First published in 1996. This book summarises the Seminar held in Edinburgh in 1994 in the five hundredth year since the publication of Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita. Its purpose is simple but relevant to every accountant. It revisits some fundamentals that lay behind Pacioli's decision to write his Summa, and examines whether the accounting framework in which we work today has overlooked basic issues because of its continued focus on development of the existing financial accounting model. It analyses Pacioli's legacy from several different perspectives, deliberately choosing to do so in ways that addressed considerations that his work reflected, examining the nature and characteristics of the bridge between academic analysis and insight on the one hand and practical application on the other. It also looks at the dominant influences in the evolution of accountancy for managing stewardship and for reporting of that stewardship. By doing so, it attempts to identify influences that had been less pressing and so had been ignored or overlooked, and also considers how changing technology has affected the way we manage the accountancy process.

The project, of which this book is the end product, has the full endorsement and backing of the Academy of Accounting Historians. Chapters on resources include the finding and utilization of archival materials (including ancient forms); the growing importance of the Internet in historical research and the Accounting Research Database as a vital, contemporary finding aid; the possibilities for joint venturing with accounting practitioners and their organizations; and the pivotal influence and immediacy of oral history.

This important book assembles formative articles that demonstrate how business history emerged as a discipline from the interwar years until the present day. The essays, drawn from authors in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, document the remarkable intellectual achievements of the field, as well as exploring the challenges it faced securing a wider impact on other disciplines. The editors provide a wide-ranging and original introduction. The book will appeal to both social scientists and historians interested to learn how the field of business history was shaped.