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The paper explores the creation in Australia of the Register of Accountants for National Service. Established at the outset of the Second World War, the Register operated for four years from June 1940 providing voluntary, non-remunerated, part-time and after-hours services to a highly stressed and seriously stretched federal government bureaucracy by members of the main Australian professional accounting bodies. Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Supply and Development and Munitions were the largest consumers of the services offered.

The study of the Register relies mainly on an extensive archive of war-time documentation from the Federal Government and various accounting professional institutes which has survived, predominantly in the National Archives of Australia. The resource is particularly rich in material covering the complex negotiation processes that brought the Register into operation together with documentation recording and reporting the work of the Register. The themes of professionalization, institutional legitimacy, volunteerism and patriotism are all invoked to explain the presence of the Register in the machinery of government that was assembled to deliver the ultimately successful war effort. Created by the principal professional accounting institutes, the Register attests to the commitment of their members to the war effort and, thereby, the importance of the profession to Australian society.

The perilous situation of Australia at a time of war provided a compelling incentive for the accounting profession to organise itself in an efficient and highly effective manner to assist with the war effort. The disparate and somewhat fractured accounting profession at the time was able to work together in a structured, cohesive and disciplined manner to provide voluntary services when called upon. To deliver the voluntary services promised, a purpose-built set of institutional arrangements was put in place. An extensive inventory of the potential services that could be provided by members of the main professional accounting bodies was conducted to facilitate the smooth matching of government needs with services available.

Discussion focusses only on Australia where the Register was unique. No other examples have been discovered where a profession has self-mobilised to serve a nation in a time of war. A further limitation is that the activities reported are restricted to self-reporting by the Register and a small loose collection of documents prepared by the Department of the Navy.

The uniqueness of the Register is the core of the originality and value of this study. How and why it came into being and the method by which it completed the “task” assigned to it stand as testament to a profession strategically placed to contribute in a substantive manner to the war effort at minimal cost to the nation.

In order to ensure that registered accountants and auditors (RAAs) discharge their functions in the public interest, the RAA profession, through its governing bodies, should establish, maintain and ensure compliance with among other things an identified set of educational requirements. The research objective is twofold: Firstly, to provide a normative description of pre‐qualification professional education and, secondly, to evaluate the extent to which the current pre‐qualification education process applicable to RAAs in South Africa is normatively justifiable. A study of the literature on general professional education and on education in the field of accountancy facilitated the achievement of the first objective, while the second objective was addressed by means of a comparative analysis of the basic prequalification educational requirements applicable to prospective RAAs and the normative description of professional education presented. The current educational process permits latitude for factors and practices that are not wholly justifiable within a normative definition of professional education. The lack of normative justification for several aspects of the system will impede the achievement of sound educational objectives.

In accounting, several studied Arab countries are keen to acquire the dominant Western thinking categories that justify and normalize the exerted domination, especially when it comes to globalized practices. This paper aims to challenge this assumption by examining the dynamics of globalization and its effects through new theoretical perspectives and through new empirical terrain.

It builds on the concept of “globalization from below”, which emerges from the network of individual development of daily routines, systems and practices, far from international institutions pressure. It uses social representation theory to inform the centrality of a particular social group. The study uses a survey, which was on a sample group of 214 Tunisian public accountants and uses the hierarchical evocation method and an attitudinal scale.

The results are twofold: first, Tunisian public accounts lack a stable and common understanding to globalization; second, there are ambivalent positive/negative attitudes towards globalization among accounting professionals.

The dynamic Tunisian context, along with the absence of a stable collective meaning to the concept of globalization among accountants, shows the complexity of such cases, vacillating between international institutions’ domination and the emergence of emancipatory accounting practices inspired by and developed for local socioeconomic entities, if supported by specific factors.

This study describes the history and present conditions of the accounting profession in Japan. In particular, the crises of the 1990s have highlighted the fact that Japanese CPAs operate under quite different institutional arrangements from their Anglo‐American counterparts. In addition, there are no equivalent Japanese bodies to the British Chartered Public Finance Accountants and Chartered Management Accountants for public sector or management accountants. This paper identifies factors behind such differences. We discuss three points at issue: currently existing problems with auditing in the private sector, the long absence of external auditors in the public sector and the reason why the accounting profession has not been formed in a management accounting field. Finally, we point out issues involving the Japanese accounting profession that might be tackled in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence and endurance of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI) as an all‐Ireland body formed in the context of political and religious upheaval. It seeks to explore the motives for the north‐south accounting alliance and the strategies adopted by the institute to negotiate the destructive and divisive forces of the wider socio‐political environment.

A multitude of archival material is used to reconstruct the post‐formation activities of the ICAI. Sources were drawn from: the ICAI archive in Dublin: Minute Books 1 and 2 covering the period from 1888 to 1921, Annual Reports, 1888‐1922; minute books of other contemporary English accountancy bodies; contemporary professional press and census records stored at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin and the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast.

