The Influence of the Accountant on British Business Performance From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present Day

Abstract

Britain has more professionally qualified accountants per capita than any of her leading economic rivals and they play a major role as advisers to British companies and take a disproportionate share of the jobs in top management. Unfortunately for the accountants, business historians, other academics, commentators and even contemporary politicians have almost universally noted this to be a bad thing. This article discusses whether this reputation is justified by assessing the past performance of professional accountants as business advisers and managers. Stereotypical criticisms of accountants in terms of excessive caution, their support for the holding company form, or seeing problems in narrow financial terms are found to be unjustified. The promotion of accountants to the top jobs can be seen as rational profit‐maximizing behaviour by British companies and a recent survey has demonstrated the performance of accountants in top management in recent years to be superior to other professions such as engineers.