Anthony G. Puxty

Regulation of Accountancy and Accountants: A Comparative Analysis of Accounting for Research and Development in Four Advanced Capitalist Countries

Explores the development of regulations for “Accounting for Research and Development” in four countries: USA, UK, Federal Republic of Germany and Sweden. Seeks to illuminate the processes of accounting regulation in the specific institutional contexts of each advanced capitalist country, with reference to the particular mix of organizing principles of dispersed competition, hierarchical control and spontaneous solidarity.

Maintaining Self-Regulation: Making 'Interests' Coincide in Discourses on the Governance of the ICAEW

Explores contributions to the process of organizing the interests of professional labour through a study of the debate on the governance of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. The Tricker and Wersley Reports have illuminated the tensions and contradictions associated with the organization and regulation of labour. Shows specifically that, by striving to secure and maintain their powers and privileges, “professional” associations are caught on the horns of their dual responsibility as “self‐interested” sellers of labour and as guardians of “the public interest”.

ACCOUNTING CHOICE AND A THEORY OF CRISIS: THE CASES OF POST-PRIVATIZATION BRITISH TELECOM AND BRITISH GAS

In examining the accounting choices of two UK utilities, it is argued that positive accounting theory is devoid of explanatory power. In its place the paper proposes a neo-Marxist theory of crisis management, largely based on the work of Habermas. It analyses the financial statements of British Telecom and British Gas, and shows how their accounting choices may be more satisfactorily explained as responses to avoid crises that otherwise might be faced by these two entities in the general context of crisis tendencies in the UK socio-economic system.

Reading accounting writing

Accounting texts are generally taken as unproblematically linked to the intentions of their authors, whether they be the writers of articles and papers or the producers of financial statements themselves. This paper argues against the logocentric notion of an intentional unitary author and in doing so grants the reader the freedom to actively read a text. The post-structuralist insights of Roland Barthes are used to show the workings of logocentrism and how the text can be disrupted by the reader. The disruption is exemplified in the paper through the undertaking of a detailed deconstruction of a magazine article on an accounting subject.