IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/acctbr/v29y1998i1p43-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Perceptions of the Royal Mail case in the Netherlands

Author

Listed:
  • Kees Camfferman

Abstract

The 1931 Royal Mail case, as a landmark event in the history of British accountancy, did not go unnoticed in the Netherlands. Awareness of the case is reflected by a fairly wide scattering of references in contemporary Dutch documentary sources, notably in the literature of the auditing profession. Because of this, the case provides a convenient opening for studying the comparative development of accounting and auditing in Britain and the Netherlands. This paper documents Dutch references to the Royal Mail case from the 1930s to the early 1950s and it presents an interpretation of the pattern and nature of these references. The materials brought together in this paper show that in interpreting the Royal Mail case, Dutch auditors paid more attention to general issues of auditor responsibility than to the issue of secret reserve accounting with which the case is traditionally associated. The case provided support for those who argued with Limperg that the Dutch profession was ahead of Britain in its views on auditor responsibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Kees Camfferman, 1998. "Perceptions of the Royal Mail case in the Netherlands," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 43-55.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:acctbr:v:29:y:1998:i:1:p:43-55
    DOI: 10.1080/00014788.1998.9729565
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00014788.1998.9729565
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00014788.1998.9729565?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. Christopher Napier, 1996. "Accounting and the absence of a business economics tradition in the United Kingdom," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(3), pages 449-481.
    2. Napier, C.J., 1996. "Accounting and the Absence of the Business Economics Tradition in United Kingdom," Papers 96-134, University of Southampton - Department of Accounting and Management Science.
    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. Edgley, Carla, 2014. "A genealogy of accounting materiality," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 255-271.
    2. Malcolm Anderson, 1999. "Accounting History Publications 1998," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 375-384.
    3. Stephen Zeff & Willem Buijink & Kees Camfferman, 1999. "'True and fair' in the Netherlands: inzicht or getrouw beeld ?," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 523-548.
    4. Camfferman, Kees, 1998. "Influence of German Betriebswirtschaftslehre on Dutch Bedrijfseconomie with particular reference to accounting," Serie Research Memoranda 0035, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.

    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. Carmona, Salvador, 1998. "Vogues in management accounting research," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB 6545, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    2. Richard Macve, 2002. "Insights to be gained from the study of ancient accounting history: some reflections on the new edition of Finley's The Ancient Economy," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 453-472.
    3. Malcolm Anderson, 1998. "Accounting History Publications, 1995/6," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 105-124.
    4. Zeff, Stephen A., 1997. "The early years of the Association of University Teachers of Accounting: 1947–1959," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 3-39.
    5. 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.
    6. Alnoor Bhimani, 2002. "European management accounting research: traditions in the making," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 99-117.
    7. Martin E. Persson & Stephan Fafatas, 2018. "Accounting measurements, profit, and loss: a science fiction play in one act by Harold C. Edey," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1-2), pages 31-60, May.
    8. Lamb, Margaret, 2001. "'Horrid appealing': accounting for taxable profits in mid-nineteenth century England," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 271-298, April.
    9. Richard K. Fleischman & Trevor Boyns & Thomas N. Tyson, 2008. "The Search for Standard Costing in the United States and Britain," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 44(4), pages 341-376, December.
    10. Camfferman, Kees, 1998. "Perceptions of the Royal Mail Case in the Netherlands," Serie Research Memoranda 0036, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:acctbr:v:29:y:1998:i:1:p:43-55. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RABR20 .

    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.