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After some introductory words about the preeminence of German accounting research during the first half of the 20th century, the paper offers a survey of the most important theories of accounts classes that still prevailed during the first two decades or longer. Following World War I, the issue of hyperinflation in Austria and Germany stimulated a considerable amount of original accounting research. After the inflationary period, a series of competing Bilanztheorien, discussed in the text, dominated the scene. Two figures emerged supremely from this struggle. The first was Eugen Schmalenbach, with his “dynamic accounting”, a series of further important contributions to inflation accounting, to the master chart of accounts, to cost accounting, and to other areas of business economics. The other scholar was Fritz Schmidt, with his organic accounting theory that promoted replacement values and his emphasis on the profit and loss account, no less than the balance sheet. The gamut of further eminent personalities, listed in chronological order, contains the following names: Schär, Penndorf, Leitner, Gomberg, Nicklisch, Rieger, Prion, Osbahr, Passow, Dörfel, Sganzini, Walb, Calmes, Kalveram, Meithner, Lion, Töndury, Mahlberg, le Coutre, Geldmacher, Max Lehmann, Leopold Mayer, Karl Seidel, Alfred Isaac, Mellerowicz, Seyffert, Beste, Gutenberg, Käfer, Seischab, Kosiol, Münstermann, and others. Separate Sections or Sub‐Sections are devoted to charts and master charts of accounts in German accounting theory, as well as to cost accounting and the writing of accounting history.

Weil die Betriebswirtschaftslehre noch jung ist und man sich auch in Fachkreisen noch nicht auf eine eindeutige Umschreibung ihres Forschungsgebietes geeinigt hat, ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass man ihr die verschiedenartigsten Aufgaben zu übertragen versucht. Um die Aufgaben der Betriebswirtschaftslehre auf dem Gebiet des Fremdenverkehrs zu erkennen, müssen wir daher zuerst das Gebiet der Betriebswirtschaftslehre abgrenzen und feststellen, um was es in dieser Wissenschaft überhaupt geht.

I. Rationalisierung und Rechnungswesen Das Rechnungswesen ist ein Kontrollinstrument, das zur Überwachung der Wirtschaftsgebarung und der wirtschaftlichen Lage einer Unternehmung dient. Seine Hauptaufgabe besteht darin, der Unternehmungsleitung jederzeit Aufschluss zu geben über den Stand des Vermögens und der Schulden einerseits sowie über die Entwicklung von Aufwand und Ertrag anderseits. Über diese Faktoren muss die Unternehmungsleitung stets Bescheid wissen, wenn sie nicht planlos in den Tag hinein operieren will. Für eine zielbewusste Unternehmungsführung hat das Rechnungswesen darüber hinaus auch Auskunft zu geben über die mutmassliche zukünftige Entwicklung. Die Registrierung von Tatsachen, die bereits der Vergangenheit angehören, ist nur ein Teil, wenn auch ein wichtiger, des Rechnungswesens. Seine volle Bedeutung erlangt dieses aber erst, wenn es auf die Zukunft ausgerichtet ist und die nötigen zahlenmässigen Unterlagen liefert für die laufend zu treffenden Dispositionen.

Unter dem Begriff “Heilbäder” werden üblicherweise Einrichtungen verstanden, die einen Komplex von Betrieben zur Befriedigung aller laufend vorkommenden Bedürfnisse des Patienten (Badegastes) darstellen: diese dienen ihm mit ärztlicher Untersuchung, mit Analysen des Laboratoriums, mit natürlichen und medikamentösen Heilmitteln, mit Beherbergung und Verpflegung sowie mit verschiedenen Leistungen gesellschaftlicher, kultureller, sportlicher oder kommerzieller Natur. Die Dienste aller dieser Arbeitsbranchen bilden eine Kette nebeneinanderstehender Leistungen, welche sich fortwährend ergänzen, um damit zur Wiederherstellung der Gesundheit der Badegäste zu führen. Das hat eine wichtige wirtschaftliche Tatsache zur Folge: das Unternehmen wird als ein Ganzes betrachtet, wobei die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung einzelner Zweige bzw. Abteilungen — Ambulatorien, Laboratorien, Rehabilitationsinstitute, Beherbergungsbetriebe, Verpflegungsstätten, Verkehrseinrichtungen, Wäschereien, Gärtnereien usw. — meistens nur sekundär, im Rahmen einer Betriebsbuchführung oder Kalkulationsabrechnung ermittelt und verfolgt wird.

