Accounting in its social context: Towards a history of value added in the United Kingdom

Connecting worlds: The translation of international auditing standards into post-Soviet audit practice

“…Czarniawska & Sevón, 1996;Gendron, Cooper & Townley, 2007;Latour, 1987;Latour, 2005;SahlinAndersson & Engwall, 2002b). ISAs are translated into audit practice through being linked to, and interdefined with, a range of different, historically and geographically specific concerns and issues (for this point see also Barrett, Cooper & Jamal, 2005;Burchell, Clubb & Hopwood, 1985;Miller & O'Leary, 1994Robson, 1991). In the context of this study, the notions of network and the stabilising of networks are used to stress that the translation of ISAs is a relational achievement.…”

“…Hence, to obtain a deeper understanding of how processes of international audit standardisation work, we need to take a closer look at the different connections that are established between the standards, local practices, people and instruments, as well as the wider networks of actors, expectations and demands involved in defining what it means to work in accordance with international standards. We need to pay close attention to locally specific "constellations" (Burchell, Clubb & Hopwood, 1985) of actors, strategies, instruments, beliefs, bodies of knowledge and activities. Studying the roles of ISAs within a postSoviet audit firm helps open up for investigation the complex of political and economic rationales, hopes and desires that accompany the rise and spread of the standards, and how these interact with the localised processes that seek to operationalise and give substance to the dream of global standards.…”

The Rise and Fall of Comprehensive Accounting Theories: R. J. Chambers and Continuously Contemporary Accounting

“…There is precedent in the literature of in-depth studies about government, regulatory and professional financial reporting initiatives (e.g., Burchell et al, 1985;Kurunmäki & Miller, 2011;Miller & O'Leary, 1987). Closest to what I have in mind is the research conducted by Robson (1988), who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the role of the State in the development of accounting standard setting, using the Sandilands Committee and it's attempt to provide a solution for inflation accounting as a case study.…”

Michel Foucault and the Administering of Lives

“…Inspired to a significant extent by Foucault's writings (see also Power, 2011: 43-4), Anthony Hopwood, who in 1976 had founded the now internationally reputed journal Accounting, Organizations and Society, outlined a research programme that placed the study of the wider social and political aspects of accounting practices at its heart. In 1985, Hopwood and his co-authors outlined 'a three branched genealogy' of the specific social space within which ideas and techniques of value added accounting appeared and developed (Burchell, Clubb, & Hopwood, 1985). Drawing on Foucault's early writings (in particular Discipline and Punish), and at a time when others were starting to speak in terms of different types of complexes or assemblages (Donzelot, 1980;Rose, 1985), Hopwood et al described this social space as an 'accounting constellation', 'a particular field of relations which existed between certain institutions, economic and administrative processes, bodies of knowledge, systems of norms and measurement, and classification techniques' (Burchell, Clubb, & Hopwood, 1985: 400).…”