Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice

Examines how and why accounting is so important to contemporary social and economic life.

Anthony G. Hopwood (Edited by), Peter Miller (Edited by)

9780521469654, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 October 1994

340 pages, 9 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'… a most worthwhile text … these chapters are clearer, better-written and more direct than the material from which they draw … will repay time spent.' Social and Environmental Accounting

Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice is the first major collection of critical and socio-historical analyses of accounting. It gathers together work by scholars of international renown on the social and institutional nature of accounting to address the conditions and consequences of accounting practice. Challenging conventional views that accounting is a technical practice, and that it comprises little more than bookkeeping, this collection demonstrates the importance of analysing the multiple arenas in which accounting emerges and operates. As accounting continues to gain in importance in so many spheres of social life, an understanding of the conditions and consequences of this calculative technology is vital. Its relevance extends far beyond the discipline of accounting. This book will be of considerable interest for specialists in organisational analysis, sociologists, and political scientists, as well as the general reader interested in understanding the increasing significance of accounting in contemporary society.

1. Accounting as social and institutional practice: an introduction Peter Miller
2. Early double-entry bookkeeping and the rhetoric of accounting calculation Grahame Thompson
3. Writing, examining, disciplining: the genesis of accounting's modern power Keith Hoskin and Richard Macve
4. Governing the calculable person Peter Miller and Ted O'Leary
5. Accountancy and the First World War Anne Loft
6. Accounting and labour: integrations and disintegrations Philip Bougen
7. The politics of economic measurement: the rise of the 'productivity problem' in the 1940s Jim Tomlinson
8. Corporate control in large British companies: the intersection of management accounting and industrial relations in postwar Britain Peter Armstrong
9. Value added accounting and national economic policy Anthony Hopwood, Stuart Burchell and Colin Clubb
10. Management by accounting Brendan McSweeny
11. Regulating accountancy in the UK: episodes in a changing relationship between the state and the profession David Cooper, Keith Robson, Tony Puxty and Hugh Wilmott
12. The audit society Michael Power

Subject Areas: Accounting [KFC]