Accounting [in] history in the COVID-19 era

Abstract

I teach an undergraduate course in the emergence of capitalism in which students have a short project ‘think like an historian’. It is their chance to visit, virtually or in person, a museum exhibit or collection of their choice and present it in a creative way: the what, how, where, who and why. It is a refreshing and pleasant surprise to see what students choose to do, how they present their research, and where they find their sources – as the search is an essential part of the assignment process. This year, one trio asked if it would be acceptable to examine ‘history in the making’, specifically the fact that all around the globe, we have spent the last two years focused on COVID-19. To do so, they took us to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and its exhibit, ‘Unmasking the Pandemic: From Personal Protection to Personal Expression’ that investigates how face masks have become not only a necessity and legal requirement for many of us, but also ‘stories of resilience, cultural identity, and collective humanity in the face of a global crisis’. The history of this pandemic remains to be written, yet we have had no end of virtual meetings, special issues, and rapid-fire research (and funding) related to it. I expect that over the longer term, we shall see studies that, like the ROM exhibit, are more reflective in nature and make effective use of the historian’s tool-kit. On a practical front, COVID-19 has not affected us equally – whether it be the need to care for family members, teach our children at home, and do our ‘day job’ remotely. For some of us, it resulted in a time of greater research productivity – all this time at home and away from campus has proven a welcome opportunity to focus on projects. For many of us, however, the pandemic has been quite the reverse, especially with family obligations and the increased workload to shift our teaching – back and forth – from an online to in-person environment. With archives closed, we have had to shelve projects – in some cases permanently. Accounting History Review (AHR) has not escaped these impacts. We have seen authors opt to abandon a project, reviewers who are too busy to take on yet another assignment or who respond very late, and re-submissions postponed until the possibility to undertake data collection returns, amongst other effects. We were forced to cancel our 2020 conference and shifted our 2021 gathering to a virtual event. AHR has not been the only academic journal to encounter such challenges. Thus, this issue represents our first step in what we hope will be a return to normal. We have three research studies that relate to auditing (or lack thereof), weaknesses in financial oversight, and the auditing profession. In ‘The problematical nature of auditor independence: a historical perspective’, John Richard Edwards and Brian West offer a historical perspective for reviewing contemporary concerns with the audit function. Their examination of the continuous audit suggests that the failings in audit independence are longstanding. In a similar vein, Graeme Dean’s study, ‘Corporate capers, group accounting reforms’, investigates how ‘takeovers, disputes, frauds, and failures’ can provide historical lessons of the weaknesses in standards-based accounting and standard setting. Diane Roberts shifts our attention to the accounting profession. Her study, ‘Gender Stereotyping in Public Accounting: Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins’, explores the gendered construction of the accounting profession and how the legal process of Ann B. Hopkins led to enhanced opportunities for women in