Using accounting as a political weapon. The University of Ferrara and Italian Fascism

Titolo Rivista CONTABILITÀ E CULTURA AZIENDALE
Autori/Curatori Luca Papi, Michele Bigoni, Giorgia Gobbo, Enrico Deidda Gagliardo
Anno di pubblicazione 2020 Fascicolo 2020/1
Lingua Inglese Numero pagine 25 P. 7-31 Dimensione file 113 KB
DOI 10.3280/CCA2020-001002
Il DOI è il codice a barre della proprietà intellettuale: per saperne di più clicca qui

Qui sotto puoi vedere in anteprima la prima pagina di questo articolo.

Se questo articolo ti interessa, lo puoi acquistare (e scaricare in formato pdf) seguendo le facili indicazioni per acquistare il download credit. Acquista Download Credits per scaricare questo Articolo in formato PDF

Anteprima articolo

FrancoAngeli è membro della Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA)associazione indipendente e non profit per facilitare (attraverso i servizi tecnologici implementati da CrossRef.org) l’accesso degli studiosi ai contenuti digitali nelle pubblicazioni professionali e scientifiche

Introduction: The paper considers the case of the University of Ferrara during the Fascist regime (1922-1943) and investigates the use of accounting practices in the government's attempt to achieve control of the organisation. Aim of the work: The study seeks to document how accounting practices can be enlisted to subjugate institutions that had traditionally enjoyed significant inde-pendence from governments and pursue the ideological programmes of dominant elites. Methodological approach: The paper is based upon primary sources gathered from the historical archive of the University of Ferrara. Their interpretation has been guided by the literature that has explored the connections between ac-counting and the State. Main findings: Accounting ensured that key information on the University could be gathered by the government. It also helped to make visible the need of the University to rely on government funding when Fascist policies had the effect of "starving" the organisation of funds, which caused the University to accept pene-trating controls by the State. Originality: The paper has broadened the compass of research into the interrela-tion between accounting and State power by considering an under-research context and documenting the role of accounting in controlling institutions that were essential to the achievement of political goals.

Keywords:Power, Italian Fascism, totalitarian regimes, accounting, funding, university.

