has more

frequently been seen as becoming what it should be. A teleological trajectory of

development has provided a basis for understanding changes in the accounting

craft. ... [A] relatively unproblematic progressive and functionalist interest has been

imposed all too readily on the residues of the accounting past (Hopwood, 1987,p.206).

Although Hopwood gives few specific references to justify this criticism, a

progressivist tendency can indeed be detected in central works of historical

accounting research. For example, in his pioneering history Accounting Evolution

to 1900, A.C. Littleton describes accounting in the following terms:

Accounting is relative and progressive. The phenomena which form its subject

matter are constantly changing. Older methods become less effective under

altered conditions; earlier ideas become irrelevant in the face of new problems.

Thus surrounding conditions generate fresh ideas and stimulate the ingenious

to devise new methods. And as such ideas and methods prove successful they

in turn begin to modify the surrounding conditions. The result we call progress

(Littleton, 1933, p.361).

Littleton does not make specific what he means by progress, although he implies

that it lies in the ability of accounting to solve present-day problems. Littleton notes

that accounting has not been static, and points to the growth in professional audits

and the expansion of cost accounting as evidence of how accounting helps to solve

emerging problems of business planning and control. He claims to show how

accounting originated in known circumstances in response to known needs; it hasevolved and grown in harmony with its surroundings; its changes can be explained

in terms of forces current at the time (Littleton, 1933, p.362). Littletons

historiography is a dynamic one: accounting came from definite causes; it moves

toward a definite destiny (Littleton, 1933, p.362).

This last statement appears to support Hopwoods accusation that the view of

accounting history adopted by historians such as Littleton seems to embody a

teleology: a belief that accounting has some ultimate end to which it is tending. The

path to this ultimate end may not be a direct one, suggesting that accounting

changes could be assessed by the extent to which they work towards the ultimateend (they would in that sense be progressive) or move away from the end (they

would in that sense be regressive). But even if we believe that accounting has

some ultimate end, what could it be? In my own studies of accountings history, I

9

Napier: Accounting history and accounting progress



5/26

have passed through various stages from an initial idealism, ready to believe that

accounting can and does change for the better, to a more sceptical position, unsure

whether it makes sense to describe accounting as progressive and to talk ofaccounting progress at all.

This paper is therefore an attempt to explore what might be meant by

describing accounting as progressive. I shall undertake this exploration by

considering what roles a notion of progress might play in historical research more

generally and historical accounting research more particularly. This requires a

review of the extent to which accounting historians have in the past appealed to

notions of progress. Although there is some evidence of the use of progress as an

organising concept in so-called traditional accounting history, it tends to be

associated with the highly ambiguous notion of evolution. The emphasis placed onevolution as a term describing accountings patterns of change has been criticised

by the so-called new accounting history (Miller et al., 1991; Miller & Napier,

1993). As Keenan (1998) has pointed out, this criticism may itself be open to

question as presupposing a rather specific and potentially confused understanding

of the concept of evolution. Nervousness about describing accounting change as

progressive may owe more to the fact that many historical accounting researchers

(particularly those working within the new accounting history approach) come

from social science backgrounds, where claims that evidence reveals a pattern of

improvement over time might be held to be inappropriate value judgements.However, historians of accounting are increasingly aware that social science

values are not the only ones appropriate for the study of how accounting has

manifested itself, changed and developed through the past (see, for example, Mills,

1993; Fleischman et al., 1996; Parker, 1999). Historical accounting researchers of

both the traditional and new varieties have, as Parker (1999, p.17), notes, been

firmly embedded in the qualitative research methodology tradition, and even

those leaning more towards social science have been suspicious of positivist

research for its tendency to explain and predict complex human behaviour in terms

of a limited number of factors. More recently, there has been a greaterconsciousness that modes of historical writing are neither neutral nor mere

rhetoric, but that different forms of narrative are themselves constitutive of the

histories that they tell (Funnell, 1998). From this point of view, narrative forms are

not inherently good or bad, rather they are effective or ineffective in persuading the

intended audience of the cogency of the story being narrated. Telling a story in

terms of progress is often a persuasive and thus an effective way of structuring a

small-scale historical narrative. This is so whether we describe a success in

which accounting, or something affected by accounting, is held to improve, or a

failure from which we hope to learn lessons to help us avoid mistakes in the

future. On a larger scale, where accounting as a whole becomes the subject matter

of our histories, it may be more difficult to tell a story of progress, as we seem to

10




6/26

face a choice between the equally unattractive options of regarding accounting as

eternally changing in a generally improving direction or as tending towards its end.

Progress in history and history as progress

A dictionary definition of progress is: An advance to something better or higher in

development (Chambers English Dictionary, 1990, p.1168). This definition brings

out the two central aspects of progress. First, it is a dynamic concept: a necessary

condition for progress is that there should be some change. However, change is not

a sufficient condition: the change must be a change for the better. Progress can be

seen as a process of more-or-less continuous improvement, and may in addition be

regarded as progress towards some goal or end. Thus the philosopher Robert

Solomon (1995, p.722) defines progress as improvement over time, especially the

gradual perfection of humanity. A strong belief in progress is often seen as

characteristic of the eighteenth century Enlightenment in Europe. This is

exemplified by such writers as the Marquis de Condorcet, who in the middle of the

French Revolution set out his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the

Human Mind (Condorcet, 1955). An enlightenment view of history as universal

progress was expressed by Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire, where he drew the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has

increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, andperhaps the virtue, of the human race (quoted in Carr, 1964, p.111).1

As a philosophical idea, progress is particularly associated with Kant and

Hegel. In his essay An Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of

View, written in 1784, Kant proposed that:

The history of the human race as a whole can be regarded as the realisation of

a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally and for this purpose also

externally perfect political constitution as the only possible state within

which all natural capacities of mankind can be developed completely (quoted

in Burns and Rayment-Pickard, 2000, p.55).

The view of Kant that humanitys history is a movement towards some ideal state

was developed by Hegel, who saw progress as being achieved through conflict

between and within ideas and political systems. These would fall apart through

their internal contradictions and be replaced by higher forms through a dialectical

process. Ultimately humanity would reach a form that contained no internal

contradictions: what many writers, most notably Francis Fukuyama (1992), have

referred to as the end of history.

Hegels view of a universal history had many unattractive features, as he

considered that:

The History of the World occupies a higher ground than that on which morality

has properly its position. ... What the absolute aim of Spirit requires and

11




7/26

accomplishes what Providence sees transcends the obligations and liability

to imputation and the ascription of good or bad motives, which attach to

individuality in virtue of its social relations. ... Moral claims that are irrelevant

must not be brought into collision with world-historical deeds and theiraccomplishment (Hegel, 1956, pp.66-7).

