Accounting change in central government : The adoption of double entry bookkeeping at the Portuguese Royal Treasury (1761)
- Authors: Gomes, Delfina , Carnegie, Garry , Rodrigues, Lucia Lima
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal Vol. 21, no. 8 (2008), p. 1144-1184
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to look at the adoption of double entry bookkeeping at the Royal Treasury, Portugal, on its establishment in 1761 and the factors contributing to this development. The Royal Treasury was the first central government organization in Portugal to adopt double entry bookkeeping and was a crucial first step in the institutionalisation of the technique in Portuguese public administration. Design/methodology/approach - Set firmly in the archive, this paper adopts new institutional sociology (NIS) to inform the findings of the local, time-specific accounting policy and practice at the Portuguese Royal Treasury. Findings - Embedded within the broader European context, this study identifies the key pressures exerted upon the Royal Treasury on its formation in 1761, which resulted in major accounting change within Portuguese central government from that date. The study provides further evidence of the importance of the state in the institutionalization of accounting practices by means of coercive pressures and highlights for Portugal the importance of individual actors who, as powerful change agents, made key decisions that influenced accounting change. Originality/value - This study examines a major instance of accounting change in European central government and broadens the application of NIS in accounting history research to a different country - Portugal - and to a different time - the eighteenth century. It also serves to illuminate the difficulties of collecting pertinent evidence pertaining to this long-dated time period in identifying certain forms of institutional pressures. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Household accounting in Australia : A microhistorical study
- Authors: Carnegie, Garry , Walker, Stephen
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal Vol. 20, no. 2 (2007), p. 210-236
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to extend the work of Carnegie and Walker and report the results of Part 2 of their study on household accounting in Australia during the period from the 1820s to the 1960s. Design/methodology/ approach - The study adopts a microhistorical approach involving a detailed examination of actual accounting practices in the Australian home based on 18 sets of surviving household records identified as exemplars and supplemented by other sources which permit their contextualisation and interpretation. Findings - The findings point to considerable variety in the accounting practices pursued by individuals and families. Household accounting in Australia was undertaken by both women and men of the middle and landed classes whose surviving household accounts were generally found to comprise one element of diverse and comprehensive personal record keeping systems. The findings indicate points of convergence and divergence in relation to the contemporary prescriptive literature and practice. Originality/value - The paper reflects on the implications of the findings for the notion of the household as a unit of consumption as opposed to production, gender differences in accounting practice and financial responsibility, the relationship between changes in the life course and the commencement and cessation of household accounting, and the relationship between domestic accounting practice and social class. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005180