Unification and Dual Closure in the Italian Accountancy Profession, 1861–1906

Abstract

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.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the reviewer and the Associate Editor for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The authors also appreciate the helpful suggestions made by participants at the Critical Perspectives on Accounting Conference, Toronto, 2014, and the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 2014.

Notes

¹In 1877 a committee to promote the congress was formed under the direction of the expert accountant Ilario Tarchiani, the founder and director of the journal L'Amministrazione Italiana. The congress was originally to be held in Naples in 1878 but organisational problems required a postponement to Rome the following year.

²It should be noted that although this and subsequent initiatives concerning admission to the profession did not specifically prohibit the entry of women, neither did they provide for their inclusion. In fact, it was not until 1914 (that is after the period covered by the current study) that a decision by the Court of Appeal legitimated the enrolment of women in the registers of colleges of accountants.

³Expert accountants monitored the occupational distribution of appointments and reported their findings in the professional journals through the period studied. For example, the Rivista di Ragioneria (Journal of Bookkeeping, November–December, p. 21) reported in 1901 that the list of bankruptcy receivers recently published by the Chamber of Commerce in Rome for the period 1902–1904 included 130 names of whom only 31 were accountants. Furthermore, many of those nominated to the Chamber by the College in Rome had been overlooked. The Chamber reserved a certain number of enrolments for specific occupational groups or ‘classes’, the majority of whom were not accountants. When the Chamber of Commerce came to compile the next list of bankruptcy receivers for the period 1905–1907, the Rome college argued that 40 positions should be reserved for accountants and made 50 nominations for these posts. The outcome was the appointment of 28 accountants to the list of whom only 10 were members of the college. This result was recognised as a dismal failure, made worse by the fact that the representation of lawyers on the list increased from 60 to 74 (Rivista di Ragioneria, 1904, November–December, pp. 188–189; 1905, January–February, p. 158). Neither did appointments advantage the accountants who did feature on the Chamber of Commerce list. For example, of the 47 bankruptcy receivers appointed in Rome in January–March 1902, 26 were lawyers, 11 were accountants, 5 were engineers and 5 were merchants (Rivista di Ragioneria, 1902, No. 4).

⁴It is worth noting that other professions organised as local colleges (such as engineers) also made more concerted attempts to achieve legal protection during the 1890s (see Minesso, 2002, pp. 199–202).

⁵Morpurgo was a member of the Chamber of Deputies and the parliamentary committee examining the bill. He was also an expert accountant and a former Mayor of Udine and the Vice President of its Chamber of Commerce.

⁶The intervention was by Luigi De Seta, a well-known Neapolitan engineer, who was later appointed Undersecretary of State for Public Works (http://storia.camera.it/deputato/luigi-de-seta-18570801#nav). He was the mouthpiece for engineers in Parliament (Cantagalli, 2006, p. 49).