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BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011 Plenary Session 2 ‘Reflections on Accounting’

BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011 Plenary Session 2 ‘Reflections on Accounting’. Keith Hoskin Warwick Business School 11 April, 2011. My Reflections on Accounting - 1. Reflections imply questions…. Such as ‘What is Accounting?’ Or alternatively ‘How does it (do its) work?’

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BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011 Plenary Session 2 ‘Reflections on Accounting’

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  1. BAFA Annual Doctoral Colloquium 2011Plenary Session 2‘Reflections on Accounting’ Keith Hoskin Warwick Business School 11 April, 2011

  2. My Reflections on Accounting - 1 • Reflections imply questions…. • Such as ‘What is Accounting?’ • Or alternatively • ‘How does it (do its) work?’ • ‘How come it has got so big?’ • As professional and managerial practice • As constantly extending/expanding knowledge form • With technical and ‘reflective’ aspects • As you are already finding as PhD students…

  3. My Reflections on Accounting - 2 • Reflective questions imply answers…. • So to the question: ‘What is Accounting?’ • My current answer is….. Always a form of ‘naming + counting’ (i.e. never just numbers) Always involving ‘naming + counting’ via ‘visible signs’ and some ‘textual layout’ Even before the invention of writing…

  4. Accounting as ‘naming & counting’? • Accounting before writing [D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing (1992)] Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia c 8000BC: Shaped, differentiated clay tokens (5,000 years before writing’s invention) Each shape ‘names & counts’ different items Enabling first living in one place (Greek: oikos) Via regulating/coordinating (Gk nomos) resources Oikos & nomos = the first ‘economy’ • So accounting enables ‘the economic’

  5. ‘Small and Large tetrahedrons enclosed in an envelope, Susa (Sb 1967), Iran. Courtesy Mussee du Louvre, Department des Antiquites Orientales’D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing (1992)

  6. Impacts of ‘Naming & counting’ before writing • Tokens get stabilised as ‘records’ • Kept by skilled ‘namers & counters’ • i.e.Accountants, who create first economic power • c. 4500BC: First cities as ‘states’ • Accounting entries define ‘surpluses’ • Then collected as ‘tax’ to fund state rule • The city (Gk. polis) as state capital • Accountants as state ‘officials & priests’ • The 1st ‘hier-archy’ (Gk: ‘priest-rulers’) • Accounting enables first ‘political economy’

  7. After writing: a new power for accounting • 4000BC: Tokens put in clay envelopes • Tokens impressed in wet clay then sealed • Impressions become first cuneiform signs • Some signs now ‘count’, others ‘name’ • Whereupon (c 3200BC) humans ‘write’! • …And the first written records are accounts • By 2500BC, ‘money of account’ in contracts • Loans charging interest: ‘time value of money’ • NB: first coinage not till 800BC • Accounting enables writing and money!

  8. Answers are never final. They have to be discovered • Accounting as ‘always naming & counting’ • First articulated in Ezzamel & Hoskin, 2002 • Accounting as always shaped by available text forms & notation systems • First advanced in Hoskin & Macve, 1986 (next slide) • Steps along a reflecting, questioning path • With other steps always still to come… • Engaging in a Truth Process – just like yours

  9. Double-Entry as ‘Invention’ • Not till c 1300 AD (Hoskin & Macve, 1986) • i.e. 3500 years after writing’s invention • Only possible when… • Arabic #’s (with ‘0’) enable ‘place value’ • Textual layout has debit & credit columns • Plus there is systematic examining (as in ‘audit’ = hearing) of what is named and counted • Developed in Italy from c 1300-1350 • Then described by Pacioli in 1494 book • So Paciolinot the ‘Father of Double Entry’

  10. The PhD as truth process • A ‘true’ contribution to knowledge • Truth-as-correctness • Methodologically sound • Empirically accurate in data gathering • Analytically coherent in interpretation (whether via quantitative or qualitative means) • Logically consistent as thesis and argument • But is that all?

  11. Plus truth as ‘aletheia’? • The Greek word for ‘truth’ • Etymologised by Martin Heidegger as • ‘What comes out of concealment’ • From ancient Greek ‘lanthanein’ (to escape notice) and ‘lethe’ (what is forgotten) • Plus ‘a-’ = ‘not’ (as in ‘atheist’ or ‘aseptic’) • So ‘what stops escaping notice • As in the ‘a-ha!’ moment….

  12. The PhD as mix of both • Truth-as-correctness necessary….. • But not sufficient…? • You as ‘truth-seeker’… • Going through ‘a-ha!’ moments • Wondering why x escaped notice before • When x was ‘right under your nose’…. • Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Purloined Letter’

  13. Truth as PhD journey • ‘Piled Higher and Deeper…’ • ‘Permanent Head Damage…’ • Requiring a relation of ‘watchfulness’… • …and thinking even when not thinking… • Kekulé and the shape of the benzene molecule • On a journey that does not end with the PhD • ‘Where’ will you be (& what will you be thinking) in 5/10 years time?

  14. A historically situated truth process • Your personal histories • How did I get here? • For me, a PhD on ancient Greek & Latin rhetoric and modes of education • For you….? • Plus the institutional history of your discipline • A Hopwood, ‘Whither Accounting Research’ (2007)

  15. Whence Positive Accounting Research? • 1960s Chicago • PhD students include Ray Ball, Phil Brown, Ross Watts, Bill Beaver… and one Anthony Hopwood • Watts & Ball: very irritated by ‘the monopolistic pretensions of the accountancy profession’ • Ball & Brown (1968) – now a ‘seminal paper’ • Written to show how accounting ‘operates in a competitive information environment’ (Hopwood, 2007) • Watts & Zimmerman (1979) • Driven by concern with monopolistic tendencies of the accountancy profession

  16. Reflections on Accounting? • Doing your research is always a mix of truth-as-correctness and ‘a-letheia’ • Easy to focus on the first • But the second is also always there • Leading you towards whatever lies just beyond your current reach • And which you will only ‘see’ after it has come out of concealment…..

  17. References: Ball, R & Brown P (1968), ‘An empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers’, Journal of Accounting Research 6, pp 159-178. Ezzamel M & Hoskin K (2002), ‘Retheorising Accounting, Writing and Money with Evidence from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt’, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 13, 3, pp. 333-367. Hopwood, A (2007), ‘Whither Accounting Research?’, The Accounting Review, 82, 5, pp. 1365-1374. Hoskin, K. and Macve, R. (1986) “Accounting and the Examination: A Genealogy of Disciplinary Power”, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 11, 2, pp.105-136. Schmandt-Besserat D (1992), Before Writing, Volume 1 : From Counting to Cuneiform, Austin: University of Texas Press. Watts, R. & Zimmerman , J (1979), ‘The demand for and supply of accounting theories: the market for excuses’, The Accounting Review 64, April, pp 273-285.

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