Accounting and detective stories: an excursion to the USA in the 1940s

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to explore accounting across time and space via novels.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses distant readings.FindingsThe paper reveals peculiarities and commonalities of the work of Certified Public Accountants 70 years ago and now.Originality/valueThe originality/value is to be decided by readers.

Accounting and entertainment: An introduction

“…A body of research has emerged in recent years which explores the role of accounting within the realm of popular culture (Jeacle, 2012). Contributions to this scholarship include studies of the linkages between accounting and pop music (Jacobs and Evans, 2012; Smith and Jacobs, 2011), accounting and popular fiction (Czarniawska, 2012; Evans and Fraser, 2012), and accounting and popular theatre (Lapsley and Rekers, 2017). Often these sites of popular culture are also locales of entertainment.…”

Building Critical Awareness of Accounting Students: A Transformative Learning Process

“…Beside story telling, I also frequently showed some short movies that can rest their mind from rigidity thinking. Indeed, media such as a movie is quite an effective method to help improve critical analysis (Chabrak & Craig, 2013;Czarniawska, 2012;Jeacle, 2009;Miley & Read, 2012;Savage, Norman, & Lancaster, 2008) and increase the learning interest of students. When I opened a session for advice for the next class method, some students requested me to keep displaying movies as a medium of learning in my class.…”

Accounting and the history of the everyday life of captains, sailors and common seamen in eighteenth-century Portuguese slave trading

“…Other authors have also made important contributions in related but distinct areas, including the household (Carnegie and Walker, 2007a, 2007b; Llewellyn and Walker, 2000; Walker, 1998, 2003b; Walker and Llewellyn, 2000); lifestyle and occupational differentiation in Victorian accountancy (Edwards and Walker, 2010); child accounting texts published in the US during the early to mid-twentieth century (Walker, 2010); the circus (Cummings and St Leon, 2009); and works of fiction, such as Gustav Freytag’s Soll Und Haben (Maltby, 1997) and The Bank Audit by Bruce Marshall (West, 2001). Czarniawska (2008) focused on changing perceptions of accounting across time and different cultural contexts, with special emphasis on gender issues, through the novels of Douglas Adams, and in a later contribution explored accounting across time and space via detective novels (Czarniawska, 2012: 661). Jacobs and Evans (2012) investigated how accounting is entwined in the cultural practice of popular music, while Jackson et al (2012) examined how ‘an accounting failure’ influenced the two established competing discourses surrounding alcohol drinking in nineteenth-century Britain and significantly impacted the UK drinking culture at the time.…”