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Italy
... Despite Italy's undisputed place in the history of accounting technologies and accounting thought, and its reputation as the site of the earliest known organisations of accountants, the development of its accountancy profession has been largely neglected in the international literature. Summaries of that history may be discovered in guidebooks and works on international accounting (Zambon, 2001), and in general histories of the major professions in Europe ( Malatesta, 2011). But theoretically informed, archival-based studies are more difficult to find. ...
Drawing on Parkin's [Marxism and class theory: A bourgeois critique. London: Tavistock Publications] concept of dual closure, this paper examines the attempt to secure the regulation of the accountancy profession in post-unification Italy. The state's establishment of a class of ‘expert accountants’ in 1865 represented an imperfect closure of the profession. In consequence, a chain of closure attempts ensued. These ventures involved shifting constructions of dominant and subordinate occupational groups and the deployment of diverse strategies to achieve usurpationary and exclusionary forms of closure. The study reveals that the achievement of state regulation of the profession in 1906 reflected the successful pursuit of usurpationary closure by a subordinated group within the accountancy field. However, it also points to the failure of the profession's efforts to make incursions into the jurisdictions of higher status occupations, especially lawyers, who wielded considerable sociopolitical power in newly unified Italy. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, the paper confirms the complexity and uncertain outcomes of closure projects in the accountancy profession.
This is the first and only book to offer a comprehensive survey of accounting research on a broad international scale for the last two centuries. Its main emphasis is on accounting research in the English, German, Italian, French and Spanish language areas; it also contains chapters dealing with research in Finland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland and the Ukraine as well as Argentina and Japan. In a time of financial globalization, familiarity with accounting research in countries beyond the English language boundary is no less important than familiarity with the recent, comprehensive research activity in the English language area. It also offers a survey of the present state of the art (from empirical to analytical accounting and from such esoteric subjects as gender issues to the archaeology of accounting); finally, it casts a glance into the future.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential impact of IFRS on SMEs' annual reporting, considering in particular: 1) the evaluation of their financial performance; 2) their creditworthiness and rating, according to Basel II. In the literature, little attention has been paid to the specific influence of IFRS on firm rating. The empirical evidence reported in this paper demonstrates the potentially important effect on the previous two issues. Accordingly, this research raises some strategic issues for individual firms and banks, as well as for the entire economic system. In fact, the current worldwide economic crisis highlights the perils of alternative sets of standards characterised by a different extent of conservatism. The paper describes the results of a multiple-case study, involving 11 firms and an Italian bank. The empirical evidence highlights the differences in these firms' ratings, implementing alternatively the Italian or the IFRS model.
The Italian contribution to the European tradition of business economics, economia aziendale, emerged from accounting theory in the early twentieth century. This approach studies the economic unit in the widest sense, the azienda, and attempts to analyse this as a natural entity irrespective of whether it is business or non-business, large or small, industrial or financial, one-man or collectively owned. Economia aziendale is a unified and autonomous science, although it contains significant sectors such as accounting, operations, management and organization. Although the theoretical approach of economia aziendale has had a major influence on both internal accounting and external reporting in Italy, it has come under challenge as being too oriented towards accounting and too much a reflection of Italian ideas. Moreover, the view of the azienda as a unity through space and time is difficult to reconcile with the need for periodic financial reporting to external users. As a reflection of international tendencies in both ideas and practices, economia aziendale faces deep crisis. Despite the threat of international 'homogenization' in accounting and management, economia aziendale retains the potential to bring together multiple disciplines in a unitary study of the economic unit.
This paper sets out the rules and practices in a number of countries with respect to different types of goodwill. the accounting and tax rules for goodwill are different in many cases. The need for the paper derives from the confusion in some previous research which has led to misspecified hypotheses and incorrect conclusions.
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