Search results

The Franciscan Friar Luca Pacioli is considered the “father of accounting” because of his 1494 publication Summa de Arithmetrica, Geometrica, Proportioni et Proportionalita (Summa) which included a section double entry accounting. While accounting systems existed before Pacioli, he introduced double entry accounting as a more efficient means of keeping business records because that would lead to better business operation and profits. Subsequently, double entry accounting systems have contributed significantly to the rise of capitalism in Europe and the developed world.

Pacioli also advocated a moral and social role for accounting, business, and the successful business person whose actions help serve the public interest. This clearly indicated that Pacioli understood business was about more than bookkeeping and profitability.

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has played a significant role in business ethics for at least a century. Starting with Rerum Novarum, 1891 and continuing through numerous Papal Encyclicals (e.g., Caritas in Veritate, 2009; Centesimus Annus, 1991), CST has carefully examined how businesspeople, labor, and capital can cooperate to build a more just and peaceful society that fulfills the entire person. CST thus predates and contributes to contemporary business ethics efforts.

Pacioli’s contributions reflect and underlay much of contemporary CST, which is why we believe it is important to examine his social responsibility teaching in the context of contemporary CST principles. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss Pacioli’s view of the moral roles of accounting, business, and businesspeople in the context of CST principles, particularly (1) purpose of accounting profits, (2) purpose of business in society, (3) ethical and efficient business practices as they relate to accounting, and (4) the undivided life.

This paper seeks to offer a survey of accounting publications and research in the French literature from 1950 to the end of the twentieth century.

The methodology is that of literary research, review and critique.

Finds that over the period mentioned different aspects of accounting research have been examined in the literature – academic, social, matrix, events, historical. The leading researchers in these fields are covered in detail.

Succeeds in offering problems the most comprehensive survey to date of the French literature on accounting and related research during the period under review.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a concise survey and comparison of Italian accounting research and academic publications during the second half of the 20th century.

The paper discusses the special relation between economia aziendale (business and public economics) and ragioneria (accounting) in Italy. The subsequent discussion on “financial accounting” includes a sub‐section on income‐orientation (vs capital‐orientation), especially important in Italy during this period, and the present crisis of economia aziendale as affecting ragioneria, contributions by major Italian accountants of the period (above all, Onida and Amaduzzi) are discussed. After a section on “cost and managerial accounting” (of less significance in Italy than financial accounting), and a look at “novel accounting trends”, the paper closes with a discussion of some representative historical studies of the period.

The paper reveals the changing international position of Italian accounting research.

The paper is limited by selecting the most prominent and relevant contributions among a host of pertinent publications.

In contrast to previous research, the paper offers an integrated survey of major Italian accounting publications of the entire second half of the 20th century.

This study aims to describe and examine the effectiveness of the mathematics-based learning method, called Accountamatics (Accounting from Mathematics perspective). The Accountamatics method is rooted in the principles of double-entry bookkeeping and the rules of debits and credits, which were initially documented by Luca Pacioli, a Mathematics Professor, in a mathematics book.

This study uses a quasi-experimental design, spanning a duration of one semester, to examine its research objectives. The participants included 230 students from the Faculty of Economics and Business in Indonesia, who were accredited by AACSB. Control variables, including gender, majors and study backgrounds, were taken into consideration. The data was analyzed using a linear regression test, followed by a comparative t-test.

The study findings show a significant positive impact of the Accountamatics method on student performance when compared to traditional learning approaches. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the control variables examined in the study did not have a significant effect on student performance. Thus, it can be inferred that the implementation of the Accountamatics method has a beneficial effect on the academic performance of college students.

The study findings provide valuable insights for faculty members in higher education institutions, highlighting the potential benefits of incorporating mathematics-based teaching in accounting as an alternative approach for business students. These findings contribute to the existing knowledge on innovative teaching methods that can enhance the study of accounting within the business curriculum.

Over the span of around 25 years, extensive research has been conducted to compare traditional teaching methods with innovative approaches. However, the results have not consistently shown that the innovative methods outperform their traditional counterparts. In response to this, the Accountamatics method has been developed, building upon the fundamental knowledge in accounting that has been used since 1494. Despite its historical significance, this method is sometimes regarded as limited to technical knowledge in the modern era.

