Accounting as a social and institutional practice: perspectives to enrich our understanding of accounting change

Abstract

In the past two decades, a body of literature has developed which depicts accounting as a social and institutional practice. Researchers adopting this perspective typically demonstrate an appreciation for the pervasive and enabling characteristics of accounting and an awareness of the importance of local, time‐specific factors which shape accounting change within particular instances. This work examines this literature and classifies its content using the themes identified by Miller (1994). Drawing upon aspects of this literature, the final sections develop a broad, thematic framework to assist researchers in future studies directed at understanding the diverse and complex processes through which changes to the accounting domain can occur.

EPSAS and the Unification of Public Sector Accounting Across Europe

“…The changes in the budgeting and accounting systems of sub-national governments can be interpreted as a function of the manner in which EU institutions believe that public accounting can help manage and solve the financial crisis that hit several EU countries (Biondi & Soverchia, 2014). In other words, the EU interpreted the "issue" of the crisis also as an accounting problem and, consequently, the solution to this problem became part of the proposed public sector accounting regulations (Bruno, 2014;Potter, 2005;Young, 1994).…”

Indonesian Hospitals under the “BPJS” Scheme: a War in a Narrower Battlefield

“…It seemed also that the flourish of organizational change issues in management and organization studies journals during 1990s started to have its impact in accounting research in 2000s to bewhat so called as accounting change issue. Among others, several works on that issue during this era are mentioned here such as the work of Burns (2000), Burns and Scapens (2000), Briers and Chua (2001), Burns and Vaivio (2001), Larrinaga-Gonzales and Bebington (2001) Kasurinen (2002), Arunachalam and Beck (2002), Baines and LangfieldSmith (2003), Potter (2005), Siti Nabiha and Scapens (2005), Webster and Hoque (2005). Relatively different with the research works on accounting change issue in 1990s that not only they were limited in number, but also quantitative in nature and generally applying contingency theory as their back ground theoretical analysis, the works on accounting change issue in 2000s started to be different, they entered to case study in their methodology and commenced to rely on qualitative with various perspectives such as post-positive, interpretive and even critical.…”

História da contabilidade e o gênero feminino

“…O contexto em história da contabilidade é fundamental e este estudo assume que a contabilidade é uma prática social, e não uma mera técnica neutra e objectiva, que deve ser estudada e compreendida no contexto em que atua (Hopwwod, 1983;Miller e Napier, 1993;Miller, 1994;Hopwood e Miller, 1994;Carnegie e Napier, 1996Carmona, Ezzamel e Gutiérrez, 2004;Napier, 2006;Walker, 2008a;Gaffikin, 2011). Uma especial atenção é dada às características penetrantes e facilitadoras da contabilidade, dando particular importância aos fatores específicos do local e do tempo que moldam a atuação dos agentes e o papel da contabilidade quando estudada em instâncias particulares (Hopwood, 2005;Potter, 2005).…”