Writing masters and accountants in England – a study of occupation, status and ambition in the early modern period

The purpose of this paper is to address the lack of knowledge of the accounting occupational group in England prior to the formation of professional accounting bodies. It does so by focusing on attempts made by the occupational group of writing masters and accountants to establish a recognisable persona in the public domain, in England, during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and to enhance that identity by behaving in a manner designed to convince the public of the professionalism associated with themselves and their work. The study is based principally on early accounting treatises and secondary sources drawn from beyond the accounting literature. Notions of identity, credentialism and jurisdiction are employed to help understand and evaluate the occupational history of writing masters and accountants. It is shown that writing masters and accountants emerged as specialist pedagogues providing expert business knowledge required in the counting houses of entities which flourished during a period of rapid commercial expansion in mercantilist Britain. Their demise as an occupational group may be attributed to a range of factors amongst which an emphasis on personal identity, the neglect of group identity and derogation of the writing craft were most important.history ; accountants ; bookkeepers

Accounting on English landed estates during the agricultural revolution -- a textbook perspective

The agricultural revolution has been portrayed as the time when landowners began to display a capitalist mentality. This paper seeks to add to our knowledge of the use of accounting for managerial purposes during this period by exploring the content of treatises advocating different ways of accounting on landed estates. Two research questions are addressed. The first is the degree of inter-relationship between accounting methods charge-and-discharge accounting (CDA) and double-entry bookkeeping that have been presented in the literature as distinct in terms of their objectives and operation. The second objective is to assess the extent to which CDA could be used by management and landowners for performance assessment purposes and, following on from that, to reflect on whether the demise of CDA was an inevitable consequence of demands for more useful management information

Process of accounting innovation: The publication of consolidated accounts in Britain in 1910

The most recent effort at restating the auditor\u27s standard report, SAS 58, is the most comprehensive statement of the auditor\u27s role that has ever been adopted. It is an acknowledgment that the previous report had become an ineffective communication of the audit function and was perhaps too cautious in circumscribing the auditor\u27s public responsibilities. This paper compares and analyzes the terminology of the standard report throughout the professions\u27s history with particular emphasis on the recent years leading up to SAS 58. An exhibit compares the parallel terminology and the social, economic and political issues that resulted in each revision. Additionally, some assessment of the potential future changes to the report are presented

Lifestyle, status and occupational differentiation in Victorian accountancy

New insights are offered to the professionalization of accountants in Britain circa 1881 by examining the private foundations of occupational status and identity as manifested by domestic arrangements and residence patterns. Drawing on literature pertaining to the relationship between consumption and socio-cultural differentiation the study deploys empirical evidence from the British census to analyse status identifiers such as servant keeping, household location and neighbourhood composition. These aspects of lifestyle are taken as signifying practices of middle-class affiliation and narratives of the social identification of professional accountants. The extent to which accountants achieved status through consumption practices is illustrated by comparisons with a range of other occupational groups and social classes in Victorian Britain

British cost accounting development: Continuity and change

This paper uses the archival records of three entities successively carrying on coal and ironmaking activities at Staveley between 1838-1900, together with the findings from earlier research, to explore the costing information generated over the period 1690-1900. We find a system of cost accounting, broadly defined, in operation throughout the period, a large measure of continuity concerning its basic features, and innovations made from time to time presumably designed to improve its usefulness. The paper uses the results of this and earlier research to explore the nature of accounting change and draws attention to possible differences in the path of development between countries. Further, we assess the significance of our findings for present ideas concerning the development of cost accounting systems in Britain and the U.S., and argue for a broader view to be taken by researchers into the nature of management accounting\u27s development

Discounted cash flow and business valuation in a nineteenth century merger: A note

In 1889 the Shelton Iron, Steel and Coal Company Limited was incorporated to take over the assets and business activities of two existing companies. To guide the contracting parties in negotiating a price to be paid for the properties belonging to the Shelton Collieries and Ironworks an independent valuation was arranged by Deloitte, Dever, Griffiths & Co., later appointed auditors of the new company. The article comprises an appraisal of the valuation exercise, which is an early example of the use of a discounted cash flow technique to provide relevant information for a capital investment decision

Corporatism and unavoidable imperatives: Recommendations on accounting principles and the ICAEW memorandum to the Cohen Committee

This paper re-examines the conclusion reached by Bircher [1991], and other researchers, that the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), through the content of the series of Recommendations on Accounting Principles (RoAPs) that it developed and then incorporated into its memorandum submitted to the Cohen Committee on Company Law Amendment, molded the radical accounting provisions contained in the Companies Act, 1948 (CA48) in the form of its own programme [Bircher, 1991, p.293]. It is argued that (1) the Board of Trade (BoT), through the formation of the Cohen Committee, prompted the qualitative change in the content of the second five RoAPs, which were drafted to accord with the content of its submission to the Cohen Committee, and (2) before the ICAEW memorandum was submitted to the Cohen Committee in February 1944, a corporatist structure is discernable in the relationship between the BoT and the ICAEW causing the leaders of the ICAEW to align its interests with the BoT\u27s priorities for the amendment of company law

Professional leadership and oligarchy: The case of the ICAEW

This paper examines the difficulty of achieving representative and effective governance of a professional body. The collective studied for this purpose is the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (formed 1880) which, throughout its existence, has possessed the largest membership among British accounting associations. Drawing on the political theory of organization, we will explain why, despite a series of measures taken to make the constitution of its Council more representative between formation date and 1970, the failure of the 1970 scheme for integrating the entire U.K. accountancy profession remained attributable to the detachment of office bearers from their constituents [Shackleton and Walker, 2001, p. 277]. We also trace the failure of attempts to restore the Council\u27s authority over a period approaching four decades since that disaster occurred [Accountancy, September 1970, p. 637]