As filtered through Marx and then later both Fascism and Communism, this

philosophy that history overrode morality was to provide a justification for many

subsequent acts of brutality (Fukuyama, 1992, p.69). However, the implication that

progress was inevitable was to appear in a more benign light in nineteenth century

Britain, where rapid social and economic change could be made to seem less

threatening by locating contemporary developments within a broader narrative of

progress and, as the nineteenth century unfolded, a story of evolution.

In his study of the Victorians relationship with the past, The Invention of

Progress (1989), Bowler notes how narratives of evolution emerged not only in

historical writings but also in a wide range of contexts, and suggests that evolution

provided a general progressive scheme designed to create order out of chaos

(Bowler, 1989, p.5). Belief in progress was a badge of optimism about the present

and the future. Much general historical writing in the nineteenth century, at least in

Britain, reflected this optimism, seeing history as a gradual movement towards

contemporary British society, with past institutions and practices being interpreted

as primitive precursors of those found in the more developed present. This

approach to historical writing was subsequently to be described by Herbert

Butterfield (1931) as Whig History. Historians would identify the favourable

factors that allowed Britain to develop in the fortunate ways that it did, while social

scientists could elucidate the underlying laws of progress in society, which might

be expected to turn out to be a generalisation of the Whig interpretation of history

(Bowler, 1989, p.27).

After World War I, the optimism that had supported a general notion of

progress tended to be replaced by a more pessimistic viewpoint. In his study The

Idea of Progress, first published in 1920, J.B. Bury tried to uphold the value ofprogress as the animating and controlling idea of western civilisation (Bury,

1920, p.viii), but could not entirely sustain an optimistic outlook. Oswald

Spenglers The Decline of the West(1926) saw in human history not a continuous

trend of improvement but rather a recurrence of cycles of growth and decay.

Civilisations had a beginning, a middle and an end. While there are echoes here of

Hegels dialectic, to Spengler it was less clear that the succeeding civilisations

embodied a pattern of constant improvement. Indeed, it might make little sense to

compare, for example, the world of classical Greece and Rome with the age of

medieval Christianity or the European Enlightenment. Not only could we expectany individual civilisation ultimately to decline, but we would have no rational

basis for considering its replacement as better or worse than what went before.

12




8/26

The argument that different civilisations could not be ranked meaningfully

undermined the use of a concept of progress at a time when historians and others

began to realise the danger of ethnocentrism in the writing of universal histories.The tendency of nineteenth century Whig history to take Victorian Britain as

normative, and the later tendency of so-called modernisation theory (Nisbet,

1969) to do the same for the USA in the twentieth century, increasingly came under

attack from those who questioned the very concept of modernity itself, in

particular whether all nations really wanted to adopt the Wests liberal democratic

principles, and whether there were not equally valid cultural starting and end

points (Fukuyama, 1992, p.69). As social science came to have an increasing

influence on historical research, particularly research into cultural development, the

use of a concept of progress (and indeed a concept of decline) was seen as requiringresearchers to make inappropriate value judgements as to what constituted

improvement or worsening. In a homogeneous culture, such judgements would

have reflected a consensus and would not only have gone unchallenged but most

likely would not consciously appear to be judgements at all. As cultures became

more heterogeneous, the description of a particular change as progressive appeared

explicitly to embody a value judgement, which social scientists increasingly wished

to avoid making on methodological grounds. Such value judgements, when not

avoided entirely, became heavily contested.

One area in which a concept of progress appeared to be still viable wasscience. An important contribution to our understanding of scientific progress is

provided by the philosopher of science Larry Laudan, in his book Progress and its

Problems (1977). Laudan argues that the adequacy of a scientific theory or research

programme lies in its ability to solve scientific problems. If two theories are

compared, one of which solves more and weightier problems than the other, then

the first theory can be regarded as better than the second. Laudan claims that:

Given that the aim of science is problem solving ... , progress can occur if and

only if the succession of scientific theories in any domain shows an increasing

degree of problem solving effectiveness (Laudan, 1977, p.68, italics in originaldeleted).

This focus on problem-solving might provide a way of conceptualising progress in

other disciplines and practices, and arguably has already been reflected in historical

studies of accounting by Littleton (1933). Laudan notes that many philosophers and

historians of science have regarded science (in actuality or as an ideal) as a

cumulative system of knowledge. This means that new theories are capable of

solving not only the problems solved satisfactorily by earlier theories but also a set

of additional problems. A notable exception is Kuhn (1962), who suggests that later

theories can be incommensurable with earlier theories. One aspect of this is that

some at least of the problems of earlier theories simply do not exist as problems

within the later theories, not in the sense that those theories can solve them easily,

13




9/26

but rather that they are conceptually inexpressible in the terms of the later theories.

Laudan attempts to overcome this objection by claiming that progress is not a

matter simply of the number of problems solved but also their significance orweight (presumably the previously solved problems inexpressible in terms of the

later theories are simply not "weighty" enough to count in an assessment of the later

theories). This move may not be very satisfactory, but the idea that theories (or

indeed practices) can be assessed and compared by their ability to fulfil adequately

some function may be a potentially promising one when we come to consider

progress in accounting. On the other hand, the link between progress and

functionalism in accounting history was precisely what was criticised by Hopwood

(1987, p.206).

The idea of progress has been an important feature of Western historiographyat least since the eighteenth century, although it came to be questioned in the

twentieth century both on empirical grounds, given that civilisation was observed

by some to be declining, and on methodological grounds, on the basis that

judgements of progress involved making unscientific (and thereby unacceptable)

value judgements. However, progress and its associated concept of evolution have

continued to be powerful narrative models for the writing of history. In fact, as the

philosopher of history Gordon Graham points out in his book The Shape of the Past

(1997), progress can be understood has having a range of different shapes.

Graham identifies three versions of progress by reference to what an impartialobserver in the present would believe about the past, and about whether or not the

observer would hold the same view at any time in the past. This conceptualisation,

by locating judgements at the level of individual preferences, attempts to

circumvent the objection that progress is a value-laden concept. First, there is

uniform progress. Here, the observers perception is of continuous improvement,

or more formally, an observer in the present believes that, for any time in the past,

there is a later time when he or she would prefer to live, and in addition the observer

would have held this judgement at any past time. Graham contrasts this with

evolutionary progress, where the observer in the present would still believe thatfor any time in the past there is a later time when he or she would prefer to live, but

this view could not be held at all points in the past. In a model of evolutionary

progress, the observer believes that recent history shows uniform improvement, but

in the past there have been episodes when things got better followed by periods

where they got worse. However, in each succeeding cycle, the best position is an

improvement on the best of the previous cycle, and the worst position is also better

than the worst of the previous cycle. Finally, Graham describes revolutionary

progress, where instead of cycles of growth and decay we have long periods of

stasis followed by rapid improvement to a new plateau. Graham expresses a

personal preference for evolutionary progress as the most plausible form of

progressivism (Graham, 1997, pp.63-6).

