Innovation in accounting thought and practice – an introduction

Abstract

Innovation is crucial to the evolution of human society. Accounting, as a complex human construction, both defines and reflects our behaviour (Rose and Miller, 1992). It has emerged in different settings across time and space and plays a key role in ordering the affairs of individuals, organisations and society. Accounting not only emerges but also changes. Historical accounting researchers are not indifferent to this evolution. A variety of approaches have been used to examine the evolution of accounting ideas, thought and practice in different historical periods. From this point of view, and since the opus prima by AC Littleton entitled Accounting Evolution to 1900 (Littleton, 1933), accounting history research has expanded in its coverage of periods, areas, episodes and institutions (Carnegie and Potter, 2000; Carmona, 2004, 2006; Walker, 2008) and elucidated the ability of the human being to invent, to innovate and to change. In addition, the lenses used in approaching accounting history have been widened (Gaffikin, 2011; Carnegie, 2014). This special issue comprises six contributions, the earlier versions of which were presented at the seventh Accounting History International Conference (7AHIC), held in Seville, Spain, in September 2013. The authors of these works are from France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the USA. The topics studied within the settings under examination involve professional associations, accounting authors, government agencies, the adoption of forms of accounting regulation, private companies and not-for-profit organisations. Interestingly, the periods studied relate mainly to the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Baker and Quere draw upon two theoretical models describing state regulation of economic activity in order to analyse two contrasting historical periods. The first is the Colbert period under Louis XIV in seventeenth-century France. The second is the United States, in the early twentieth century, when the federal government sought to control capitalist activity. The first theoretical model employed is that of Miller (1990) who maintained that the principal “reason of state” for intervention in business and accounting practices during the Colbert period was “military competition” between France and other European powers. The second model is based on Clarke (2004) 596396 ACH0010.1177/1032373215596396Accounting HistoryEditorial research-article2015