The aim of this paper is to clarify and discuss the various ways firms can make workforce reductions. This aim is accomplished by an in-depth study of an historical case; the downsizing process undertaken in the 1920s by the Swedish Tobacco Monopoly, a state-owned company that had to balance...

This paper examines the critical role the 'accounting language' plays in organisational change. Whilst researchers have studied 'business planning' as a pedagogic device aimed at controlling spending and at introducing accountability, the explicit role played by 'accounting language' in the...

The harmonization of the economic -financial report at an international level is, today, in the context of the globalization and integration of the world’s financial markets, an important demand and an urgent desideratum. In fact, it is needed a necessary prerogative for the comparability of...

The evolution of accounting as social practice is linked to human evolution as an economic entity. The accounting as a system as it is today, is the result of a long historical process, during which it was transformed from a simple registration technique of trade into a means of control and...

This article induces the pragmatic structure of what financial reporting can be ? it does not deduce what financial reporting should be. Empirical studies can show that opportunism is not a feature generally of financial accounting in practice, but challenges exist in the post-Enron era. One...

Using legitimacy theory this paper contrasts the values portrayed by public accounting firms via their recruitment practices and society's expectations of the responsibilities of a professional accountant. Society confers on organisations legitimacy when the value system of the organisation is...