Knowledge, motivation and accounting form: an historical exploration

Abstract

Understanding how individuals make decisions about and with accounting information and how they react to different aspects and forms of accounting has been of much interest to cognitive accounting researchers. However, the origins of cognitive characteristics and the manner in which they shape accounting form has not received much attention. This essay attempts to explore the underlying basis of two cognitive characteristics (knowledge and motivation) and their roles in conditioning accounting form within an historical context. Primary information on two nineteenth-century French mining and metallurgical enterprises provides the vehicle for the study. The knowledge base of company directors is argued to have been influenced by their educational training at the Ecole Polytechnique. Moreover, the paper argues that both directors' predilection to quantitative reasoning and their sharp sensitivity to the prospect of economic gains were associated with the sophisticated and extensive appeal which they made to financial analysis and accounting-based argumentation. The essay concludes with remarks on the potential which historical questioning of the type undertaken here offers for widening the agenda of research in accounting concerned with cognition.