Nachdem Sie diese ökonometrische Problematik kennengelernt haben, werden Sie den folgenden ökonometrischen Analysen nicht geringe Skepsis entgegenbringen. Diese besteht zu Recht. Die wichtigste Vokabel jedoch in der praktischen Ökonometrie ist das Wörtchen «IMMERHIN». Die Voraussetzungen sind teil‐weise unrealistisch, die statistischen Beobachtungen ungenau, z. T. auf Schätzung beruhend, zahlreiche Fundamentalprobleme sind ungelöst. Alles zugegeben. Immerhin zeigt sich … doch hierzu noch ein ernsteres Wort: Ist es nicht vorteilhafter, um die Dubiosität von (wohlbestimmten) Voraussetzungen zu wissen als die Voraus‐setzungen überhaupt nicht zu kennen und ihre Dubiosität daher gar nicht beurteilen zu können? Der Verdacht liegt nahe, dass der Optimismus, der bei nicht‐ökonometrischen Untersuchungen herrscht, zuweilen auf der anregenden Wirkung totaler Unkenntnis über die Voraussetzungen beruht.

Anthropologists have long discussed the ways in which their discipline has been entangled, consciously and unconsciously, with the colonized populations they study. A foundational text in this regard was Michel Leiris' Phantom Africa (L'Afrique fantôme; Leiris, 1934), which described an African ethnographic expedition led by Marcel Griaule as a form of colonial plunder. Leiris criticized anthropologists' focus on the most isolated, rural, and traditional cultures, which could more easily be described as untouched by European influences, and he saw this as a way of disavowing the very existence of colonialism. In 1950, Leiris challenged Europeans' ability even to understand the colonized, writing that “ethnography is closely linked to the colonial fact, whether ethnographers like it or not. In general they work in the colonial or semi-colonial territories dependent on their country of origin, and even if they receive no direct support from the local representatives of their government, they are tolerated by them and more or less identified, by the people they study, as agents of the administration” (Leiris, 1950, p. 358). Similar ideas were discussed by French social scientists throughout the 1950s. Maxime Rodinson argued in the Année sociologique that “colonial conditions make even the most technically sophisticated sociological research singularly unsatisfying, from the standpoint of the desiderata of a scientific sociology” (Rodinson, 1955, p. 373). In a rejoinder to Leiris, Pierre Bourdieu acknowledged in Work and Workers in Algeria (Travail et travailleurs en Algérie) that “no behavior, attitude or ideology can be explained objectively without reference to the existential situation of the colonized as it is determined by the action of economic and social forces characteristic of the colonial system,” but he insisted that the “problems of science” needed to be separated from “the anxieties of conscience” (2003, pp. 13–14). Since Bourdieu had been involved in a study of an incredibly violent redistribution of Algerians by the French colonial army at the height of the anticolonial revolutionary war, he had good reason to be sensitive to Leiris' criticisms (Bourdieu & Sayad, 1964). Rodinson called Bourdieu's critique of Leiris' thesis “excellent’ (1965, p. 360), but Bourdieu later revised his views, noting that the works that had been available to him at the time of his research in Algeria tended “to justify the colonial order” (1990, p. 3). At the 1974 colloquium that gave rise to a book on the connections between anthropology and colonialism, Le mal de voir, Bourdieu called for an analysis of the relatively autonomous field of colonial science (1993a, p. 51). A parallel discussion took place in American anthropology somewhat later, during the 1960s. At the 1965 meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Marshall Sahlins criticized the “enlistment of scholars” in “cold war projects such as Camelot” as “servants of power in a gendarmerie relationship to the Third World.” This constituted a “sycophantic relation to the state unbefitting science or citizenship” (Sahlins, 1967, pp. 72, 76). Sahlins underscored the connections between “scientific functionalism and the natural interest of a leading world power in the status quo” and called attention to the language of contagion and disease in the documents of “Project Camelot,” adding that “waiting on call is the doctor, the US Army, fully prepared for its self-appointed ‘important mission in the positive and constructive aspects of nation-building’” a mission accompanied by “insurgency prophylaxis” (1967, pp. 77–78). At the end of the decade, Current Anthropology published a series of articles on anthropologists’ “social responsibilities,” and Human Organization published a symposium entitled “Decolonizing Applied Social Sciences.” British anthropologists followed suit, as evidenced by Talal Asad's 1973 collection Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. During the 1980s, authors such as Gothsch (1983) began to address the question of German anthropology's involvement in colonialism. The most recent revival of this discussion was in response to the Pentagon's deployment of “embedded anthropologists” in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. The “Network of Concerned Anthropologists” in the AAA asked “researchers to sign an online pledge not to work with the military,” arguing that they “are not all necessarily opposed to other forms of anthropological consulting for the state, or for the military, especially when such cooperation contributes to generally accepted humanitarian objectives … However, work that is covert, work that breaches relations of openness and trust with studied populations, and work that enables the occupation of one country by another violates professional standards” (“Embedded Anthropologists” 2007).³ Other disciplines, notably geography, economics, area studies, and political science, have also started to examine the involvement of their fields with empire.⁴