14




10/26

Grahams shapes of progress directly raise the question of the connection

between the concepts of progress and evolution. The problem here is that the term

evolution covers a very broad spectrum of meanings. Indeed, Keenan (1998,p.652) suggests: Evolutionary is an adjective with a wide application and

anything, perhaps, which involves processes and outcomes could be so described.

At its simplest, evolution may signal a process of gradual and continuous change,

in contrast to revolution. This seems to be an important feature of Grahams

argument. In the accounting literature, evolution is used in this sense by Bromwich

and Bhimani (1989), in their study of changing developments in accounting inside

organisationsManagement Accounting: Evolution not Revolution. However, most

users of evolution in the context of accounting history are, as Littleton (1933) was,

interested in understanding change in a particular domain as a response to changesin other domains. Here the analogy with biological evolution begins to be drawn.

This analogy is taken further when the outcome of some process of change is

presented as a result of a variant of natural selection. For example, a change in

the economic environment may give rise to new problems that call forth in some

way a range of possible solutions. The solution that ends up predominating might

be considered to do so through a process of the survival of the fittest. At one

level, this may be a satisfactory explanation for the observed outcome. I would,

however, suggest that historians will not be satisfied with simplistic evolutionary

explanations along the lines that the fittest solution has survived (what theAmerican Accounting Association (1977) has described as Accounting

Darwinism see also Napier, 1987, p.244) but rather will wish to demonstrate

how the outcome actually is superior to its rivals. The assumption that what is

observed is fittest has been challenged recently by Hoskin and Macve (2000,

p.105), who claim:

To say, as [economic rationalists] tend to, that the routines found in the archive

must have represented the optimal trade off of costs and benefits (given the

decision-making and other uses that economic rationalists wish to attribute to

such routines) is empirically empty and essentially tautological. What is stillgenerally missing is an historical explanation for why particular routines and

their subsequent modifications were the ones that were actually chosen and

why consideration/experimentation was not given to possible alternatives that

may have been even more cost-beneficial.

Analogies with biological evolution also become complex when some goal or end

to the evolutionary process is imputed. One of the ways in which nineteenth

century Christianity tried to accommodate itself to the emerging biological theory

of evolution was to claim that evolution was simply the mechanism by which the

world was moving towards the completion of Gods plan (Ruse, 1999). The secularvariant of this saw evolution as the mechanism by which society progressed

(Bowler, 1989). Evolution was broad enough as a concept to accommodate a range

of positions from extreme laissez-faire (for example, the social Darwinist views

15




11/26

of Herbert Spencer and others) to more interventionist views such as those of the

Fabians and Progressivists. To some, evolution is seen as driving the world towards

some desired end point (it is teleological), to others, evolution is a force forunbounded progress. This linking of evolution and progress was perhaps

influenced by Darwins ideas of the Descent of Man: what appears to be a path

of improvement from simple organisms through increasingly complex ones to the

ultimate sentient organism.

However, it is by no means necessary to a theory of evolution that it embodies

any presupposition of increasing or decreasing complexity. Indeed, many modern

biological views of evolution (see, for example, Smith, 1993) tend to combine a

local perspective whereby species in particular environmental niches become

dominant because of particular adaptive advantages with a global perspectivewhereby changes in the environment are expected to lead to changes in the range

and dominance of species in ways that cannot be labelled simply as progressive.

There is no reason to expect an environmental change to lead to greater complexity

in the dominant species.

To sum up, progress has been a central theme in the writing of history in the

Western world for over two centuries. A wide range of historians, from the

Universal Historians such as Hegel to the Whig Historians of nineteenth century

Britain, saw history itself as essentially progressive. History was written within a

narrative framework of progress, demonstrating how problems are solved,challenges overcome and things get better. Metaphors of evolution were often

mobilised, although the equivocal nature of the concept of evolution necessitates

care in our interpretation of how contemporaries used the term. In the twentieth

century, however, a more pessimistic attitude to the world and to humanity on the

one hand, and a reluctance to make value judgements on the other, have made the

idea of progress less fashionable. It is now necessary to see how the concept of

progress and its more recent questioning have had an impact on the writing of

accounting history and on our understandings of accounting more generally.

Progress in accounting history

The relationship between accounting and progress raises some important questions.

The first of these is the empirical question of how far, if at all, accounting itself is

"progressive at the social level, in the sense that properly functioning accounting

contributes to the improvement of society. Certainly many historians of accounting

have recognised as does Littleton (1933) that accounting impacts on society,

and an idealistic view of accounting is that it has the potential of contributing to

social improvement through its embodiment of rational calculation. If we payattention, as did Max Weber among others, to the ways in which particular forms

of calculation help to bring about the rationalisation of the conduct of life in the

16




12/26

sphere of the enterprise and more generally (Miller & Napier, 1993, p.635), and

we see such rationalisation as in itself progressive, then accounting, as a form of

rational calculation, has the potential to be progressive. Of course, if we see therationalisation of life as a bad thing, then we will be less likely to regard the spread

of accounting as evidence of social improvement, and less likely to consider

accounting as a possible force for progress. Whatever our position, the criticism of

commentators such as Hopwood (1987) is that traditional historians took

accounting as unproblematically representing a potential for technical

improvement. Broadbent and Guthrie (1992) have described this view in the

context of research into present-day accounting practice as technical accounting.

They refer explicitly to Hopwood (1987) when they state that, under this view,

changes to accounting systems are seen as being progressive and reforms toaccounting practices are based on the notion of teleological trajectory. Changes in

practice are therefore seen as being manifestations of functional progress and

system improvements (Broadbent & Guthrie, 1992, p.10).

A second question is what might actually constitute progress within

accounting. Understanding progress as meaning change for the better, this is

certainly a central question that must be addressed by the accounting profession

and by both governmental and non-governmental regulators of accounting. It arises

implicitly if not explicitly whenever a new or revised accounting or auditing law or

standard is proposed. What criteria can we use to decide whether the newregulation is an improvement on the old one, rather than simply being different?

Similarly, both academics and practical men and women want to satisfy

themselves that the technical innovations they develop actually represent

improvements on current ideas and practices. To some, progress in accounting was

equated with accountings becoming more scientific, not in the sense that theories

used to understand and explain accounting appealed to scientific analogies, as did

positive accounting theory (Watts & Zimmerman, 1986, p.2), but rather in the

sense that accounting measurements would be claimed as conforming to the canons

of objectivity and realism (Chambers, 1966; Sterling, 1979). Perhaps suchinnovators would endorse the view put forward by Laudan (1977) that progress can

be assessed in terms of ability to solve more and weightier problems. Mobilising a

problem-solving framework, an accounting historian would need to ask at what

point in time does a particular problem emerge to which accounting might be a

solution.2 The pace of innovation in different times and places could be explained,

within a framework of comparative international accounting history (Carnegie &

Napier, 1999), in terms of the emergence at different points of a given problem. For

example, the need to account effectively for business combinations emerges as a

problem at an earlier time in countries with highly developed capital markets such

as the USA and UK, than in countries where not only the way in which business

finance is organised but also the legal structure of complex enterprises is different.

