Accountants and the professional project

Derek Robert Matthews

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 2017, vol. 30, issue 2, 306-327

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to offer a critique of the sociological model of professionalisation known as the “professional project” put forward by Magali Larson, which has become the prevailing paradigm for accounting historians. Design/methodology/approach - The paper challenges the use of the concepts of monopoly, social closure, collective social mobility and the quest for status as applied to the history of accountancy. The arguments are made on both empirical and theoretical grounds. Findings - The use of the concept of monopoly is not justified in the case of accounting societies or firms. The only monopoly the accountants required was the exclusive right to the titles, for example, CA in Britain and CPA in the USA. They were right to argue that the credentials were merely to distinguish themselves in the market place from untrained accountants. The validity of the concept of social closure via artificial barriers to entry is questioned and new evidence is provided that the elite accountants have always recruited heavily from classes lower in the social hierarchy than themselves. The concept of the collective social mobility project is found wanting on a priori and empirical grounds; accountants behaved no differently to other business classes and have probably not enhanced their social status since the formation of their societies. Originality/value - The paper offers, in the case of accountancy, one of the few critiques of the accepted model of professionalisation. It demonstrates the weak explanatory power of the sociological paradigms used by accounting historians.

Keywords: Accounting history; Professionalization; Social status; Collective social mobility; Social closure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:aaajpp:aaaj-01-2015-1953

DOI: 10.1108/AAAJ-01-2015-1953

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal is currently edited by Prof James Guthrie and Prof Lee Parker

More articles in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().