Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Editorial

Epistemology is essential for probing the fundamental issues of the management sciences, included the ‘economic control process’. The paper aims to highlight the connections between economia aziendale, the typical Italian research program, as well as the traditional research programs of Continental European Countries, with a theoretical reconstruction founded also on modern epistemological issues. One fundamental question, for instance, is about the ‘true’ information or knowledge conveyed by a financial statement, taking into account that economia aziendale, the general system, was conceived as consisting of interrelated sub-systems of management, organization and data gathering for planning and control. The ‘economic control’, both antecedent, concomitant and subsequent, refers to the azienda, the economic entity, that is to every kind of economic unit, not only to the business enterprise.The ‘economic control’ is concerned with social responsibility, ethical conduct, as well as with ‘evidence’, ‘proof’, opinions and judgments. The credibility of a hypothesis depends on the associated evidence, so it is not independent from the strength of the entire argument, ‘evidence plus hypothesis’. The ‘degree of confidence’ implies probability, specifically the bayesian approach for modifying early prior valuations in the light of further information, obtaining revised posterior probabilities. The essential requirement of a proof is that it is ‘psychologically satisfying’; the problem of the controller’s independence stresses the controlling ethical standards. The code of ethics and rules of conduct should serve to identify responsibilities and aims involved – greater accountability through better information about ends and means – and to underline the need for a theoretical foundation about ethics of accounting and economic controlling. Of particular interest is the dichotomy ‘subjective-objective’ related also to economic reality, every kind of reality, included physical as well as cultural ones. This brings directly in the field of accounting and ‘entity economics’ metaphors. The economic controlling process is tightly connected to interpersonal analogy and to the ‘social agreement approach’ to ‘objectivity’ and scientific methodology. There is often no possible control through ‘correspondence’ with definite aspects of reality, economic-financial events themselves. System theorists employ many concepts that correspond to ‘independent reality’ only through ‘indicator hypotheses’ such as ‘business income’ magnitude, the best proxy of the economic efficiency of the ‘business entity’.

Accounting records support the economic information and control system of the organizations.Accounting reports are compilations of financial information that are derived from them. Financial reports are useful to provide information to determine and evaluate the management carried out by the steward with the resources entrusted to him and serve as a base for making business decisions. Despite charge and discharge has had multiple functions related with control and accountability, usually it has been considered more inefficient than the double entry bookkeeping. Some authors claim charge and discharge does not constitute any accounting system because it is not the result of a prior interrelation between all elements of a business transaction. That is why it is less valid than double entry bookkeeping to provide usefulinformation to make a business decision.This work seek to answer two questions: the first one, within an historical framework, could the charge and discharge be useful for helping the principal to make a decision about the management of their properties? The second one is, is the charge and discharge a financial report? To answer them we analyses the qualitative characteristics of accounting information, which Diego del Castillo in 1522, describe in Tratado de Cuentas.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and explain, from a scientific and pedagogical point of view, the subject of double–entry bookkeeping, namely its properties, characteristics and advantages. The article also explores single–entry bookkeeping, to contrast it with double–entry bookkeeping, and provides a state–of–the–art view of the knowledge about Luca Pacioli, the first author to print a book about double–entry bookkeeping, in 1494. Using a qualitative and interpretive approach, the research relies heavily on secondary sources, although some primary sources of archival have been used. The study expands accounting knowledge by means of an unprecedented systematization of the institutions that contributed to the institutionalization of double–entry bookkeeping in Portugal during the eighteenth century. The exposition presents a theoretical–practical implication for accounting education and for society: using accounting history, it provides a valid study tool to increase the initial motivation of accounting students at the beginning of their business studies in Portugal.

This paper aims to extend the knowledge about how ad hoc accounting and accountability practices arose and were used in the past to face a situation of crisis in the context of local government. With this purpose, it addresses a health public problem in a specific context, the yellow fever epidemic in Cadiz in 1800. The specific characteristics of the setting, where acquaintance with accounting was usual, allow setting the following specific objectives: (1) to explain the genesis of the accountability systems and the accounting itself used for local government management of the epidemic and (2) to explore the versatility and plasticity that accounting background provides to the records produced in this context. To accomplish them, primary sources as well as publications of the time have been considered. The evidence obtained shows that both an accountability system and a basic bookkeeping system influenced by the local accounting and medical background arose in the local context. Moreover, the findings suggest that the generalized accounting background promoted the self-serving use and interpretation of the records by local government, local Church, trade association and medical profession. The value that local society attributed to accounting books was important in this sense.

The journal-ledger (Journal-Grand-Livre) was a new and ingenious accounting device invented by Edmond Degrange at the beginning of the 19th century. It deployed a journal plus a ledger blended into one register which is deemed to have contributed to the modernization of the accounting bookkeeping. Indeed, the journal-ledger set forth the “synthetic” double-entry bookkeeping and “synoptic” accounts which finally supplanted the “analytical” double-entry method. Such a device is worth noting insofar as it was diffused throughout scholars and experts and many accounting applications would stem from its logic henceforth. Indeed, further accounting devices would employ less registers in order to synthesize the accounts involved, thus retracing the functioning of Degrange’s journal-ledger. The main example of such a fashion in that period is the Logismography by Giuseppe Cerboni, which had been in use for 15 years as the Italian State accounting methodology. This work aims at singling out accounting applications of the journal-ledger, thus focusing on any “derived” features they posit and by comparing the existing similarities/differences between such accounting devices. The work contributes in retrieving the role played by Edmond Degrange in the Italian arena, as he has been neglected from accounting historians so far. Moreover it provides a frame of reference of the Italian accounting technique at the beginning of the 20th century. The paper builds upon the examination of accounting works which either had been released in Italy after the invention of the journal-ledger (that is from 1804 to the end of the 19th century) or posited the very technique of such a French device in order to perform comparative analyses. The work opens the door to international comparative analyses.

Previous surveys based on historical documents on the price of slaves from Africa have contributedgreatly to accounting literature. However, most of these studies usually focus on the sale price of slaves in the colonies or on slave purchase prices in Africa. Therefore, no work has been observed in the literature relating to the effective or estimated unit cost of slaves, taking into account the total cost of all phases of the slave trade. This study aims to bring to the literature of accounting history an approach on the estimated unit cost of slaves basedon estimated total cost of all costing phases of captive transportation from Angola to Pernambuco. This approach was found in a historical document dated November 12, 1758, written by the governor of the captaincy of Pernambuco - Luis Diogo Lobo da Silva. This document was written in fulfillment of the orders of the king of Portugal, D. José I, in order to prepare a list of ships capable of transporting slaves from Africa and the details ofnecessary provisions for the slaves, who would be sent from Angola to Pernambuco. Luis Diogo Lobo da Silva was governor of the captaincy of Pernambuco from 1756 to 1763, and he was recognized for his qualities as a good colonial administrator and for adopting good management practices in his work.