17




13/26

In the latter case, the business combination may simply not exist as an object to

be accounted for.

In terms of technical progress, claims have been made that accounting hasbeen subject to periods of stagnation or even decline. It would therefore not exhibit

the pattern that Graham (1997) referred to as uniform progress, with steady

improvement from period to period. Raymond de Roover (1955, p.409)

contemptuously dismissed the period between the publication of Paciolis Summa,

the first printed treatment of double-entry bookkeeping, in 1494, and the transition

to more sophisticated corporate accounting in the nineteenth century, as an Age of

Stagnation (see also Chatfield, 1977, pp.52-61).3 Edwards (1988, p.vi), noting that

change does not, of course, necessarily mean progress, gives an example of a

relative decline in the quality of financial reports published by British companiesduring the 1920s, as these tended to disclose less than many financial reports

published before World War I.

The suggestion that accounting has declined has been associated particularly

in recent years with Johnson and KaplansRelevance Lost(1987). In fact, although

these authors argue that management accounting systems had become increasingly

inadequate in the later twentieth century, they interpret this as a relatively recent

decline in relevance, not as a lag in adapting older financial accounting systems to

modern managerial needs (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987, p.xii). Accounting methods

become obsolescent partly because of changes in the available technologies foraccounting methods developed in the manual or punch card era can be refined

greatly in the computer era but also because of changes in the nature of the

problem for which accounting is the proposed solution. Interestingly, this view of

decline in relevance incorporates a narrative of technological progress. Both the

Age of Stagnation argument and the Relevance Lost position are capable of

accommodating a long-run view of progress, as stagnation did not last indefinitely,

while the diagnosis offered byRelevance Loststimulated many enterprises to make

changes in their cost accounting and management systems intended to remedy the

decline in accountings relevance (Johnson, 1992).Furthermore, some historians have pointed to a tendency for accounting

changes to follow recurring patterns or cycles. Mumford (1979) noted that the

various stages in the growth and decline in interest in price-change accounting in

Britain over the 1970s reflected closely similar stages in an earlier cycle in the late

1940s. He put forward his cyclical model as a blueprint for the next surge of

inflation (Mumford, 1979, p.98), and also in part as a prediction (subsequently

fulfilled) that, with the decline in the rate of inflation, price-change accounting

would disappear from the agenda of accounting standard-setters, preparers and

users.

A cyclical model has also been proposed by Nobes (1991) for UK standard-

setting.4 Nobes specifically addresses the question as to whether UK accounting

18




14/26

standards in the 1970s and 1980s provided evidence of progress, defining this in

terms of the ability of the standard-setter to resolve conflicts, discover unique

answers or impose standard solutions (Nobes, 1991, p.271). It is worth noting howby implication Nobes identifies progress in accounting with the ability to solve

problems, where solution is defined in terms of obtaining answers or at least

consensus. Nobes adopts a rather Hegelian position by proposing that:

Progress may be inferred in the sense that the [standard-setting] structure

contained the seeds of its own destruction ... . The inability of the Accounting

Standards Committee to identify or to state or to enforce the right answer on

various issues led to the pressure to replace it with a body that might be better

able to manage some or all of these matters (Nobes, 1991, p.271).

This illustrates a central problem with using a concept of progress in historicalexplanation: if we focus on a relatively short period of time we might observe a

particular pattern of change (improvement, stasis or decline), but this pattern need

not be the same as that observed over a longer period of time, within which the

shorter period is included. This situation is consistent with the evolutionary

progress model of Graham (1997) already discussed, and it may underlie the

relative lack of explicit statements about progress in much of the traditional writing

on accounting history, as against the frequent references to evolution.

However, the evolutionary progress model implies one major belief: that,

despite the possibility of setbacks in the past on the road to the present, todaysobserver believes that the current state of affairs is preferable to that at most if not

all points in the past. How far is it reasonable to impute such a belief to traditional

accounting historians using the term evolution in their work? A relatively brief

examination is enough to show how several such historians say very little about the

current state of affairs at the time they were writing. Thus Littleton, writing in

1933, brings his book to a close in 1900. Garner, whose classic work Evolution of

Cost Accounting to 1925 includes no fewer than nine chapters on the evolution

of particular features of costing, wrote in 1954. Lee and Parker, whose collection

The Evolution of Corporate Financial Reporting was published in 1979, includesome material touching on events close to the date of publication, and their main

motivation was inviting the reader to explore certain contemporary problems of

accounting through the eyes and pens of historians (Lee & Parker, 1979, p.viii).

However, far from considering the present to be better than most times in the

past, they contend that few of the major issues of today are unique. In fact, ... they

are often many decades old, and no nearer solution today than they were when first

mooted (Lee & Parker, 1979, p.viii).

Perhaps the most significant advocate of evolution as a structure for thinking

about accounting history was the American Accounting Associations Committee

on Accounting History, which reported in 1970. This proposed an objective for

historical study firmly in the tradition of modernisation theory:

19




15/26

By observing the evolution of accounting thought, practices, and institutions

that has corresponded to evolution in the environment (including economic,

social, political, and legal factors), it may be possible to suggest the practices

and institutions which are more compatible with the environments of thedeveloping world (American Accounting Association, 1970, p.53).

Of nine specific examples of historical studies which deserve attention, no fewer

than eight contain the word evolution. But despite this predominance of

evolution, it is unclear whether the Committee on Accounting History meant much

more than process of change, with some sense that changes in accounting may be

a function of changes in the environment. It is in this sense that more recent

historians seem to appeal to evolution. For example, Jones and Aiken (1995), in

their study of British company legislation of the nineteenth century, argue that

analysis of political and social evolution is ... essential for explaining the timing

and development of companies legislation of this period (Jones & Aiken, 1995,

p.61).5

Even if traditional accounting historians have been circumspect about making

claims that accounting has progressed, this is how the new accounting historians

have tended to characterise their general approach. Thus Funnell (1998, p.156)

defends new accounting history by claiming that accounting history is not the

simple story of progressive improvement in response to the emerging needs of

society. The view that traditional accounting history was this simple story of

progress is evident from a number of the precursors of the new accounting history.

