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Abstract:
Historical research has shown the influence of environmental contexts on the design and functioning of management accounting systems. In contrast to the relatively competitive settings that witnessed the emergence of cost systems in Anglo-American contexts, the focal settings featured inter alia the imposing role of religious and social philosophers' ideas on society as well as distinctive degrees of state intervention in the economy. The findings question traditional contentions that double-entry bookkeeping spread from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries and that cost calculations have been implemented only since the advent of the British Industrial Revolution

Management Accounting Systems, Competition, Regulation, Monopoly, History

Abstract:
Studies of organizational performance have overwhelmingly relied on evidence gathered from private sector firms. Nevertheless, the past several years have witnessed increasing interest in enhancing effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector, in turn generating considerable investment in the deployment of performance metrics in such settings. Though extant evidence provides many perceptive insights into the specifics of performance frameworks in public sector organizations, little is known about the measurement of organizational performance in police work. Our investigation drew upon the deployment of the balanced scorecard in Swedish Law Enforcement, an organization that long ago implemented the new paradigm of policing, which consisted in enhancing the quality of urban life on the mere making of arrests. Results from this investigation concur with other studies indicating that public sector organizations tend to assume a stakeholder perspective on performance measurement. In particular, Swedish Law Enforcement developed aset of measures of external success and internal performance that addressed present, past, and future time dimensions. Implementation of the balanced scorecard in police work, though, raised some problems. Our study details concerns about the aggregation of non-financial performance measures. More importantly, some crucial areas in the new concept of policing (such as community policing) were neglected by the system. Conversely, the system focused on monitoring some easy-to-measure indicators that provided a traditional view of police work while some crucial areas of policing were not measured. This focus ultimately lessened the operational potential of the balanced scorecard system. Our study also puts forward some suggestions for future research in this area.

Performance Measurement, Balanced Scorecard, Stakeholder Approach, Public Sector Management, Police

Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to identify the relevance and implications of ancient accounting practices to the contemporary theorizing of accounting. The paper provides a synthesis of the literature on ancient accounting particularly in relation to issues of human accountability, identifies its major achievements and outlines some of the key challenges facing researchers. We argue that far from being an idiosyncratic research field of marginal interest, research in ancient accounting is a rich and promising undertaking that holds the promise of significantly enhancing our understanding of the roles of accounting in organizations and society. The paper concludes by considering a number of implications of ancient accounting practices for the theorizing of accounting and identifies a number of possible avenues for future research.

Abstract:
Regulated markets and state-owned monopolies characterized the economies of many Southern European territories around the end of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Although this economic form was of considerable importance in implementing public policy at the time, investigation into the functioning of cost accounting in such contexts has been consistently neglected in accounting research. In this paper, we examine the role of cost systems in early regulated markets by focusing on the case of the soap production and distribution monopoly in the City of Seville, Spain. In 1423, the King of Castille granted the soap monopoly to the Duke of Alcalá as a reward for his war achievements, but pricing decisions rested in the hands of the local government. Disputes between the Duke of Alc alá and the local government (the parties) about the fair price of a pound of soap were negotiated after the development of tests that replicated the soap production process and determined its cost through complex calculations.

Institutional Sociology, Regulated Markets, Early Cost Accounting, Spain

Abstract:
Studies on assessments of research performance in economic departments largely rely upon such bibliometric tools as impact factors to rank a short list of journals. In the present study, we examine the use of short lists of journals in order to assess research performance in Spain - a country that features a rare combination of a thin and incomplete academic market along with an elite of eminent economists. Our analysis reveals that the implementation of bibliometric tools to produce short lists of journals for assessment purposes entail problems with the statistical significance of cutoff rates, neglect of the interdisciplinary nature of economics, and an inability to track progress in academic markets that move towards internationalization and publications in top-tier, premier outlets.

Research assessment, Economic departments, Impact factors, Journal rankings, Spain

Abstract:
The rhetoric of dissemination of outsourcing stresses its alignment with organizational strategy and its linkage to the interests of firms' stakeholders. In practice, however, performance improvements attributed to outsourcing are sometimes caused by deliberate malpractices like extensive hiring of children in operations and opportunistic searches for permissive legislations on issues such as environmental protection, social security and employee benefits. This study adopted a historical perspective to trace back outsourcing through examination of the case of cigarette manufacturing by poor Catholic nuns during 1817-1819, that is, from the launch of said product until the cessation of operations as a consequence of low demand. In the context of an absolutist regime, justification for the outsourcing decision drew on arguments of compassion towards poor nunneries. The decision was enacted in a decree signed by King Fernando VII and assigned monitoring of outsourcing to the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville. In this paper, we examined the divergence between public discourse and actual practice from the standpoint of the Foucauldian framework of power/knowledge. Instead of compassion, our findings suggested that actual practice was inspired by the concomitant effects of (i) the deployment of political influences on the RTF management to ensure deterrence of gender conflicts within the manufactory; and (ii) exploitation of the disciplinary tradition of nunneries by the tobacco monopoly.

Outsourcing, foucault, management control

Abstract:
The widespread acceptance of International Accounting Standards (IAS)/International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) makes it timely to examine their technical determinants as well as their implications for the accounting profession and the process of accounting harmonization. In this respect, we suggest that the principles-based approach to the standards and its inner flexibility enables the application of IAS/IFRS to countries with diverse accounting traditions and varying institutional conditions. Furthermore, the principles-based approach involves major changes in the expertise held by accountants and, hence, in their educational background, training programs, and in the organizational and business models of accounting firms. Finally, we submit that the standards set by the IAS/IFRS constitute a step forward in the process of accounting harmonization, although there is still far to go in the comparability of accounting measures across countries and regions.

globalization, accounting harmonization, convergence, principles-based standards, rules-based standards

Abstract:
Extant knowledge on gender and auditing overwhelmingly relies on evidence gathered from a limited group of Anglo-Saxon countries. It is widely admitted, however, that gender issues are affected by the institutional contexts of the investigation. The Anglo-Saxon settings, we contend, embrace a number of idiosyncratic, institutional characteristics that advise caution in the generalisability of results. Our study addresses the role of gender in Spanish audit practice during the period 1942 to 1988. The environment of the Spanish audit profession witnessed the peaceful transition from a dictatorship to a full-fledged democracy as well as the emergence of a free market economy from a system characterised by stiff economic autarchy and an overriding intervention of the state in the economy. We found that the dominant role of the state in the Spanish society affected the structure of the audit profession and made impossible the emergence of an autonomous project. In particular, our findings reveal that the audit profession did not have an independent strategy about the role of women at work, but mimicked the attitudes deployed by the state during our observation period.

Abstract:
Drawing on a number of primary sources (e.g. the minutes of the meetings of the governing bodies of the Association, EAA publications, and congress proceedings), this study outlines the undertakings of the European Accounting Association (EAA) from its inception to the present. Examination of available evidence suggests that the activity of the EAA may be explained by the concomitant effect of institutional, organizational and individual factors. It was found that the EAA made considerable progress in: facilitating networking among European accounting scholars; increasing commitment towards high-quality research; incorporating into its structures and activities the notion of diversity; increasing reputation of its annual congress; and substituting its initial Anglo-Saxon-Northern European dominance by a more comprehensive European focus. The EAA, though, faces some challenges in the near future: consolidation in Southern Europe and other peripheral countries; penetration in Eastern Europe; eventual re-definition of its aims and scope in a globalized world; eventual re-definition of the size and scope of its annual congress; and a more prominent role of women in executive posts.