The profession of arms and the profession of accounting numbers – Accounting, the military and war: A review

Abstract

Within the accounting history literature, there exists a small sub-realm that focuses on the nexus between accounting and war and accounting and the military. This article is a review of 55 articles published in the new millennium (2000–2017) ranging across a 420-year period, encompassing many wars and periods of peace, and involving multiple countries. Several accounting issues including procedures, costing, budgeting, disclosure, financing, efficiency gender and culpability emerge. The availability of existing accounting knowledge forms the basis of the review, with accounting shown to be adaptive and reactive to the needs of the military (and the state) in peacetime and wartime emergency. Specifically, in applying existing accounting knowledge, accounting contributes to the military or war. Where new accounting knowledge is developed, accounting is influenced either by the needs of the military or the dictates of war.

Shades of theory: A topic modelling of ways of theorizing in accounting history research

“…Second, scholars have extensively reviewed the accounting history literature, engaging, in some cases, with thematic reviews or thematic calls for empirical research (see, for instance, Cobbin and Burrows, 2018, for accounting history and the military). We are missing an in-depth engagement with conceptual reviews, such as ‘accounting history and ANT’, or ‘accounting history and neo-institutionalism’ and the like, as some scholars have started doing in general accounting research (Justesen and Mouritsen, 2011; Modell et al, 2017).…”

Can Auditor Expertise Contribute to Positive Contagion?

“…Early studies developed discretionary accrual models to test earnings management (e.g. Healy, 1985;DeAngelo, 1986;Jones, 1991;and Dechow et al, 1995). The two most popular models for estimating the discretionary component of accruals are the Jones (1991) model and modified-Jones model (Dechow et al, 1995).…”

Minding their Ps and Qs; the Royal Navy purser and accounting and governance, 1731–1808

“…Calls for further research in the area of military history (Chwastiak and Funnell, 2010) have been answered. Indeed, accounting for the military, and for wartime activity as a subset of accounting history is thriving (Cobbin and Burrows, 2018). This article adds to the literature by developing an under-explored area within that subset, that of naval accounting.…”

“…This stream of research includes studies of the development of management accounting and innovations in various military organisations, for example, military hospitals (Sanchez-Matamoros, 2014; Sanchez-Matamoros and Funnell, 2015). Most literature in this area focuses on costing, accounting practices and the enhancement of efficiency (Cobbin and Burrows, 2018), improvements that may have been intended to send the right signals of legitimacy in order to secure future funding, but this aspect has not been explored in-depth within the literature.…”