The aura of accounting in the context of a crisis: Germany and the first world war

Accounting in the Service of the Holocaust

“…Accounting has also been shown to assist in sustaining political and economic inequality between a capital owning ( class and those the capitalist class employs Tinker, 1980;Tinker & ) Neimark, 1987;Armstrong, 1991;Tinker et al, 1991 . As awareness of the social impacts of accounting has intensified, accounting has been pilloried also for the approval it allows for the social alienation resulting ( from a rational managerialist approach to government Humphrey et al, ) 1993, p. 17;Hutton, 1994 . Overwhelmingly, alternative research projects in accounting have been preoccupied with the problems raised by capitalism, capitalism's need to promote an image of unproblematic operation, and its ability to harness ( accounting to ensure capitalism's continued existence Cooper & Sherer, ) 1984;Gallhofer & Haslam, 1991;Lovell, 1995, p. 69 . Given the close association between capitalism and democracy, whether the liberal variety of the West or the State paternalism of the emerging economies of South East Asia, the significance of accounting in strengthening the paranoiac grip of totalitarian regimes, of the right and the left, has been ( ) neglected in comparison.…”

“…The second broad theme of the paper is the ability of accounting to privilege a limited set of interests and, thereby, to deny a voice for the ( ) excluded or the '' Other' ' Broadbent, 1995 . In particular, accounting's ( aura of neutrality and objectivity Francis, 1990;Gallhofer & Haslam, ) 1991;Miller & O'Leary, 1993, pp. 190, 192 , in part stemming from representations that emphasise accounting as a technology of inscription, has been the means to discount the subjective as something necessarily inferior to the products of the rational logic of accounting.…”

The Gendered Nature of “Accounting Logic”: Pointers to an Accounting That Encompasses Multiple Values

“…These are asserted and open to challenge only at the objective level of truth. It is this which is reflected in the notion of the ''aura'' of ( ) accounting Gallhofer & Haslam, 1991 . This acceptance of the representation of ''accounting logic'' and conventional accounting locates them in the objective domain, the public sphere of '' facts'' which can be validated through the truth claims experienced cognitively and supposedly objectively.…”

“…This then allows a possibility of claiming that an instrumental rationality underlies the process of judgement and evaluation. In this ( ) way ''accounting logic'' creates an ''aura' ' Gallhofer & Haslam, 1991 of completeness and precision in its representation of reality which has ramifications for the control process and comes to dominate it. If all things that are deemed important and significant are assumed to be made visible through the measures which ''accounting logic'' generates, then all decision making and control has a tendency to relate to these measures.…”

“Forging accounting principles” in France, Germany, Japan, and China: A comparative review

“…Critical interpretive studies also remain an infrequent feature of the literature on Germany. While Gallhofer and Haslam's (1991) study of the changing accounting aura surrounding the First World War is much cited, the interest in this article likely stems from its theoretical, rather than regulatory, insights. Volmer et al (2007) have examined changes to the German regulatory framework since the 1980s, embedding them in the socioeconomic context with the help of a governance framework on disclosure and enforcement.…”