The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how Italian-language accounting history was one example of a “local” accounting discipline. For this purpose, we reviewed all historical publications edited from 1869 to 2008 and conducted an in-depth analysis on the database we built. Evidence about authorships, dates of publication, publication forms, periods of study, issues and approaches, were collected. The results show many changes in the publishing patterns of accounting history research. We also explore how the schools of accounting thought, the assessment of historical research in the recruitment system, the stimuli and opportunities coming from the Italian Society of Accounting History, the role of practitioners in conducting and financing research about the origin of their profession could have influenced authorship, publication forms, and the issues and themes during the century and a half after the Unification of Italy.

The relationship between literature/theory and practice in accounting is not well understood, especially in the area of cost accounting. This article examines the development of both the relevant literature/theory and cost accounting practice in Italy during the nineteenth century and the first four decades of the twentieth century. In this way, the article provides insights into aspects of accounting’s development, throwing light on alternative views such as the diffusionist and “multiple origins” theories, and helps to provide material for future comparative international accounting history research

PurposeThe paper examines how accounting and accounting experts provided important contributions to the Italian government's strategy to address the COVID-19 emergency in 2020, especially in terms of implementing new rules of conduct and providing justification for penetrating interventions in the life of individuals.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach by drawing upon Agamben's concepts of the state of exception, bare life and biosecurity to understand the purposes of the decrees issued by the Italian government and data provided to the citizens in the “daily bulletin” on the crisis by the Civil Protection Department.FindingsAccounting data provided essential contributions to the government's strategy that sought to spread disquiet and uncertainty in the population to ensure compliance with the strict rules in place, thereby sustaining the management of the country under a state of exception.Social implicationsThe study draws attention to the way in which accounting provides justification for measures that are promoted as provisional but which have enduring effects, most importantly the ability of governments in the future to suspend the rights of individuals. It shows how accounting can influence people's behaviour and contribute to the development of a permanent state of exception that significantly increases government prerogatives.Originality/valueThe work contributes to the literature on accounting and emergencies by studying the use of accounting information as a subtle means to ensure support for extreme government actions and ultimately as a political tool that promotes biosecurity as a new government paradigm.

The aim of this article is to describe the role played by accounting in an industrial company in which elements of utopian socialism and capitalism co-existed. The case is the Royal Silk Factory founded by King Ferdinand IV at San Leucio, near Caserta in 1778. The article covers the years 1802–1826. In this hybrid institution, double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) was adopted to calculate the minimum profit rate owed to the capitalist shareholders, while ‘labour accounting’ measured the workers’ performance. The surplus value was shared between the enterprise and the workers. This article makes a number of contributions to the accounting history literature: First, it adds archival evidence of accounting practices in Italian industrial companies; second, it supports the close connection between DEB and capitalism; third, it shows that the accounting system is set up to reflect the different social organisation of a manufacturing company; and finally, it illustrates how the accounting system makes the wealth-generating and wealth-distributing processes accountabl

The aim of this article is to show the contributions to the accounting history literature made by Italian scholars working in the second half of the nineteenth century. These scholars comprised the world’s first community of academics, practitioners, office bearers and historians dealing in a systematic way with accounting’s past. They invented the narrative of accounting history and their historical re-enactments on relevant topics have been the basis for further historical research for many years. The last decades of the nineteenth century saw great development in historical studies of accounting, both in and outside of the academies. These studies were mainly of three types: (a) general histories, which examined the evolution of accounting practices from antiquity to the late nineteenth century; (b) investigations of the origins of double-entry and Pacioli; and (c) research on the evolution of accounting practices. Some of the most prominent books and papers published in this period have become widely known abroad. This article contributes to knowledge of early international accounting historians and can be linked to the field of accounting history today. It also demonstrates the widespread dissemination of this early Italian literature around the world, thereby forming the first example of international accounting history