In Europa und in Amerika zeigten sich ungefähr zur gleichen Zeit Bestrebungen, der Hotelbuchführung einheitliche und systematisch aufgebaute Kontenpläne zugrunde zu legen. In den USA war es die Hotel Association of New York City, die 1925/26 einen ersten Entwurf eines Kontenplanes ausarbeiten liess. Unabhängig davon schrieb in Deutschland J. Stehle an seinem Werk “Organisation und Technik der Hotel‐Buchhaltung”, das 1925 erschienen ist. Während das in den USA entwickelte Uniform System of Accounts for Hotels bis heute keine grundsätzlichen Änderungen mehr erfahren hat, folgten in Europa auf Stehle — parallel mit der allgemeinen Fortbildung des Rechnungswesens und der Betriebswirtschaftslehre — mehrere neue Vorschläge für den Aufbau der Hotelbuchführung. Zu erwähnen sind namentlich die deutschen Pflichtkontenrahmen für die Hotellerie und das Gastgewerbe und der 1945 erschienene Normal‐Kontenplan der schweizerischen Hotellerie. In der Schweiz hat diese Entwicklung ihren vorläufigen Abschluss gefunden mit dem durch die Betriebswirtschaftliche Abteilung des Forschungsinstitutes für Fremdenverkehr an der Universität Bern entworfenen Kontenplan für die Hotelunternehmung (Vgl. Walther/Kunz, Hotel‐Rechnungswesen nach betriebswirtschaftlichen Grundsätzen, Bern 1947. Hier zitiert als Kontenplan des FIF).

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

There are many accepted ways in which the economist may look at the business enterprise, each of which involves a different blend of theory and empirical evidence. Unfortunately, one gets the impression that many microeconomists have had no direct contact with firms: their experience of the very object on which some lavish such intricate mathematical analysis is entirely second‐hand. Happily, such isolation from the proper object of analysis, the firm, is by no means typical of the history of economic analysis. Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, was well acquainted with the business community of Glasgow. He was on good terms with the leading merchants of the day including, most notably, Provost Andrew Cochrane who assisted Smith in the acquisition of statistical and institutional information later to be used the The Wealth of Nations. Alfred Marshall too had a serious concern for the realities of business activity. In 1885 he made an extended visit to the United States which took him into many factories and provided the basis for his paper “Some Features of American Industry”. Even ten years later “his zeal for field work remained unimpaired”, and the months of August and September saw Marshall undertaking extensive tours of English mines and factories. One hundred years later, one notices scarcely any enthusiasm on the part of economists for fieldwork of the sort that would take them into the business enterprise. A welcome sign of the possibility that this parlous state may yet be modified is contained in an article by Lawson, where it is argued that “more resources should be allocated, and attention paid, to the results of forms of case‐study, to personal histories, and to the study of primary sources. At the very least a re‐evaluation of research priorities and methods may be in order”. Such an attitude is in sympathy with the line of argument pursued in this article.

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the development of industrial relations (IR) in Germany since the end of the Second World War and discusses the current challenges posed by economic globalisation und European integration.

Combining a political economy, identifying Germany as a coordinated market economy (social market economy), and actor-centred historical institutionalism approach, outlining the formation and strategies of the main social actors within a particular institutional setting, the paper draws on the broad range of research on IR in Germany and its theoretical debates, including own research in the field.

The legacy of the key institutional settings in the post-war era – primarily the social market economy, co-determination at supervisory boards, works councils and sector-based non-ideological unions with their analogously organised employer counterparts, as well as the dual system of interest representation – has shaped the German IR and still underlie the bargaining processes and joint learning processes although trade unions and employers’ associations have been weakened because of loss of membership. In consequence the coverage scope of collective agreements is now somewhat reduced. Despite being declared dead many times, the “German model” of a “conflictual partnership” of capital and labour has survived many turbulent changes affecting it to the core.

The paper presents an original, theoretical informed reconstruction of the German IR and allows an understanding of the current institutional changes and challenges in the light of historical legacies. Additionally the theoretical debates on path dependence and learning processes of collectivities are enriched through its application to the German case.