Accounting History

Western colonisation has left a lasting impact on Africa's economy, business practices, social structures and cultural attitudes. This article examines the collapse of Ghana Airways and Nigeria Airways. Using extensive interview and documentary data, we draw on the historically rooted concept of neopatrimonialism to explain how the colonial experience shaped the actions of indigenous decision-makers at critical moments of the history of each of the airlines. Our analysis suggests that the two airlines’ failure lies in the combination of two interconnected factors. First, the colonial legacy, particularly the inculcated mindset, and arrangements with the former colonial nation created the conditions for further role and influence, particularly at difficult times. This allowed Western firms, including accounting companies, to continue draining the respective airline's financial resources. Second, local leaders adopted the favouritism and clientelism practices, once used by the colonial power, allocating jobs to relatives and the politically connected individuals.

This article analyses Côte d’Ivoire's evolving accounting architecture. Drawing on archival documents, oral histories, and interviews with regulatory and professional actors, it examines how successive interactions between local institutions and external forces shaped accounting standards. The lenses of accounting infrastructure and polycentricity are used to explore how local, regional, and international actors negotiated authority over standard-setting processes. The findings highlight both the endurance of externally shaped frameworks and the development of locally adapted alternatives responsive to economic, legal, and institutional realities. This layered structure – visible in Côte d’Ivoire's selective adoption, modification, and resistance – reflects a pragmatic calibration rather than outright compliance or rejection. The study advances African accounting historiography by offering a rare Francophone case study and demonstrating how standard setting is embedded within complex governance arenas. It invites future comparative research on how diverse African states respond to regional integration and global harmonisation pressures in constructing their accounting regimes.

The contribution of individual accounting leaders nurturing future leaders in an emerging profession in Africa has received limited, if any, attention in the history of the development of accounting in the entire African continent. The discourse critical of imperialist engagement failed to allow for the potential contribution of individual agency of non-African accounting leaders and subsequent bidirectionality in professional development. Benefitting from insights offered by the theory of networks and the role of individuals in extending networks, this article seeks to investigate the enabling contribution made to the development of new accounting leaders through interaction with the British accounting tradition. Networks facilitate knowledge transfers and capacity building. An agency in extending the development of accountancy and society in Africa may identify enabling outcomes by analysing the role of individual leaders in nurturing new accounting leaders in Africa. The value of Granovetter's strong-weak tie theory finds application in a case study of Henry Alexander Benson and accounting development in Africa.

This study adds to the work on emancipatory/oppressive accounting by analysing the effect of the French influence on accounting systems in formerly colonised Francophone African countries. This study applies a comparative history critical approach to two cases: the French Accounting Plan of 1942 (in Nazi German-occupied France) and the Basic African Accounting System of Reference (SCAR-B, the project of African accounting emancipation, following independence). The data comes from archival sources and 18 semi-structured interviews. The results show that the neo-colonial influence led to the failure of primitive attempts to domesticate African Francophone accounting systems. The failure of the 1942 French Plan was linked to the suspicion of collaboration with the Nazi German occupying authorities, which led to French autonomous accounting emancipation. In the African countries, the failure of SCAR-B led to their desire for empowerment, but maintained these countries in captivity. Both accounting break-out and sovereignty are essential for the emancipation and Africanisation of accounting to occur in Africa.

This article compares the development of the American and Canadian accounting professions from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to 2023 and the role of national traditions in shaping these developments. Larson's and Abbott's sociological theories of professions were used to understand the evolutions of each country's professional accounting. The USA stayed with the CPA designation for the entire study; Canada had three major professional accounting programmes that merged in 2012 into the CPA. The USA and Canada had some common traditions: a public accounting base that emphasised preparing quality candidates through formal education, experience, credentialism and continuing education. They have also followed differing paths as the profession has been defined, some of which reflected their differing national traditions. Our contribution is to show how these national traditions led to the actual evolution of the accounting professions in each country and the similarities and differences between them.

