IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bracre/v53y2021i3s0890838921000019.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Australia's divided accounting profession: The 1969 merger attempt and its legacy

Author

Listed:
  • Sidhu, Jasvinder
  • Carnegie, Garry D.
  • West, Brian

Abstract

The Australian accounting environment is dominated by two competing brands – Chartered Accountant (CA) and Certified Practising Accountant (CPA) – which signal that the profession has been unable to achieve full unification. Focussed on 1969, this dual theory-informed, in-depth study examines the first of four unsuccessful attempts to merge the two professional accounting associations from which the two brands originate: The Australian Society of Accountants (the Society) and The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (the Institute). Primary data from public archives and oral history interviews, combined with secondary sources, are drawn upon to explain the failure of this proposed merger and to consider its legacy. The complementary theoretical perspectives of “boundary-work” and “institutional work” are applied. Amidst other challenges, corporate collapses during the 1960s precipitated a legitimacy crisis for the profession and raised the prospect of there being sufficient commonality of purpose to enable a merger. While there was overwhelming support from Society members, the merger proposal was defeated by a comprehensive “no” vote from Institute members. This pattern of voting was repeated in three subsequent merger attempts, leading to the persistence of the curious binary structure of the Australian accounting profession and associated ongoing differences and tensions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sidhu, Jasvinder & Carnegie, Garry D. & West, Brian, 2021. "Australia's divided accounting profession: The 1969 merger attempt and its legacy," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:53:y:2021:i:3:s0890838921000019
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2021.100975
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838921000019
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bar.2021.100975?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bertrand Malsch & Yves Gendron, 2013. "Re-Theorizing Change: Institutional Experimentation and the Struggle for Domination in the Field of Public Accounting," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(5), pages 870-899, July.
    2. anonymous, 1969. "Letters to the Editor," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 14-16, October.
    3. Walker, Stephen P. & Shackleton, Ken, 1995. "Corporatism and structural change in the British accountancy profession, 1930-1957," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 467-503, August.
    4. Miller, Peter & Hopper, Trevor & Laughlin, Richard, 1991. "The new accounting history: An introduction," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 16(5-6), pages 395-403.
    5. Thomas Lawrence & Roy Suddaby & Bernard Leca, 2009. "Introduction: theorizing and studying institutional work," Post-Print hal-00576557, HAL.
    6. Joni J. Young, 2014. "Separating the Political and Technical: Accounting Standard†Setting and Purification," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(3), pages 713-747, September.
    7. Carnegie, Garry D. & Edwards, John Richard, 2001. "The construction of the professional accountant: the case of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria (1886)," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 26(4-5), pages 301-325.
    8. Persson, Alma, 2010. "Soldiers and secretaries: Gendered boundary work in the Swedish Armed Forces," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 166-175, June.
    9. Garry D. Carnegie, 2009. "The Development Of Accounting Regulation, Education, And Literature In Australia, 1788–2005," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 49(3), pages 276-301, November.
    10. T. Lawrence & R. Suddaby & B. Leca, 2009. "Introduction : Theorizing and studying institutional work," Post-Print hal-00808954, HAL.
    11. Carnegie, Garry D. & McBride, Karen M. & Napier, Christopher J. & Parker, Lee D., 2020. "Accounting history and theorising about organisations," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    12. Walker, Stephen P., 1995. "The genesis of professional organization in scotland: a contextual analysis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 285-310, May.
    13. Annisette, Marcia, 2017. "Discourse of the professions: The making, normalizing and taming of Ontario's “foreign-trained accountant”," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 37-61.
    14. T. Lawrence & R. Suddaby & B. Leca, 2011. "Institutional work - Re-focusing institutional studies of organization," Post-Print hal-00802293, HAL.
    15. Alan J. Richardson & Eksa Kilfoyle, 2012. "Merging the Profession: A Historical Perspective on Accounting Association Mergers in Canada," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(2), pages 77-109, June.
    16. Carnegie, Garry D. & O’Connell, Brendan T., 2014. "A longitudinal study of the interplay of corporate collapse, accounting failure and governance change in Australia: Early 1890s to early 2000s," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 446-468.
    17. Chua, Wai Fong & Poullaos, Chris, 1993. "Rethinking the profession-state dynamic: The case of the Victorian charter attempt, 1885-1906," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 18(7-8), pages 691-728.
    18. anonymous, 1968. "Letters to the Editor," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(4), pages 132-136, December.
    19. Richardson, Alan J., 1989. "Corporatism and intraprofessional hegemony: A study of regulation and internal social order," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 14(5-6), pages 415-431, October.
    20. Gracia, Louise & Oats, Lynne, 2012. "Boundary work and tax regulation: A Bourdieusian view," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 304-321.
    21. Willmott, Hugh, 1986. "Organising the profession: A theoretical and historical examination of the development of the major accountancy bodies in the U.K," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 11(6), pages 555-580, October.
    22. Aburous, Dina, 2019. "IFRS and institutional work in the accounting domain," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1-15.
    23. Garry D. Carnegie & Christopher J. Napier, 2012. "Accounting's past, present and future: the unifying power of history," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(2), pages 328-369, February.
