The Routledge Companion to Accounting History shows how the seemingly innocuous practice of accounting has pervaded human existence in fascinating ways at numerous times and places; from ancient civilisations to the modern day, and from the personal to the political. Placing the history of accounting in context with other fields of study, the collection gives invaluable insights to subjects such as the rise of capitalism, the control of labour, gender and family relationships, racial exploitation, the functioning of the state, and the pursuit of military conflict. An engaging and comprehensive overview also examining geographical differences, this Companion is split into key sections, which explore: changing technologies used to represent financial and other data historical development of accounting theory and practice accounting institutions and those who perform accounting accountancy and the economy accounting, society, and culture the role of accounting in the government, protection and financing of states including chapters on the important role played by accountancy in religious organizations, a review of how the discipline is portrayed in fine art and popular culture, and analysis of sharp practice and corporate scandals. The Routledge Companion to Accounting History has a breadth of coverage that is unmatched in this growing area of study. Bringing together leading writers in the field, this is an essential reference work for any student of accounting, business and management, and history.

A Five Books Best Economics Book of the Year A Politico Great Weekend Read “Absolutely compelling.” —Diane Coyle “The evolution of modern management is usually associated with good old-fashioned intelligence and ingenuity...But capitalism is not just about the free market; it was also built on the backs of slaves.” —Forbes The story of modern management generally looks to the factories of England and New England for its genesis. But after scouring through old accounting books, Caitlin Rosenthal discovered that Southern planter-capitalists practiced an early form of scientific management. They took meticulous notes, carefully recording daily profits and productivity, and subjected their slaves to experiments and incentive strategies comprised of rewards and brutal punishment. Challenging the traditional depiction of slavery as a barrier to innovation, Accounting for Slavery shows how elite planters turned their power over enslaved people into a productivity advantage. The result is a groundbreaking investigation of business practices in Southern and West Indian plantations and an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery’s relationship with capitalism. “Slavery in the United States was a business. A morally reprehensible—and very profitable business...Rosenthal argues that slaveholders...were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. Techniques that are still used by businesses today.” —Marketplace “Rosenthal pored over hundreds of account books from U.S. and West Indian plantations...She found that their owners employed advanced accounting and management tools, including depreciation and standardized efficiency metrics.” —Harvard Business Review

The recent financial crisis has sparked debates surrounding the nature and role of accounting in informing capital markets and regulatory bodies about the financial performance and position of a firm. These debates have drawn attention to the broader implications of accounting for the economy and society. Accounting and Business Economics brings together leading international scholars to examine the current state of accounting theory and its fundamental connection with the economics and finance of firms, viewing the business entity from not only accounting, but also national, economic, social, political, juridical, anthropological, and moral points of view.

The Routledge Companion to Accounting History presents a single-volume synthesis of research in this expanding field, exploring and analysing accounting from ancient civilisations to the modern day. No longer perceived as the narrow study of how a mysterious technique was used in past, the scope of accounting history has widened substantially. This revised and updated volume moves beyond the history of accounting technologies, accounting theories and practices and the accountants who applied them. Expert contributors from around the world explore the interfaces between accounting and the economy, society, culture and the polity. Accounting history is shown to offer important insights into such disparate phenomena as the evolution of capitalism, control of labour, gender and family relationships, racial exploitation, the operation of religious organisations, and the functioning of the state. Illuminating the foundation and development of accounting systems, this updated, classic book opens the field to a new generation of accounting scholars and historians around the world.

Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative--not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project--not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make.

The world certainly suffers no shortage of accounting texts. The many out there help readers prepare, audit, interpret and explain corporate financial statements. What has been missing is a book offering context and discussion for divisive issues such as taxes, debt, options, and earnings volatility. King addresses the why of accounting instead of the how, providing practitioners and students with a highly readable history of U.S. corporate accounting. More Than a Numbers Game: A Brief History of Accounting was inspired by Arthur Levitt's landmark 1998 speech delivered at New York University. The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman described the too-little challenged custom of earnings management and presaged the breakdown in the US corporate accounting three years later. Somehow, over a one-hundred year period, accounting morphed from a tool used by American railroad managers to communicate with absent British investors into an enabler of corporate fraud. How this happened makes for a good business story. This book is not another description of accounting scandals. Instead it offers a history of ideas. Each chapter covers a controversial topic that emerged over the past century. Historical background and discussion of people involved give relevance to concepts discussed. The author shows how economics, finance, law and business customs contributed to accounting's development. Ideas presented come from a career spent working with accounting information.