1 / 17

BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011 Plenary Session 2 ‘Reflections on Accounting’

BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011 Plenary Session 2 ‘Reflections on Accounting’. Keith Hoskin Warwick Business School 11 April, 2011. My Reflections on Accounting - 1. Reflections imply questions…. Such as ‘What is Accounting?’ Or alternatively ‘How does it (do its) work?’

hailey
Download Presentation

BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011 Plenary Session 2 ‘Reflections on Accounting’

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011Plenary Session 2‘Reflections on Accounting’ Keith Hoskin Warwick Business School 11 April, 2011

  2. My Reflections on Accounting - 1 • Reflections imply questions…. • Such as ‘What is Accounting?’ • Or alternatively • ‘How does it (do its) work?’ • ‘How come it has got so big?’ • As professional and managerial practice • As constantly extending/expanding knowledge form • With technical and ‘reflective’ aspects • As you are already finding as PhD students…

  3. My Reflections on Accounting - 2 • Reflective questions imply answers…. • So to the question: ‘What is Accounting?’ • My current answer is….. Always a form of ‘naming + counting’ (i.e. never just numbers) Always involving ‘naming + counting’ via ‘visible signs’ and some ‘textual layout’ Even before the invention of writing…

  4. Accounting as ‘naming & counting’? • Accounting before writing [D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing (1992)] Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia c 8000BC: Shaped, differentiated clay tokens (5,000 years before writing’s invention) Each shape ‘names & counts’ different items Enabling first living in one place (Greek: oikos) Via regulating/coordinating (Gk nomos) resources Oikos & nomos = the first ‘economy’ • So accounting enables ‘the economic’

  5. ‘Small and Large tetrahedrons enclosed in an envelope, Susa (Sb 1967), Iran. Courtesy Mussee du Louvre, Department des Antiquites Orientales’D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing (1992)

  6. Impacts of ‘Naming & counting’ before writing • Tokens get stabilised as ‘records’ • Kept by skilled ‘namers & counters’ • i.e.Accountants, who create first economic power • c. 4500BC: First cities as ‘states’ • Accounting entries define ‘surpluses’ • Then collected as ‘tax’ to fund state rule • The city (Gk. polis) as state capital • Accountants as state ‘officials & priests’ • The 1st ‘hier-archy’ (Gk: ‘priest-rulers’) • Accounting enables first ‘political economy’

  7. After writing: a new power for accounting • 4000BC: Tokens put in clay envelopes • Tokens impressed in wet clay then sealed • Impressions become first cuneiform signs • Some signs now ‘count’, others ‘name’ • Whereupon (c 3200BC) humans ‘write’! • …And the first written records are accounts • By 2500BC, ‘money of account’ in contracts • Loans charging interest: ‘time value of money’ • NB: first coinage not till 800BC • Accounting enables writing and money!

  8. Answers are never final. They have to be discovered • Accounting as ‘always naming & counting’ • First articulated in Ezzamel & Hoskin, 2002 • Accounting as always shaped by available text forms & notation systems • First advanced in Hoskin & Macve, 1986 (next slide) • Steps along a reflecting, questioning path • With other steps always still to come… • Engaging in a Truth Process – just like yours

  9. Double-Entry as ‘Invention’ • Not till c 1300 AD (Hoskin & Macve, 1986) • i.e. 3500 years after writing’s invention • Only possible when… • Arabic #’s (with ‘0’) enable ‘place value’ • Textual layout has debit & credit columns • Plus there is systematic examining (as in ‘audit’ = hearing) of what is named and counted • Developed in Italy from c 1300-1350 • Then described by Pacioli in 1494 book • So Paciolinot the ‘Father of Double Entry’

  10. The PhD as truth process • A ‘true’ contribution to knowledge • Truth-as-correctness • Methodologically sound • Empirically accurate in data gathering • Analytically coherent in interpretation (whether via quantitative or qualitative means) • Logically consistent as thesis and argument • But is that all?

  11. Plus truth as ‘aletheia’? • The Greek word for ‘truth’ • Etymologised by Martin Heidegger as • ‘What comes out of concealment’ • From ancient Greek ‘lanthanein’ (to escape notice) and ‘lethe’ (what is forgotten) • Plus ‘a-’ = ‘not’ (as in ‘atheist’ or ‘aseptic’) • So ‘what stops escaping notice • As in the ‘a-ha!’ moment….

  12. The PhD as mix of both • Truth-as-correctness necessary….. • But not sufficient…? • You as ‘truth-seeker’… • Going through ‘a-ha!’ moments • Wondering why x escaped notice before • When x was ‘right under your nose’…. • Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Purloined Letter’

  13. Truth as PhD journey • ‘Piled Higher and Deeper…’ • ‘Permanent Head Damage…’ • Requiring a relation of ‘watchfulness’… • …and thinking even when not thinking… • Kekulé and the shape of the benzene molecule • On a journey that does not end with the PhD • ‘Where’ will you be (& what will you be thinking) in 5/10 years time?

  14. A historically situated truth process • Your personal histories • How did I get here? • For me, a PhD on ancient Greek & Latin rhetoric and modes of education • For you….? • Plus the institutional history of your discipline • A Hopwood, ‘Whither Accounting Research’ (2007)

  15. Whence Positive Accounting Research? • 1960s Chicago • PhD students include Ray Ball, Phil Brown, Ross Watts, Bill Beaver… and one Anthony Hopwood • Watts & Ball: very irritated by ‘the monopolistic pretensions of the accountancy profession’ • Ball & Brown (1968) – now a ‘seminal paper’ • Written to show how accounting ‘operates in a competitive information environment’ (Hopwood, 2007) • Watts & Zimmerman (1979) • Driven by concern with monopolistic tendencies of the accountancy profession

  16. Reflections on Accounting? • Doing your research is always a mix of truth-as-correctness and ‘a-letheia’ • Easy to focus on the first • But the second is also always there • Leading you towards whatever lies just beyond your current reach • And which you will only ‘see’ after it has come out of concealment…..

  17. References: Ball, R & Brown P (1968), ‘An empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers’, Journal of Accounting Research 6, pp 159-178. Ezzamel M & Hoskin K (2002), ‘Retheorising Accounting, Writing and Money with Evidence from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt’, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 13, 3, pp. 333-367. Hopwood, A (2007), ‘Whither Accounting Research?’, The Accounting Review, 82, 5, pp. 1365-1374. Hoskin, K. and Macve, R. (1986) “Accounting and the Examination: A Genealogy of Disciplinary Power”, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 11, 2, pp.105-136. Schmandt-Besserat D (1992), Before Writing, Volume 1 : From Counting to Cuneiform, Austin: University of Texas Press. Watts, R. & Zimmerman , J (1979), ‘The demand for and supply of accounting theories: the market for excuses’, The Accounting Review 64, April, pp 273-285.

More Related