We can observe this view being expressed right from the start by the central

influence on the emergence of the new accounting history, Anthony Hopwood. He

was a member of a committee set up in 1977 by the British Social Science Research

Council to investigate research needs in accounting. One of the main aims of this

committee was to stimulate research that moved away from what it perceived as

technical towards a more socially informed research agenda. The committee was

greatly affected by a perception that change was pervasive in accounting, that

accounting change was not well understood, and that at least a partialunderstanding of change could be given by historical studies. However, despite a

recognition of the substantial body of historical research in accounting that, even in

the mid-1970s, had come into existence:

Most members of the committee nevertheless were dissatisfied with not only

the present state of knowledge in the area but also the current directions of

historical research. There has been a tendency for technical histories of

accounting to be written in isolation of their social, economic and institutional

contexts. Accounting seemingly has been abstracted from its social domain

with many of the understandings that are available tending to present a view of

the autonomous and unproblematic development of the technical. Where

efforts have been made to offer alternative perspectives, teleological,

evolutionary or progressive notions of change have often been implicit in the

understandings presented. ... [M]any members of the committee were

20




16/26

concerned about the partial, atheoretical and intellectually isolated nature of

much historical work in the accounting area (Hopwood, 1985, pp.365-6).

This view of traditional accounting history not only motivated Hopwood in his ownsubstantive historical researches (Hopwood, 1987), but was proposed by Miller and

Napier in their paper Genealogies of Calculation (1993). The latter paper is open

to the objection that many of the examples of traditional historical accounting

research that it criticised were rather dated, even at the time the first version of the

paper (Miller & Napier, 1990) was written. That Littleton in 1933 may have been

rather simplistic in drawing links between social and economic change on the one

hand and accounting change on the other, and vague on how accounting fed back

to help shape society, does not mean that all traditional historians should have

similar views attributed to them.The key feature of the new accounting history, as stimulated by Hopwood and

developed by many others working within a wide number of theoretical

perspectives (see, for example, Miller et al., 1991), is that it is a sociological history

written by social scientists. Hence, it is driven by a desire to theorise and generalise,

rather than to particularise. At the same time, the canons of social scientific

research, in particular a nervousness about appearing to make value judgements,

have a significant influence on the form of argumentation. This gives rise to a

potential paradox, as some of the new accounting historians, while documenting the

expansion of accounting and accountants (and related disciplines such as auditing)into new contexts and domains, have felt distinctly unhappy with what they

perceive as the confining rather than liberating impact of accounting on modern

society. It has been argued forcefully by commentators such as Neimark (1990,

1994) and Armstrong (1994) that the methodological inhibition from making

explicit value judgements has tended to lead to tensions if not contradictions in

much of the new accounting history, particularly that influenced by the French

social theorist Michel Foucault. New historians wish to critique society, and

accountings role within society, while their theoretical standpoint tends to locate

value judgements as relative to beliefs and systems of power extant during the

period under study. This undermines the possibility of the very critique that is being

sought, as there is and can be no independent standpoint from which any critique

may be offered that is immune to accusations that it simply reflects a particular set

of values. On the other hand, Foucauldians argue that a Marxist theory of history

appeals to Hegelian ideas of Universal History that have long since been exploded.

Perhaps at this stage it is worth appealing to the archive (Fleischman &

Tyson, 1997). In an unpublished working paper6 that formed the basis of thought

on historical accounting research of the Social Science Research Council

committee discussed by Hopwood (1985), Cyril Tomkins set out his view of the

development of accounting. This contains a remarkable echo of Littleton (1933).

Developments in accounting came about in the first place in response to economic

21




17/26

social and political pressures, but, thereafter, acted as an enabling device to assist

further developments (Tomkins, 1978, p.9, emphasis in original). Moreover,

Tomkins exhibits a degree of optimism that is often lacking from the newaccounting history:

Despite the current criticisms, the long run record of accounting is distinctly

encouraging. There have been occasions when accountants may not have

reacted quickly enough to the needs of the days society for example the very

slow pace (and sometimes backward steps) of increasing disclosure of

information through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, more

currently, the failure to produce acceptable inflation accounting rules and the

lack of new methods to serve the special needs of developing countries where

western (USA and UK) accounting practices are often of little direct relevance.

However, if we take the broad span of history, accounting has on the wholedeveloped as and when required (Tomkins, 1978, p.9, emphasis in original).

Interestingly, Fukuyama (1992, p.70) suggests that the pessimism of the twentieth

century may have been overdone: We need to ask whether our pessimism is not

becoming something of a pose, adopted as lightly as was the optimism of the

nineteenth century. For a nave optimist whose expectations are belied appears

foolish, while a pessimist proven wrong maintains an aura of profundity and

seriousness. Is there scope for optimism about accounting, and is it legitimate to

tell histories of accounting progress? These issues will be considered in the

concluding section of this paper, which develops the theme of history as narrativeand hence importantly literary rather than simply a neutral piece of science.

Narratives of progress

Within the study of history more generally, one of the most important debates in

recent years has involved the consideration of the extent to which the writing of

history does more than simply provide a superstructure (Goldstein, 1976, pp.140-

1) necessary to express in words the objective facts of the past. Indeed, does the

way in which history is written the narrative of history actually give meaningto the past (White, 1987, p.2)? If the latter, is there one correct narrative already

implicit in past events, or is there the possibility of multiple narratives, and thus

multiple meanings? Within the accounting literature, Funnell (1998) has already

examined this debate at some length,7 and what follows is a very brief sketch of the

issues. On one side, there is the view that:

The historical method consists in investigating the documents in order to

determine what is the true or most plausible story that can be told about the

events of which they are evidence. A true narrative account ... is a necessary

result of a proper application of historical method. The form of the discourse,the narrative, adds nothing to the content of the representation (White, 1987,

p.27).

22




18/26

The role of the historian is to tell it as it actually was. Historians may want to

explain why events happened as they did by appealing to some broader theory (and

sociologically oriented historians will inevitably wish to take this route), but thehistorians explanations are separate from the historians narratives. Indeed,

historians face a tension: a scientific as opposed to a literary approach to

history seems to suggest that putting the historical facts into a narrative framework

could lead to the danger of diluting objectivity. The aim of the historian, on this

view, is not to tell a good story (Napier, 1989, p.241), but rather to tell the true

story.

However, in recent years strong arguments have been put forward, most

notably by Hayden White, that the content and the form of historical narrative are

inseparable. Moreover, there is no single true narrative: historical events can beordered in a narrative emplotted in different ways. In his seminal work

Metahistory, White proposes a series of standard emplotments8 that can be taken by

historical narratives: romance, comedy, tragedy and satire. In the romance, the hero

of the story triumphs over the world: it is a drama of the triumph of good over evil,

of virtue over vice, of light over darkness, and of the ultimate transcendence of man

over the world (White, 1973, p.9). In the satire, whose principal style is irony, it

is the world that triumphs: in the final analysis, human consciousness and will are

always inadequate to the task of overcoming definitively the dark force of death,

which is mans unremitting enemy (White, 1973, p.9). Comedy and tragedy, onthe other hand, offer some hope of at least provisional victory over the world, the

difference being the form that this victory takes. In comedy hope is held out for

the temporary triumph of man over his world by the prospect of occasional

reconciliations of the forces at play in the social and natural world, while in

tragedy there are intimations of states of division among men more terrible than ...

at the beginning. Still, the fall of the protagonist and the shaking of the world he

inhabits ... are not regarded as totally threatening to those who survive ... . There

has been a gain in consciousness for the spectators (White, 1973, p.9).

