Welfare or politics? The identity of Italian mutual aid societies as revealed by a latent class cluster analysis of their annual reports

Abstract

This article proposes a statistical analysis of the Italian mutual aid societies’ annual report data from 1862,\ud 1873 and 1904, and tests the hypothesis, supported by the mainstream literature, that mutual financial\ud support for the poor is just a facade for organizing the political activity of the working classes. Factor analysis\ud allows the data, signaling these two commitments, to be kept separate. Their time evolution, as outlined\ud by an inter-temporal comparison of a latent class cluster analysis, reveals that political commitment, even\ud if generally prevalent, oscillates as a function of environmental conditions, whereas the mutual financial\ud support retains a solid foundation, regardless. The study demonstrates the potential of unconventional\ud annual report data analysis to reveal the deepest nature of the organizations and contributes to exploring\ud the links between political activism and accounting data in not-for-profit organizations

Accounting historians engaging with scholars inside and outside accounting: Issues, opportunities and obstacles

“…However, any possible constructive contact between these accounting scholars may enlarge each one’s own perspective, as from one side functionalistic/positive scholars may help ‘New’ accounting historians to introduce quantitative methods in their research. It is a path not often travelled, even if, to some extent, some scholars are employing statistical tools in their historical accounting research (De Cimbrini, 2015). On the other side, functionalistic/positive scholars may be interested in starting up historical-based research where the major challenge to be faced is (1) to share methodologies to the endpoint of a jointly developed thesis and (2) to have results relevant to the two kinds of researchers.…”

Misreporting in financial statements in a centrally planned economy: The case of Czechoslovak state-owned enterprises in late socialism

“…Principal-agent theory has experienced, over the last four decades, a high level of acceptance in the accounting literature, especially in relation to managerial incentives and self-interested behaviour (Block, 2011; Koford and Penno, 1992; Kwon, 2005). Nevertheless, it also has faced strong criticism, for example, the trust literature disputes the concept of the self-interested agent, and notes that a manager's behaviour may be based on trust and cooperation (Davis et al, 2010).…”

“… 13. Recently, Sivakumar and Waymire (2003) examined, mostly using predictions based on cross-sectional regression tests, how managers responded to new accounting rules in the US railroad industry in the early 20 th century; MacDonald and Richardson (2011) used cliometrics to focus on the knowledge transfer between manage­ment accounting practice and education and its evolution over time; and Di Cimbrini (2015) used exploratory factor analysis to test the nature of financial support from Italian mutual aid societies for poor inhabitants.…”

Mutual aid for the arts in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Milan: The ‘Pio Istituto Teatrale’

“…Their institutional objective was to alleviate widespread poverty by establishing funds to help those who were unable to work due to illness or disability and were therefore unable to support themselves and their families. In exchange for the payment of a membership fee and regular financial contributions, members of mutual aid societies were entitled to claim help in the form of a subsidy and sometimes health care (Cherubini, 1972; Di Cimbrini, 2015; Tomassini, 1996). Concurrently, the theatre arts had reached their peak, and Milan was considered the intellectual and artistic capital of Italy (Locatelli, 2002a).…”

“…Mutual aid in Italy, which we will discuss in the next section, was an extremely diverse phenomenon, and scholars have studied many aspects of it, from the political to the financial, without forgetting its social profile (Bonifazi and Salvarani, 1976; Cherubini, 1972; Marucco, 1981; Tomassini, 1996). While many studies have examined Italian mutual aid societies, those in the artistic field have generally been overlooked (Di Cimbrini, 2015). This work attempts to address this oversight by examining a mutual aid society operating in the artistic field through the medium of its accounting documents.…”