The early ICAI was an overwhelmingly Protestant/Unionist dominated body seeking to maintain Protestant hegemony at a time when the power of this class was being gradually eroded. Cognizant of the likely vulnerability of such a body existing in the catholic‐nationalist south, and the need to strengthen such a position through a northern alliance, the ICAI from its inception was envisaged by its southern architects as an all Ireland institution. The fact that there were only a relatively small number of members acted as an inducement, particularly for Protestant members, to maintain unity.

The professionalization of accountancy in Ireland has been relatively under‐researched and the debates about the diffusion of the English professional model have virtually bypassed it.

Surveys by questionnaire the accounting profession and auditing practices in Singapore: development of the profession; major influences and practices.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to assess the impact of the 1999 Special Issue on Professionalization in Asia in the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ); and second, more generally to review research on this topic post-1999.

The paper starts with a discussion of the research articles of the Special Issue. It then identifies research that has cited papers in the Special Issue and which focusses on professionalization in Asia to identify relevant subsequent research. In addition, a literature search is conducted to locate post-1999 work that has not cited papers from the Special Issue but has investigated the same topic area. Analyzing both sets of work enables an integrated review of the field and aids the identification of future research opportunities. The study covers published research articles and books on professionalization projects in Asia from 1999 to 2018. In this paper, reference to Asia focusses on East Asia (including countries such as China and Japan), South Asia (including countries such as Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka), and South East Asia (including countries such as Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam). Given the elapsed time of near 20 years, there has been sufficient time for research to be published. Therefore, the review focusses on published output only and does not discuss unpublished theses, conference proceedings nor working papers.

First, the Special Issue of AAAJ in 1999 generally adopted a critical lens and studied professionalization as projects of market closure and collective mobility. The corporatist framework of Puxty et al. (1987) provided a useful framing to analyze the influence of states, markets and communities on professionalization. Second, the Special Issue has helped to spur interest in understanding professionalization in the region. Post-1999, there are studies of countries not covered in the Special Issue. Third, the themes identified in the Special Issue continue to be relevant and are examined in post-1999 work: the active role of the state, the legacies of colonization, the activities of transnational accounting bodies; and to a lesser degree, the influence of transnational accounting firms. Finally, future research could usefully focus on: the distinctive and more expansive role of Asian state agencies; the conduct of deeper comparative research; the role of accounting firms in the region; and the impact of transnational agencies such as the International Federation of Accountants and the World Bank.

There are three limitations. First, the review of literature omits unpublished research such as PhD theses and working papers. Second, it focusses only on research published in English. As a result, some work may be excluded. Third, it assesses the contribution of a single issue (i.e. the 1999 AAAJ Special Issue) and does not discuss work that preceded 1999.

This paper is aimed at assessing the impact of the 1999 Special Issue but also presents a wide-ranging analytical review of published research on accounting professionalization in Asia since 1999. The paper identifies several areas for future research and proposes a modified model of state-market-community-profession relations. In particular, the paper emphasizes the large and distinctive roles of Asian state agencies and the activities of transnational actors (both those within the profession as well as those that are external).

This paper presents the results of a survey designed to determine what tax topics are important in the educational background of a trainee accountant entering the training environment in South Africa. These topics were then compared to the 2008 tax syllabus prescribed by SAICA and taught at accredited universities in respect of the 2009 Qualifying Examination. The results indicated that the 2008 syllabus is largely meeting the expectations of respondents both in and outside public practice, although there are a number of topics that the syllabus setters and educators should reconsider when next reviewing and updating the 2008 syllabus and as part of the considerations for the new competency framework.

Differential corporate reporting exists in one form or another in many countries and it is currently on the agenda of the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB’s). This article provides some background on this practice and, in particular, on the current position of the IASB and the accounting profession in South Africa with regard to differential corporate reporting. The article also reports on the results of a postal survey of South African Registered Accountants’ and Auditors’ views on the form that differential corporate reporting should take. It was found that there is some support for limited deviations from Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP), in agreement with DP 163 – Limited Purpose Financial Statements issued by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA).

The purpose of this study is to analyse historical events to argue the improbable prospect of radical accounting reform in corporate financial reporting (CFR) due to the absence of abstract accounting knowledge as part of accountancy professionalisation (AP).

A historical database of CFR and AP events in the UK is categorised and analysed to observe the evolution of accounting in CFR from the perspective of the sociology of professions relating to abstract knowledge in professionalisation.

CFR has always been a statutory function in the UK dependent on arbitrary accounting rules rather than expert measurements based on abstract accounting knowledge. Accounting rules have evolved as part of AP and currently form part of the statutory regulation of CFR. The accountancy profession has eschewed abstract accounting knowledge in a mutually beneficial and uncompetitive relationship with the law profession in CFR.

The study is limited to the history of CFR and AP in the UK and its findings are contrary to the sociology of professions regarding abstract knowledge, consistent with the accountancy profession’s 19th-century experience of court-related services, and indicative of normative accounting research’s redundancy.

Regarding CFR and AP in the UK, the accountancy profession is an expert subordinate branch of the law profession and has no incentive to alter the status quo of statutory accounting rule compliance prevailing over abstract accounting knowledge-based expertise in CFR.

The study questions the optimism of prior research of accounting in CFR that suggests the possibility of radical reform using abstract knowledge.