Georgian architecture dominates much of the urban vista of the British Isles and is also evident in many former British colonies. A product of the eighteenth century, it is an architectural style richly embedded in its social and political context. The defining feature of a Georgian building: a perfectly proportioned, standardized and symmetrical façade echoes the balance inherent in Pacioli’s double entry treatise. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of accounting in the construction and widespread adoption of the standard Georgian house. It finds that eighteenth century builders’ price books (“estimators”), disseminating detailed materials and labour costing information on all components of house construction, inherently acted as norms or standards of cost behaviour. Essentially, it is argued, they constituted a form of human accountability which, located within a broader network of diverse actors, culminated in the diffusion of Georgian Classicism.

Today’s financial reporting inherits its origin in money, numbers and accounting dated back 7,000 years in Mesopotamia. The Italian Luca Pacioli, “first person to publish a work on double-entry bookkeeping”¹ is regarded as the father of accounting and bookkeeping. In USA, SEC issued its first Accounting Series Release which appeared to be Commission’s views on auditing and accounting, later, in 1982 has become known as Financial Reporting Releases. Today more than 100 countries permit publicly held companies to use International Financial Reporting Standards. This meteoric rise for use of financial reporting was due to a worldwide demand from regulators, lenders, trade partners, businesses, investors and policy makers. “The Companies Act of 1994 mandates requirement for financial reporting by all companies in Bangladesh.”² Banks’ reporting formats and disclosures in Bangladesh based on BAS 30 is similar to the requirements of the Companies Act of 1994. The research depicts how the two banking institutions of Bangladesh – Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) and Grameen Bank having two philosophical objectives – uniquely present their results of operation under a uniform financial reporting system and how they differ in their financial operations.

This study aims to investigate the claim that there is no coherent and homogeneous body of concepts and practices that can be classified as “Islamic accounting”.

The study focuses specifically on Islamic accounting and uses a qualitative historical documentary analysis methodology to study an original manuscript from the 14th century.

The analysis of the manuscript argues that religious accounting can be seen as a value-based system for achieving social good and that in the context of Islamic accounting, it can be conceptualised as a coherent body of ideas and practices.

Firstly, the study conceptualises Islamic accounting as a homogeneous discipline with its own knowledge, concepts and practices. Secondly, it contributes to current accounting literature by examining an ancient manuscript from the 14th century, which serves as a foundation for understanding the Islamic accounting system within the context of accounting, religion and spirituality. The paper further contributes by arguing that this conceptualisation of religious accounting as a value-based approach enables its practitioners to evaluate their own accountabilities in delivering on socioeconomic objectives related to inter-human/environmental, social and financial transactions within the context of religious accounting practices.

One of the objectives of accounting education at South African universities is to prepare students for positions as professional accountants. The bulk of current education at South African universities focuses on the acquisition of technical knowledge through courses or modules focused on financial accounting. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, which is the dominant professional accounting body in South Africa, is mainly responsible for prescribing the body of knowledge that is taught. However, current accounting education is challenged by major changes in the environment in which professional accountants are operating. One of the major factors that affect this environment is the impact of information technology on the accounting profession. The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly, to investigate the extent of the changing environment in which professional accountants will need to operate in future, focusing specifically on information technology; and secondly, to determine the need for future research that will identify strategies for closing the gap between the current education of accountants at South African universities and what will be expected from them in their profession in future.

Paul Strathern’s book, A Brief History of Economic Genius, is a history of economic thought that is written for the general public. The book contains photographs, no footnotes and a very limited list of sources that functions as a list of “further reading” advice. This book stands in a long line of over more than forty books by Paul Strathern on the lives and works of great philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Locke, Kant, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Madame Curie as the exceptional woman scientist. In these books he introduces the lay reader in an accessible and brief manner to often complicated ideas. As his other books, A Brief History tells the life stories of scholars, which are here woven into an account of the history of economics.