‘Lady Accounting’, an analogy using blood circulation to popularise an accounting view of the health of the firm

Abstract

This paper examines the attempt by Deuwez in 1933 to explain accounting concepts and ideas to non specialists through the analogy of the process of blood circulation within human beings. It comprises two main sections. The first section comprises two reviews: first, of accounting ideas of the period 1900–33 and developments therein; and, second, an examination of contemporary knowledge of blood circulation and the operation of key human organs in relation thereto. In the second part of the manuscript, the analogy is examined in more depth, with some limited attempt made to consider whether or not the blood circulation system is an apposite analogy.

Keywords:

• analogy
• popularisation
• accounting history
• 1900–33
• blood circulation

Notes

Details of the author, H. Deuwez, remain unknown. We will sometimes refer to the author ‘he’, designating not the gender but the professional category to which this person belongs.

For the period studied, the ‘prix de revient’ is the purchase price of general goods or material with some expenses added to it.

Petit Robert (a famous French dictionary) defines a handbook as follows: ‘an educational book which presents essential notions of a technique in a handy form’. In our collection, those books are characterised by a large section devoted to exercises and to applications unlike other kinds of books.

Bulletins of professional or academic reviews were not systematically examined.

In the Stevelinck collection, for the period studied, we have only identified four works of this type so far.

Two later works are included in this group, namely Hanon de Louvet (1939) and Delaporte (1925). In the case of the first, the reason is that there is only a later version of an earlier work available in the Stevelinck collection, and for the second, the earlier version on the rational method is being restored at the present time.

This is the exact translation of the terms used by French authors at the time.

The term ‘warehouse’ is used as a translation of the French term ‘magasin’ which can also mean shop.

However the handbooks make reference to a conformity with the programmes for the athenaeums (Belgium) and for the education of school teachers (France). Regarding France, Le nouveau dictionnaire de la pédagogie (1911) shows us, under the reference ‘accounting’, the programmes whose contents primarily refer to the organisation of the accounting entries.

We could note that this personification of the accounts is associated in the handbooks with a distinction between the firm and the owner which has been described as the theory of the double personality (Degos 2005).

According to Lemarchand, André was the first in to use this formulation: ‘Qui entrera ou recevra sera débiteur, et qui sortira ou baillera sera créditeur’.

The signs + and − are also used by certain authors in the person-account framework but not in the same way.

Faure (1927a) is a particular case because he presents the two approaches in the same handbook even though he is an ardent defender of the personification approach.

For more details about theses authors, (Degos 2005) and (Labardin and Nikitin 2009)

See note 2.

Throughout the period studied, the concepts of ‘provision’ and of ‘reserve’ (retained reserve) were not used or differentiated consistently in the manner in which they are distinguished in modern usage.

Lemarchand and Praquin (2005) point out that financial scandals continued after 1914 until halfway through 1930, when light accounting regulation intervened.

This explanatory model of bookkeeping (Grenier and Bonnebouche 1998) is not contemporary to the studied document, but it seems relevant to us for this analysis.

We could only consult only the 4th edition where this quotation no longer appears. Two of the eight chapters of this work are devoted to the symptoms of the social body corresponding to an analogy.