    24. Golyagina, Alena & Valuckas, Danielius, 2020. "Boundary-work in management accounting: The case of hybrid professionalism," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(2).
    25. Miranti, Paul J., 1986. "Associationalism, Statism, and Professional Regulation: Public Accountants and the Reform of the Financial Markets, 1896-1940," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(3), pages 438-468, October.
    26. Garry D. Carnegie & Brendan T. O'Connell, 2012. "Understanding the responses of professional accounting bodies to crises," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(5), pages 835-875, June.
    27. anonymous, 1969. "Letters to the Editor," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(10), pages 481-485, June.
    28. Caramanis, Constantinos V., 2005. "Rationalisation, charisma and accounting professionalisation: perspectives on the intra-professional conflict in Greece, 1993-2001," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 195-221, April.
    29. Suddaby, Roy & Gendron, Yves & Lam, Helen, 2009. "The organizational context of professionalism in accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(3-4), pages 409-427, April.
    30. Ken H. Guo, 2012. "Understanding Why and How Some Chartered Accountants Object to the Proposed Merger of the Three Accounting Professions in Canada," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(2), pages 111-130, June.
    31. anonymous, 1969. "Letter to the Editor," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(12), pages 592-593, August.
    32. Caramanis, Constantinos V., 2002. "The interplay between professional groups, the state and supranational agents: Pax Americana in the age of 'globalisation'," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 27(4-5), pages 379-408.
    33. Brendon Swedlow, 2007. "Using the boundaries of science to do boundary-work among scientists: Pollution and purity claims," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(9), pages 633-643, November.
    34. anonymous, 1969. "Letters to the Editor," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(6), pages 242-245, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stacchezzini, Riccardo & Masiero, Eleonora & Lai, Alessandro, 2023. "Histories as counter-accounting," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Annisette, Marcia, 2017. "Discourse of the professions: The making, normalizing and taming of Ontario's “foreign-trained accountant”," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 37-61.
    2. Cooper, David J. & Robson, Keith, 2006. "Accounting, professions and regulation: Locating the sites of professionalization," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 415-444.
    3. Yee, Helen, 2009. "The re-emergence of the public accounting profession in China: A hegemonic analysis," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 71-92.
    4. Napier, Christopher J., 2006. "Accounts of change: 30 years of historical accounting research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 445-507.
    5. Mihret, Dessalegn Getie & Mirshekary, Soheila & Yaftian, Ali, 2020. "Accounting professionalization, the state, and transnational capitalism: The case of Iran," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    6. Agrizzi, D. & Sian, S., 2015. "Artificial corporatism: A portal to power for accountants in Brazil," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 56-72.
    7. Mihret, Dessalegn Getie & Alshareef, Mohammed Naif & Bazhair, Ayman, 2017. "Accounting professionalization and the state: The case of Saudi Arabia," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 29-47.
    8. François Brouard & Merridee Bujaki & Sylvain Durocher & Leighann C. Neilson, 2017. "Professional Accountants’ Identity Formation: An Integrative Framework," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 225-238, May.
    9. Rodrigues, Lúcia Lima & Craig, Russell, 2022. "Using historical institutional analysis of corporatism to understand the professionalization of accounting in Latin America," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    10. Caramanis, Constantinos V., 2002. "The interplay between professional groups, the state and supranational agents: Pax Americana in the age of 'globalisation'," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 27(4-5), pages 379-408.
    11. Sian, S., 2006. "Inclusion, exclusion and control: The case of the Kenyan accounting professionalisation project," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 295-322, April.
    12. Ghattas, Peter & Soobaroyen, Teerooven & Marnet, Oliver, 2021. "Charting the development of the Egyptian accounting profession (1946–2016): An analysis of the State-Profession dynamics," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    13. Canning, Mary & O'Dwyer, Brendan, 2016. "Institutional work and regulatory change in the accounting profession," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-21.
    14. Aburous, Dina, 2019. "IFRS and institutional work in the accounting domain," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1-15.
    15. Kenneth J. Lenihan, 1977. "Telephones and Raising Bail," Evaluation Review, , vol. 1(4), pages 569-586, November.
    16. Guo, Ken H., 2018. "The odyssey of becoming: Professional identity and insecurity in the Canadian accounting field," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 20-45.
    17. Antonelli, Valerio & D'Alessio, Raffaele & Lauri, Lucia & Marcello, Raffaele, 2024. "Professional bodies and professional closure strategies: The field of auditing for small and medium-sized enterprises in Italy☆," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    18. Walker, Stephen P. & Shackleton, Ken, 1995. "Corporatism and structural change in the British accountancy profession, 1930-1957," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 467-503, August.
    19. Henk E. Meier & Marcel Reinold, 2018. "Immunizing Inefficient Field Frames for Mitigating Social Problems: The Institutional Work Behind the Technocratic Antidoping System," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(2), pages 21582440187, June.
    20. Caramanis, Constantinos V., 2005. "Rationalisation, charisma and accounting professionalisation: perspectives on the intra-professional conflict in Greece, 1993-2001," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 195-221, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:53:y:2021:i:3:s0890838921000019. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-british-accounting-review .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.