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Traditional history has sought to provide narrative accounts of the past which can be accepted as factual, devoid of fictions and therefore true. This image has come under strong attack from new historians who denounce the narrative as a literary convention which mixes fiction (myth) and fact rather than being a model of an extant, discoverable reality. The narrative is also accused of being the means of privileging some accounts of history and thereby enhancing the position of social élites. This paper rejects condemnation of the ability of narrative history to provide reliable renditions of accounting’s past and promotes the role of narrativity in the “new” accounting history. It is shown that new accounting history, whilst critical of the results of traditional accounting history, currently still finds merit in the narrative as both the form in which historical events occur and as a means of telling alternative stories or counternarratives.

This paper seeks to review the accounting history content of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) over the last 20 years and to identify distinctive research themes therein. Observations and suggestions are offered in relation to future accounting history research.

The study comprises an analysis of the content of AAAJ and related literature.

Histories appearing in AAAJ have focused on technical issues, accounting in business organisations, cost and management accounting, accounting historiography, professionalisation, and socio‐cultural studies of accounting. The journal has been an important medium for the pursuit of interdisciplinarity, the promotion and practical application of new research methods, methodological pluralism, and searches for convergence in historical debates.

The paper discusses the potential for advancing established research agendas in accounting history and identifies some new subjects for investigation by accounting historians.

It is suggested that, while methodological innovation and plurality are to be applauded, the sustained application of new approaches should also receive greater encouragement. Searches for rapprochement in accounting history debate run the risk of stultifying historical controversy. It is argued that histories of management accounting, gender, class, professionalisation are far from “complete” and should be reignited through the adoption of broader theoretical, temporal and spatial parameters. An emphasis on the performative aspects of accounting in socio‐cultural histories is encouraged, as is clearer recognition of the significance of contemporary understandings of the boundaries of accounting. Also emphasised is the desirability of more indigenously sensitised histories of the profession, greater engagement with the “literary turn”, and a renewed commitment to interdisciplinarity.

This paper aims to contextualise and critically evaluate the state of accounting historiography, its past and future agenda as a foundation for future scholars’ design and pursuit of accounting history research.

Focussing on the historiographic accounting history literature, the paper draws on prior state-of-the-art reviews as well as a range of contemporary accounting history research studies to provide an overview of the accounting history community internationally, its emergence, institutions, theories and methodologies.

Accounting history researchers are identified now as an established and growing international community of scholars, increasingly diverse in national origins and focus, yet still on the threshold of moving beyond its specialist literature into general accounting and history research literatures. Nonetheless, their historiography exhibits a vibrant theoretical and methodological discourse that has laid the foundations for expanding opportunities in both research subjects and approaches available for study.

Theoretical and methodological proliferation offers a wealth of options for further research in this field, in terms of subject matter focus and in terms of innovative and insightful approaches to their investigation.

Findings already available in the accounting history literature offer useful foundational understandings that have the potential to better inform contemporary policy and practice decision-makers.

The paper provides a reference point for emerging and established scholars in accounting history, presenting a summary of their underlying historical institutional and historiographic development contexts and offering a research agenda based on theoretical and methodological diversity.

This study focusses on the participation of women in the development of the specialist international accounting history literature. Based on an examination of the three specialist, internationally refereed, accounting history journals in the English language from the time of first publication in each case to the year 2000, the study provides evidence of the involvement of women through publication and also through their membership of editorial boards and editorial advisory boards. In doing so, the study builds on the earlier work of Carnegie and Potter in 2000 and aims to augment our understanding of publishing patterns in the specialist international accounting history literature.

Delineates differing attitudes towards knowledge of the past in accounting and illustrates one of these by referring to accounting histories informed by the work of Michel Foucault. Foucauldian accounting histories are a part of the pluralization of accounting history. Its categories of description and its view of history are different from traditional accounting history. Suggests that many approaches are needed to ensure an undogmatic view of history but that the new history has enriched our understanding of accounting in action in our society.

This paper illustrates the socio-political nature of accountings, referring to the partial privatisation of the monopoly telecommunications organisation in a lower-middle-income country.

Actor-network theory and an ANTi-history approach are used to trace circumstances and occurrences. Empirical materials include official documents, print media and retrospective interviews with organisation employees ten years on from the privatisation.

Proponents of privatisation used retrospectively constructed historical accounts to problematise the natural monopoly of telecommunications and the government organisation administering it. A restructuring programme followed. Proponents addressed controversies pertaining to the programme thus garnering widespread support for complex and controversial changes. Proponents produced and reproduced accounting artefacts as evidence in these processes of history reconstruction, consequent changes and restoring stability to telecommunications in its reconfigured commercial domain. The proponents used selective, controversial accounting evidence to problematise the government organisation's existence, then to mobilise various actors to reduce and close the controversies previously aroused and reinstate stability in a partially privatised telecommunications company. Although no longer having a monopoly this company still dominates. Dissenters did the same but with little success.

The findings demonstrate the importance of tracing the socio-political process of arriving at the dominant outcome about the past. This assists in making sense of present circumstances and re-imagining the future.

The study demonstrates that, during controversial circumstances, taken-for-granted history, as well as what is thought to have not existed in the past, support the dominant network in gaining advantage over their opponents and black-boxing their perspectives of how things should be.

Globalization has brought about migration and the transnational movement of people from different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, using different languages, and has thereby facilitated intercultural interaction and re-interpretation of lived experiences. Gender research in accounting is also influenced by globalization, which has created a platform where different cultures can meet and interact, and where knowledge can be synthesized from the work of authors from various different countries. Building on my own research experiences and their outcomes, this study examines the globalization of gender research in accounting by tracing the development of research on the relationship between Japanese women and accounting. The experiences of Japan highlight that knowledge in accounting, including gender-in-accounting studies, historically flows from West to East. The language, concepts and framework in existing Western-led accounting studies translate and visualize the history and phenomena in a Japanese context to be shared within the international accounting arena.

This study demonstrates that this process provides a body of interesting evidence from Japanese contexts in the fields of history, household accounting and professionalization. Accounting played an enabling role for women in Japan, while positioning women to act as catalysts for social change. Questions arise regarding the potential for such findings (from the East) to flow to the West and be accorded equal status to Western-led accounting research. The study concludes by discussing, in terms of achieving sustainable and innovative knowledge creation in accounting, the importance of herstory in understanding local culture and its integration into ‘global’ academic research.

This paper aims to draw on a family business perspective to explore the historic accounting records of an Italian liquorice juice business. The applicability of the three-circle model of family business systems to such an historic context is examined.

Using archival records, the Cassa accounting book of the business is studied. Its transactions are examined to distinguish family and business items over the period from 1875 to 1920.

Through an analysis of the accounting records, the family, ownership and business systems are shown to overlap more than typically expected in a contemporary setting.

Contemporary literature suggests the three-circle model of a family business is relatively static, but it has not been applied to an historic context. This study suggests that the model can be applied in historic studies, but it is not static over time with its elements needing refinement.