To White, the choice of emplotment for a historical narrative is a choice ofhistorical explanation. As the same set of historical evidence is open, at least in

principle, to different emplotments, it can be explained in different ways. In a later

work, White links emplotment specifically to stories of progress:

When Kant turned to the consideration of what could be known from the study

of history, so as to be able to determine what mankind could legitimately hope

on the basis of that knowledge, he identified three kinds of equally pertinent

conclusions. These were that (1) the human race was progressing continually;

(2) the human race was degenerating continually; and (3) the human race

remained at the same general level of development continually. He called thesethree notions of historical development eudaemonianism, terrorism and

farce, respectively; they might just as well be called comedy, tragedy, and

irony (if considered from the standpoint of the plot structures they impose upon

23




19/26

the historical panorama), or idealism, cynicism, and scepticism (if considered

from the standpoint of the world-views they authorise) (White, 1987, p.65).

So a view of general progress is emplotted as comedy, one of decline as tragedyand one of stasis or recurrence as satire.

Comedy and tragedy are common modes of emplotment in traditional

accounting history. Any narrative that begins with the identification of some

problem (whether this identification is made by the author or is observed in the

historical evidence), sets out the various attempts at addressing the problem, and

ends with describing how the problem was solved, would be a comedy in Whites

terms. A classic example of this form of narrative is given by Neil McKendricks

study of Josiah Wedgwoods cost accounting (McKendrick, 1970). Here,

Wedgwood is faced with the problem of falling profit margins in a time ofeconomic decline, which he addresses by experimenting with cost estimation

procedures. These turn out to be successful, and Wedgwood persists with them.

This is a clear story of progress. However, when Hopwood tells the story of

Wedgwood, the conclusion is more equivocal: Wedgwood now had available to

him the basis of a more anonymous and continuous form of surveillance. ... The

newly established accounting system enabled a different set of dynamics to be set

into motion. ... The organisation could be observed and managed in terms different

from those in which it functioned (Hopwood, 1987, p.218). There is a more ironic

tone to this: Wedgwoods innovations may have solved one set of problems fromhis personal point of view, but they change, not necessarily for the better, how

others in the organisation are affected by the new practices.

Traditional accounting histories may also adopt a mode of tragedy, where an

episode of failure is narrated as a cautionary tale from which readers today (and

indeed observers in the past) might learn lessons. Arguably, the mode of

emplotment inRelevance Lost (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987) is one of tragedy (even

though some of the sub-plots told along the way may in themselves have the form

of comedy). If American business is seen as the protagonist of the story, then its

persistence with costing methods that were increasingly losing their relevance led,

for some organisations, to bankruptcy, and for others to serious difficulty. There is,

though, a hope that those reading the book will draw lessons from it and change

their costing methods to more relevant ones.9 A satirical or ironic approach to

narrating the same events would rule out such hope.

If different emplotments of the same historical evidence are possible, there is

no single true historical explanation. Choice of emplotment may reflect personal

philosophy: as White points out in the passage quoted earlier, there is an

association between comedy and idealism, tragedy and cynicism, and satire and

scepticism. If a sceptical attitude is regarded as the most appropriate for a social

scientist to adopt, then it is not surprising that the new accounting historians,

reflecting such scepticism, appear to find satire the most comfortable mode of

24




20/26

emplotment, and are uneasy with narratives of progress (or indeed decay).10 This is

well illustrated by the study by Miller (1991) of the British governments advocacy

of discounted cash flow (DCF) as a means of increasing the rate of economicgrowth in the 1960s. Miller is at pains to stress that issues such as the extent to

which DCF was actually adopted, and the extent to which its use helped achieve the

governments objective of faster economic growth, were not the point of his paper,

which was to study how a particular issue is problematised and how DCF was

mobilised in various programmes. As he concludes: The failure of the idealised

programme within which DCF techniques was promoted can be seen as intrinsic to

the very nature of such programmes (Miller, 1991, p.738). In the final analysis, the

world always triumphs: the characteristic emplotment of satire or irony.

As Berkofer (1995, p.126) notes: Progress as a way of interpreting andemplotting history is both a methodology and a moral outlook. We have already

seen how the influence of social science on history has led to a reluctance to express

a moral outlook, but perhaps the time has come to be less nervous about this. Nave

optimism may no longer be tenable, but unthinking pessimism may be too bleak an

outlook. The challenge is to accommodate both an informed optimism and an

informed pessimism as acceptable positions, rather than leaving the arena entirely

to the morally evasive ironists of social science. Narratives of accounting that make

use of a progress emplotment, showing how the environment gives rise to new

problems, how individuals and groups experiment with solutions, and how thesesolutions either succeed (from the viewpoint of those developing them) or fail

(allowing lessons to be learnt), are just as valid as histories as narratives that claim

not to make judgements of success or failure. Alternative emplotments of the

same facts or events are of course possible. It could be argued that Marxist

historical writings in accounting are tragic emplotments offered as counterweights

to comedic or progressive ones: accounting serves capitalism, but only at the

expense of the working class.11 Making capital markets work better may be seen by

some as a successful outcome of reform in financial reporting, but to others may be

simply an exacerbation of exploitation. Once we give up the belief that there is only

one true narrative, we can accommodate a range of different explanations and

understandings of the same set of historical evidence.

Progress narratives may be useful on the small scale, where particular

episodes are under consideration, but are they valid at the level of the grand

narrative of an overall history of accounting? It is at this level that I begin to be

more nervous about whether such a grand narrative, if it could be written at all,

should reasonably take the form of a story of progress. If we accept that accounting

is at least in part, even if not entirely, a set of practices that are employed with the

aim of carrying out various functions efficiently and effectively, then it is only to

the extent that these functions (and the domains in which they are located) remain

static that we can sensibly compare from one point in time to another how well

25




21/26

accounting operates relative to these functions. If the functions and domains of

accounting change dramatically from one period to another, then such comparisons

cannot be validly made. This view of the world of accounting could becharacterised as an evolutionary one where, so long as the environment is relatively

static, we may hope to observe progress towards a better fit between accounting

and its environment (particularly as movement towards such a better fit is helped

by human agency rather than relying on chance). However, once the environment

changes significantly, it no longer makes sense to talk of progress, as a degree of

incommensurability enters into the comparison. The borderline between a

relatively static and a significantly changing environment is itself not self-evident,

particularly where specific forms of accounting are being introduced into hitherto

uncolonised domains, and there will doubtless be cases where use of a progressmotif will be problematic rather than clearly acceptable or inappropriate.