In Sweden, the statutory audit extends beyond the financial statement audit. It mandates an audit of the company's administration by the board and the managing director (management audit). Despite being a national tradition since the mid-seventeenth century and resisting various harmonisation efforts, the practice remains under-researched in accounting history. This study aims to analyse the development of the Swedish management audit from its legal inception in 1895 to 1994, the year prior to Sweden's EU membership. Through the lens of historical institutionalism and using document analysis, our findings reveal how critical events have prompted institutional changes, and how path dependencies have both sustained the continuity of the Swedish management audit and shaped its trajectory. The study offers three key contributions. Firstly, it deepens understanding of the antecedents of the Swedish management audit and the institutional context that has shaped its development, offering a nuanced perspective on its status and relation to the financial statement audit, both of which form part of the statutory audit. Secondly, it underscores the need for context-sensitivity in international harmonisation endeavours, emphasising the caution needed when adapting global audit standards to local regulatory environments and national audit traditions. Thirdly, it provides insights into the opportunities and challenges posed by the broader scope of the Swedish management audit, particularly in relation to the audit expectation gap literature. Furthermore, the study advances new avenues of inquiry, encouraging a rethinking of the audit concept to enhance its relevance both in Sweden and on a broader scale.

The purpose of this study is to explore changes in standard setting in South Africa using a regulatory theory perspective. The article focuses on three events: the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards, the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, and the change in standard setting with control of standard setting passing from the accounting profession to the Financial Reporting Standards Council. The methodology is qualitative, using primary and secondary sources of information. The findings show that elements of and changes in these three events reflect regulatory theory's sub-category of public interest theory, although elements of private interest theory, in particular interest group capture theory, are present. The importance of this study is that it discusses recent developments in standard setting in South Africa using a regulatory theory lens and provides an alternative viewpoint when analysing standard setting in other jurisdictions.

The political differences between Chinese and Japanese imperial systems offer a foundation for this study of accounting traditions in East Asia. For much of pre-modern history, the Chinese empire had a highly centralised power structure in which accounting gradually became a political institution that supported the emperor's power of governance. In pre-modern Japan, however, political control was largely shared by the shogunate and local clans of feudal lords, diverting power away from a central monarch. In such an environment, Japanese accounting traditions were orientated towards the business interests of major merchants, rather than the political interests of a centralised state. These political variances also underpin the different journeys that both countries have taken in their transition to embrace Western-style accounting practices from the late nineteenth century. This comparative history reinforces that accounting is highly responsive towards broader socio-political structures, adapting to the specific needs of changing circumstances in particular contexts.

This work intends to respond to the call of Edwards and Walker in 2009, who encourage the study of accounting in diverse socio-cultural contexts, by shedding light on one of the longest accounting traditions in Europe, the Italian one. In Italy, the history of accounting is much broader than the adoption of double-entry bookkeeping, and the rise of specific philosophical concepts and scholarship has not been explored in-depth yet. This study highlights the context and innovations, which characterised the significant Italian accounting debate between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through the narrative analysis of the works of Fabio Besta and Gino Zappa, it provides an explanatory framework for double-entry bookkeeping that connects the recording method to the system of records and allows for the emergence of the accounting discipline known as economia aziendale.

Studies of Britain's accounting history date from the second half of the nineteenth century. Up to 1970 contributions to what became labelled the ‘traditional’ accounting history literature came from authors with diverse backgrounds – for example, archivists, civil servants, economists, (non-accounting) historians, lawyers, librarians, government employees and accounting practitioners. Accounting remained on the periphery of academe, through to the 1960s, thereby explaining the lack of historiographical contributions from accounting faculty. The theoretical underpinning of historical studies was increasingly recognised, post-1970, with investigations explicitly grounded in economics by the so-called neoclassicists. The second half of the 1980s, in Britain, saw a methodological revolution in the study of accounting's past accelerate through a movement christened ‘The new accounting history’. Key venues for the circulation and publication of studies informed by theories taken from numerous other disciplines included the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference, first held in Manchester in 1985, and support provided by Accounting, Organizations and Society and other high-ranking academic journals for the publication of historical studies into the behavioural, organisational and sociological positioning of accounting. Participation in accounting history research by academics from other sectors of academe has featured prominently in the growth in interdisciplinarity.

Cardao-Pito (2020) critically reviewed Donleavy’s (2019) article on the origins of the use of the word ‘fair’ in fair value accounting. This article is a rejoinder to the criticisms in that review.