Extending practice – Accountants’ constructions of the industrial relations arena in the USA
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 1 December 1999
Abstract
This paper examines the historical means by which accountancy, as a mature profession, has sought to expand its practice to new areas of business. Accountancy has long been eager to satisfy perceived client needs, and in so doing foster an ever widening scope for accounting expertise. However, as the profession faces the end of a boom in audit services, the question of how its markets can be self‐consciously expanded has re‐emerged. To understand the dynamics of professional expansion we examine the way in which accountants attempted to develop their practice in the US industrial relations arena shortly after the Second World War, amid the charged industrial relations climate of the time. By examining professional discourse, as evidenced in practitioner journals, we explore accountants’ constructions of potential roles for themselves in this new field. The means by which the profession has redefined itself previously may be instructive as an element in the development of fresh markets for its services.
Keywords
Citation
Fogarty, T.J. and Radcliffe, V.S. (1999), "Extending practice – Accountants’ constructions of the industrial relations arena in the USA", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 525-560. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513579910298462
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 1999, MCB UP Limited