Conclusion

My argument leads to the conclusion that it is legitimate for accounting historians

to tell their stories in terms of progress when they are working on a relatively small

scale, so long as they recognise that what is progress for some may be degeneration

for others, and what appears progressive at one point of time may not seem so with

the benefit of hindsight. In terms of such microhistories (Williams, 1999), thehistorian may wish to emplot the historical narrative in ways that encourage readers

to learn lessons from the past, although perhaps more appropriately we should

consider the lessons those of the particular historian, rather than already there in

history (Jenkins, 1999). Hence accounting history will still have a place for

stories, within many different arenas and genres, of success or gallant failure

(Carnegie & Napier, 1996, p.30), although perhaps with greater self-consciousness

on the part of their authors of the equivocal nature of the histories they narrate.

At the macro level, it is certainly worth examining the extent to which those

involved in changing accounting (not only at through national and internationalregulation but also within organisations) attempt to mobilise rhetorics of progress

and improvement,12 and the extent to which such rhetorics do not need to be drawn

on as they are taken for granted. But on this larger scale, suspicion about meta-

narratives of progress is still appropriate, particularly where these involve

teleologies. We simply do not know whether the end of accounting will be its

glorification or apotheosis as the dominant mode of economic calculation, its

routinisation as a mundane and unpretentious task, or its literal end in oblivion.

26




22/26

Notes

1. As Carr observes in a footnote, this passage appears in the context of a discussion

of the collapse of the western Roman empire. Carr stresses that Gibbon was not

being ironic in this paean to progress.

2. There is nothing necessary about the extent to which the formulation of a particular

problem its problematisation and the ways in which solutions to the particular

problem are pursued programmes admits or includes accounting (Miller,

1991). Why certain issues are seen at particular points in time as problems of

accounting is a legitimate area of historical enquiry.

3. This has been derided as the after Pacioli, nothing theory of history by Zan (1994,

p.296).

4. The Nobes (1991) study has been criticised by Skerratt and Whittington (1992),

who argue that the cyclical model is both underdetermined theoretically and non-

descriptive empirically.

5. The approach of Jones and Aiken (1995) has been challenged by several writers,

among them Maltby (1999), who asserts bluntly that accounting does not

evolve.

6. A copy of this paper was provided to me by Anthony Hopwood in 1985.

7. Awareness of narrative as a mode of providing explanation and understanding is

spreading beyond the historical aspects of accounting research into broaderorganisational and managerial contexts. Recently, Llewellyn has called for the

greater use of narratives in accounting and management research, noting that

narratives can be explanatory but, more significantly for accounting and

management research, narratives can make some stronger research claims than

calculative research. ... [N]arratives can reveal the individual, human projects

within organisations and ... can construct and identify emerging organisational

strategies (Llewellyn, 1999, p.233).

8. These are borrowed from the work of the American literary theorist, Northrop Frye

(1957).9. Much of the historical evidence forRelevance Lostwas summarised by Kaplan in a

paper entitled The Evolution of Management Accounting (Kaplan, 1984),

showing the persistence of the theme of evolution in different contexts of historical

accounting research. It is possible that this use of evolution was particularly

provocative to new accounting historians such as Hopwood and Miller. Since

Relevance Lostwas published, the authors have diverged in their prescription for

healing the disease of archaic management accounting systems, with Kaplan calling

for different measurement bases, including The Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan &

Norton, 1996), while Johnson has suggested that management by results is aninherently flawed approach for the modern industrial organisation (Johnson &

Brms, 2000).

27




23/26

10. White (1973, p.375) notes that irony or scepticism is implicitly present in every

historians attempt to wrest the truth about the past from the documents, and is

manifested in the critical scrutiny applied to historical materials. However, ironymay be only a tactical tool, functioning as a methodological element in the

preliminary stage of research, and it need not be carried over into the historians

final presentation of the history in a narrative. Here, the historian will present the

truth in whatever mode appears to be most appropriate, not necessarily in an ironic

mode.

11. Whites view of Marx as a historian is more complex than this: For Marx, as for

Hegel, humanity achieves the condition of a Comic reconciliation, with itself and

with nature, by means of Tragic conflicts which, in themselves, appear to offer

nothing more than the consolations of a philosophical comprehension of theirnobility (White, 1973, p.328, emphasis in original).

12. An issue addressed by Miller and OLeary (1987), in their discussion of how

projects of national efficiency that aimed to improve the life of the individual, and

through this the nation, involved innovations in human accounting through

processes of standard costing.

References

American Accounting Association, (1970), Committee on Accounting History,Accounting Review, Vol.45, Supplement, pp.52-64.

American Accounting Association, (1977), Committee on Concepts and Standards for

External Financial Reports, Statement on Accounting Theory and Theory

Acceptance, New York: American Accounting Association.

Armstrong, P., (1994), The Influence of Michel Foucault on Accounting Research,

Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol.5, No.1, pp.25-55.

Berkofer, R.F. Jr., (1995), Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse,

Cambridge (Mass): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Bowler, P.J., (1989), The Invention of Progress: The Victorians and the Past, Oxford:Blackwell.

Broadbent, J. and Guthrie, J., (1992), Changes in the Public Sector: a Review of Recent

Alternative Accounting Research, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability

Journal, Vol.5, No.2, pp.3-31.

Bromwich, M. and Bhimani, A., (1989), Management Accounting: Evolution not

Revolution, London: Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Burns, R.M. and Rayment-Pickard, H., (2000), Philosophies of History: From

Enlightenment to Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell.

Bury, J.B., (1920), The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth,

London: Macmillan.

Butterfield, H., (1931), The Whig Interpretation of History, London: G. Bell & Sons.

28




24/26

Carnegie, G.D. and Napier, C.J., (1996), Critical and Interpretive Histories: Insights

into Accountings Present and Future Through its Past, Accounting, Auditing &

Accountability Journal, Vol.9, No.3, pp.7-39.

Carnegie, G.D. and Napier, C.J., (1999), Exploring Comparative International

Accounting History. Paper presented at the first Accounting History International

Conference, Melbourne, August.

Carr, E.H., (1964), What is History? Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Chambers, R.J., (1966), Accounting, Evaluation and Economic Behavior, Englewood

Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Chambers English Dictionary, (1990), Edinburgh: Chambers.

Chatfield, M., (1977), A History of Accounting Thought, revised edition, Huntington

(NY): Krieger.Condorcet, J.A.N. de Caritat, Marquis de, (1955), Sketch for a Historical Picture of the

Progress of the Human Mind, trans. J. Barraclough, London: Weidenfeld and

Nicolson.

