Phillip E. Cobbin

A revisitation of the "audit expectations gap": judicial and practitioner views on the role of the auditor in late-Victorian England

This paper takes the contemporary audit expectations gap and seeks to establish its place in the commercial dynamics of late-Victorian England. The gap(s) in this paper relate to the views on audit-practice expectations as differentially articulated by the judiciary and audit practitioners. A paucity of codified guidelines on audit expectations either in statute or by the profession provided the ultimate imperative for consideration of expectations when the nascent profession was struggling to establish its place in the market. Through an extensive review of judicial decisions and the extant professional and academic literature, the paper demonstrates that a significant inconsistency of views existed on the bench and within the profession, causing a disjoint between the bench and the profession. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, it became clear to the profession that it needed to address the lack of guidance on expectations before judicial activism completed the task for them.

Controlling government expenditure by external review: The 1921—2 “Geddes Axe”

The Lloyd George-appointed Committee on National Expenditure (Geddes Committee), charged with reducing projected 1922—3 Supply Expenditure by £100m comprised outstanding businessmen who employed an extraordinary range of techniques and approaches, some of great antiquity (but nowadays thought to be “modern”), and others genuinely novel, to lay the groundwork for returning British public expenditure to a peace-time footing following a post-Armistice budgetary crisis. Drawing mostly on documents lodged at the UK National Archives, the methodologies and political, institutional and behavioural dynamics of Committee operations are analysed to show how it achieved arguably the most profound analysis of British public expenditure ever undertaken.

A Micro-Level Approach to Internationalising the Accounting Curriculum

This article documents groundwork for initiatives to enhance the international characteristics of the discipline of Accounting as taught within the University of Melbourne.A strong commitment to the notion of international curricula pervades much of the vision of the university, and strengthening the international dimension of the curriculum is identified as one of the means to achieve this end.Accounting is used as the practical context for the project, and the curriculum analysis suggests the discipline lends itself readily to internationalisation with respect to Management Accounting and Information Systems, but Financial Accounting and Audit & Assurance Services are not so straightforward.The study revisits the accounting curriculum at the micro level and challenges the reader to rethink the notion of an international curriculum by drawing on curriculum content and pedagogical processes with a view to producing a curriculum that has a greater international complexion.

The British navy’s 1888 budgetary reforms:

Reforms to the British navy’s estimates for 1888—9 radically changed the way that budgetary information was presented to parliament. Motivated by a desire to facilitate efficiency judgments about public expenditure, in the new-style estimates expenditure was classified according to object or purpose rather than on the basis of the traditional subjective categorizations. These reforms were instituted, in the face of strong Treasury opposition, almost as a fait accompli, by Mr Arthur Forwood (later Sir Arthur Forwood, Bt), Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Navy, supported by his senior minister, Lord George Hamilton, First Lord of the Admiralty, both of whom possessed unusually advanced ideas about public-sector efficiency and management. The article examines the background to and nature of the reforms and the unusual dynamics of the reform process, as well as attempting to ascertain their wider place in the history of governmental budgeting and accounting.

“THE BEST BRAINS OF THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTING WORLD”: THE RESTRICTED MEMBERSHIP OF THE ARMY ACCOUNTANCY ADVISORY PANEL, 1942–1945

The events threatening to engulf Australia as the Japanese imperial forceS continued their push through southeast Asia caused enormous concern for the Department of the Army as civilian and uniformed staff struggled to cope with large increases in manpower and expenditure responsibilities. The department moved, in January 1942, to create an expert panel of accountants to provide advice with a view to overcoming these problems. This paper focuses uniquely on a small group of individuals brought together for their expertise in accounting drawn exclusively from the practitioner ranks of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. The paper draws attention to the fact that, while several of those invited to serve had “inside” knowledge and experience during World War I (1914–1918), only those holding the designation of chartered accountant were invited to participate, seemingly ignoring the great potential available from the wider profession of the day.

Budgetary and financial discontinuities: Iraq 1920–32

At national level, arguably the most severe budgetary and financial discontinuities occur when states are created or recreated. The challenge then is to create viable financial systems which reduce the danger of state failure. Despite their importance, these processes are under-researched in the accounting and finance literatures. We examine these processes in relation to Iraq, the former Mesopotamia, which emerged as a fledgling state only after World War I, a process, occurring under British suzerainty, and complicated by existing and proposed financial obligations. Iraqs early history provides a case study of the role of financial management in state-creation.

A fine education but no “bluestocking”: Harriett Amies, pioneer female accounting professional

Harriett Amies (1907–2006) was the first female Bachelor of Commerce graduate of the University of Melbourne and the first female to qualify for membership of an accounting professional body in Victoria largely on the basis of tertiary qualifications. Her career encompassed teaching and accounting, as well as army service during World War II. In a last altruistic gesture, she donated her body to the Department of Anatomy at the University of Melbourne, coming full circle back to her alma mater. Her life and career spanned almost a century, one in which women went from almost no presence in the public arenas of universities and the professions, to almost equal representation in numbers of students and members. A narrative and interpretive approach to the life and career of Harriett Amies contributes to the literature on gender and accounting history, including the social construction of the accounting professional and women’s economic self-determination.

The profession of arms and the profession of accounting numbers – Accounting, the military and war: A review

Within the accounting history literature, there exists a small sub-realm that focuses on the nexus between accounting and war and accounting and the military. This article is a review of 55 articles published in the new millennium (2000–2017) ranging across a 420-year period, encompassing many wars and periods of peace, and involving multiple countries. Several accounting issues including procedures, costing, budgeting, disclosure, financing, efficiency gender and culpability emerge. The availability of existing accounting knowledge forms the basis of the review, with accounting shown to be adaptive and reactive to the needs of the military (and the state) in peacetime and wartime emergency. Specifically, in applying existing accounting knowledge, accounting contributes to the military or war. Where new accounting knowledge is developed, accounting is influenced either by the needs of the military or the dictates of war.