De Roover, R., (1955), New Perspectives on the History of Accounting, Accounting

Review, Vol.30, No.3, pp.405-20.

Edwards, J.R., (1988),A History of Financial Accounting, London: Routledge.

Fleischman, R.K., Mills, P.A. and Tyson, T.N., (1996), A Theoretical Primer for

Evaluating and Conducting Historical Research in Accounting, Accounting

History, NS Vol.1, No.1, pp.55-75.Fleischman, R.K. and Tyson, T.N., (1997), Archival Researchers: an Endangered

Species?Accounting Historians Journal, Vol.24, No.2, pp.91-109.

Frye, N., (1957), The Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

Fukuyama, F., (1992), The End of History and the Last Man, London: Penguin.

Funnell, W., (1998), The Narrative and its Place in the New Accounting History: the

Rise of the Counternarrative, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal,

Vol.11, No.2, pp.142-62.

Garner, S.P., (1954),Evolution of Cost Accounting to 1925, Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press.

Goldstein, L., (1976),Historical Knowing, Austin: University of Texas Press.

Graham, G., (1997), The Shape of the Past, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hegel, G.W.F., (1956), The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree, New York: Dover.

Hopwood, A.G., (1985), The Tale of a Committee that Never Reported: Disagreements

on Intertwining Accounting with the Social, Accounting, Organizations and

Society, Vol.10, No.3, pp.361-77.

Hopwood, A.G., (1987), The Archaeology of Accounting Systems, Accounting,

Organizations and Society, Vol.12, No.3, pp.207-34.

Hoskin, K.W. and Macve, R.M., (2000), Knowing More as Knowing Less?

Alternative Histories of Cost and Management Accounting in the US and the UK,

Accounting Historians Journal, Vol.27, No.1, pp.91-149.

29




25/26

Jenkins, K., (1999), Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity, London: Routledge.

Johnson, H.T., (1992), Relevance Regained: From Top-down Control to Bottom-up

Empowerment,New York: The Free Press.Johnson, H.T. and Brms, A., (2000), Profit Without Measure: Extraordinary Results

through Attention to Process and People, London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Johnson, H.T. and Kaplan, R.S., (1987), Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of

Management Accounting, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Jones, S. and Aiken, M., (1995), British Companies Legislation and Social and

Political Evolution During the Nineteenth Century, British Accounting Review,

Vol.27, No.1, pp.61-82.

Kaplan, R.S., (1984), The Evolution of Management Accounting, Accounting

Review, Vol.59, No.3, pp.390-418.Kaplan, R.S. and Norton, D.P., (1996), The Balanced Scorecard, Boston: Harvard

Business School Press.

Keenan, M.J., (1998), A Defence of Traditional Accounting History Research

Methodology, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol.9, No.6, pp.641-66.

Kuhn, T.S., (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Laudan, L., (1977), Progress and its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth,

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lee, T.A. and Parker, R.H. (eds.), (1979), The Evolution of Corporate FinancialReporting, Sunbury-on-Thames: Nelson.

Littleton, A.C., (1933), Accounting Evolution to 1900, New York: American Institute

Publishing Company.

Llewellyn, S., (1999), Narratives in Accounting and Management Research,

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol.12, No.2, pp.220-36.

Maltby, J., (1999), Accounting does not Evolve: a Reply to Jones, Accounting

History, NS Vol.4, No.2, pp.87-100.

McKendrick, N., (1970), Josiah Wedgwood and Cost Accounting in the Industrial

Revolution,Economic History Review, second series, Vol.23, No.1, pp.45-67.

Miller, P., (1991), Accounting Innovation Beyond the Enterprise: Problematizing

Investment Decisions and Programming Economic Growth in the UK in the 1960s,

Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol.16, No.8, pp.733-62.

Miller, P., Hopper, T. and Laughlin, R., (1991), The New Accounting History: an

Introduction,Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol.16, No.5/6, pp.395-403.

Miller, P. and Napier, C., (1990), How and Why Should We Do the History of

Accounting? Paper presented at the History of the Accounting Present Conference,

Denton, Texas, November.

Miller, P. and Napier, C., (1993), Genealogies of Calculation, Accounting,

Organizations and Society, Vol.18, No.7/8, pp.631-47.

Miller, P. and OLeary, T., (1987), Accounting and the Construction of the Governable

Person,Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol.12, No.3, pp.235-65.

30




26/26

Mills, P.A., (1993), Accounting History as Social Science: a Cautionary Note,

Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol.18, No.7/8, pp.801-3.

Mumford, M., (1979), The End of a Familiar Inflation Accounting Cycle,Accounting

and Business Research, Vol.9, No.34, pp.98-104.

Napier, C.J., (1987), Research Directions in Accounting History, British Accounting

Review, Vol.21, No.3, pp.237-54.

Neimark, M.K., (1990), The King is Dead. Long Live the King!, Critical Perspectives

on Accounting, Vol.1, No.1, pp.103-14.

Neimark, M.K., (1994), Regicide Revisited: Marx, Foucault and Accounting, Critical

Perspectives on Accounting, Vol.5, No.1, pp.87-108.

Nisbet, R.A., (1969), Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of

Development, New York: Oxford University Press.Nobes, C.W., (1991), Cycles in UK Standard Setting, Accounting and Business

Research, Vol.21, No.83, pp.265-74.

Parker, L.D., (1999), Historiography for the New Millenium: Adventures in

Accounting and Management,Accounting History, NS Vol.4, No.2, pp.11-42.

Ruse, M., (1999), M ystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction?

Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Skerratt, L. and Whittington, G., (1992), Does the Nobes Cycle Exist, and if so, What

Does it Signify?Accounting and Business Research, Vol.22, No.86, pp.173-7.

Smith, J.M., (1993), The Theory of Evolution, third edition, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Solomon, R.C., (1995), Progress, in T. Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to

Philosophy (p.722), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Spengler, O., (1926), The Decline of the West, trans. C.F. Atkinson, London: George

Allen & Unwin.

Sterling, R.R., (1979), Towards a Science of Accounting, Houston: Scholars Book Co.

Tomkins, C., (1978), The Development of Accounting, a discussion paper presented

at the Workshop on Accounting in a Changing Social and Political Environment,

London.Watts, R.L. and Zimmerman, J.L., (1986), Positive Accounting Theory, Englewood

Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

White, H., (1973), Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century

Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

White, H., (1987), The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical

Representation, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Williams, R.B., (1999), Lifting Stones: A Place for Microhistory in Accounting

Research?,Accounting History, NS Vol.4, No.1, pp.59-78.

Zan, L., (1994), Towards a History of Accounting Histories: Perspectives from the

Italian Tradition,European Accounting Review, Vol.3, No.2, pp.255-307.

31



Accounting History 2001 Napier

Documents

Transcript of Accounting History 2001 Napier