  1. Carnegie G.D., Napier C.J. (2002). Exploring comparative international accounting history. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 15(5): 689-718. DOI: 10.1108/09513570210448966.
  2. Cinquini L. (2007). Corporative economy and accounting in Italy during the thirties: exploring the relations between a totalitarian ideology and business studies. Accounting, Business and Financial History, 17: 209-240. DOI: 10.1080/09585200701376550
  3. Cinquini L., Giannetti R., Tenucci A. (2016). The making of uniform costing in a war economy: the case of the Uniconti Commission in Fascist Italy. Accounting History, 21: 445-471. DOI: 10.1177/1032373216652414
  4. Covaleski M.A., Dirsmith M.W. (1988). The use of budgetary symbols in the political arena: an historically informed field study. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 13: 1-24. DOI: 10.1016/0361-3682(88)90023-2
  5. De Grand A. (1994). Italian Fascism: its origins and development. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
  6. Funnell W. (1998). Accounting in the service of the holocaust. Critical perspectives on accounting, 8: 435-464.
  7. Gentile G. (1928). The philosophic basis of Fascism. Foreign Affairs, 6: 290-304. DOI: 10.2307/20028606
  8. Gentile G. (2004). Discorsi Parlamentari. Bologna: il Mulino.
  9. Gomes D., Carnegie G.D., Rodrigues L.L. (2014), Accounting as a technology of government in the Portuguese empire: the development, application and enforcement of accounting rules during the Pombaline era (1761-1777). European Accounting Review, 23: 87-115.
  10. Gregor A.J. (2001). Giovanni Gentile: philosopher of Fascism. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
  11. Hopwood A. (1987). The archaeology of accounting systems. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 12: 207-234. DOI: 10.1016/0361-3682(87)90038-9
  12. Hopwood A. (1990). Accounting and organisation change. Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal, 3: 7-17. DOI: 10.1108/09513579010145073
  13. Hopwood A. (1992). Accounting calculation and the shifting sphere of the economic. European Accounting Review, 1: 123-143.
  14. Jones M.J. (2010). Sources of power and infrastructural conditions in medieval governmental accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 35: 81-94.
  15. Leardini C., Rossi G. (2013). Accounting and power in religious institutions: Verona’s Santa Maria della Scala monastery in the Middle Ages. Accounting History, 18: 415-427. DOI: 10.1177/1032373213487336
  16. Littleton A.C. (1966). Accounting evolution to 1900. New York: Russel & Russel.
  17. Lippman E.J., Wilson P.A. (2007). The culpability of accounting in perpetuating the Holocaust. Accounting History, 12: 283-303.
  18. Lyttleton A. (1973). The seizure of power: Fascism in Italy 1919-1929. Bath: The Pitman Press.
  19. Maran L., Vagnoni E. (2011). Physiognomy of a Corte organization: how power shaped management and accounting at the Estense Corte in Ferrara, Italy, from 1385 to 1471. Accounting History, 16: 55-85.
  20. Maran L., Bracci E., Funnell W. (2015). Accounting and the management of power: Napoleon’s occupation of the commune of Ferrara (1796-1799). Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 34: 60-78.
  21. Miller P. (1986). Accounting for progress. National accounting and planning in France: a review essay. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 11: 83-104. DOI: 10.1016/0361-3682(86)90020-6
  22. Miller P. (1990). On the interrelations between accounting and the state. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 15: 315-338.
  23. Miller P. (1994). Accounting as social and institutional practice: an introduction. In: Hopwood A.G., Miller P. (eds.). Accounting as social and institutional practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  24. Miller P. (2001). Governing by numbers: why calculative practices matter. Social Research, 68: 379-396.
  25. Miller P., O’Leary T. (1987). Accounting and the construction of the governable person. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 12: 235-265.
  26. Morgan P. (1995). Italian Fascism, 1919-1945. Houndmills: Macmillan.
  27. Mussolini B. (1955). Le linee programmatiche del partito Fascista. In: Susmel E., Susmel D. (eds.). Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, Volume 17. Firenze: La Fenice.
  28. Mussolini B. (1957). Nel quarto anniversario della Marcia su Roma (28 Ottobre 1926). In: Susmel E., Susmel D. (eds.). Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, Volume 22. Firenze: La Fenice.
  29. Mussolini B., Gentile G. (1961). Dottrina del Fascismo. In: Susmel E., Susmel D. (eds.). Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, Volume 34. Firenze: La Fenice.
  30. Napier C.J. (2006). Accounts of change: 30 years of historical accounting research. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31: 445-507.
  31. Neu D. (2000). “Presents” for the “Indians”: land, colonialism and accounting in Canada. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 25: 163-184.
  32. Neu D. (2006). Accounting for public space. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31: 391-414.
  33. Panciera E. (1939). Riflessi corporativi nell’economia aziendale. Palermo: Palombo.
  34. Partito Nazionale Fascista (1936). La cultura Fascista. Testi per i corsi di preparazione politica. Roma: La Libreria dello Stato.
  35. Pepe L. (2003). Copernico e lo studio di Ferrara. Bologna: Clueb.
  36. Quattrone P. (2004). Accounting for God: accounting and accountability practices in the Society of Jesus (Italy, XVI-XVII centuries). Accounting, Organizations and Society, 29: 647-683.
  37. Riccaboni A., Giovannoni E., Giorgi A., Moscardelli S. (2006). Accounting and power: evidence from the fourteenth century. Accounting History, 11: 41-62. DOI: 10.1177/1032373206060082
  38. Robson K. (1994). Inflation accounting and action at a distance: the Sandilands episode. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 19: 45-82.
  39. Romano S. (1984). Giovanni Gentile. La filosofia al potere. Milano: Bompiani.
  40. Rose N., Miller P. (1992). Political power beyond the State: problematic of government. British Journal of Sociology, 43: 173-205.
  41. Sargiacomo M. (2009). Accounting for the “good administration of justice”: the Farnese State of Abruzzo in the sixteenth century. Accounting History, 14: 235-267. DOI: 10.1177/1032373209335290
  42. Sargiacomo M., Ianni L., D’Andreamatteo A., D’Amico L. (2016). Accounting and the government of the agricultural economy: Arrigo Serpieri and the Reclamation Consortia. Accounting History Review, 26: 307-331. DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2016.1239710
  43. Spence C. (2010). Accounting for the dissolution of a Nation state: Scotland and the Treaty of Union. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 35: 377-392.
  44. Stone L. (1974). The University in Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  45. Antonelli V., D’Alessio R., Rossi R., Funnell W. (2018). Accounting and the banality of evil: expropriation of Jewish property in Fascist Italy (1939-1945). Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 31: 2165-2191.
  46. Antonelli V., Bigoni M., Cafaro E. M., D’Alessio R. (2019). Railway systems and the ‘Universal Good of the State’: technologies of government in the nineteenth-century Papal State. Accounting History.
  47. Baños J., Gutierrez F., Álvarez-Dardet C., Carrasco F. (2005). Govern(mentality) and accounting: the influence of different Enlightenment discourses in two Spanish cases (1761-1777). Abacus, 41: 181-210.
  48. Berland N., Chiapello E. (2009). Criticisms of capitalism, budgeting and the double enrolment: budgetary control rhetoric and social reform in France in the 1930s and 1950s. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34: 28-57.
  49. Bigoni M., Deidda Gagliardo E., Funnell W. (2013). Rethinking the sacred and secular divide. accounting and accountability practices in the Diocese of Ferrara (1431-1457). Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 26: 567-594. DOI: 10.1108/09513571311327462
  50. Bigoni M., Funnell W. (2015). Ancestors of governmentality: accounting and pastoral power in the 15th century. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 27: 160-176.
  51. Burchell S., Clubb C., Hopwood A., Hughes J., Nahapiet J. (1980). The roles of accounting in organisations and society. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 5: 5-27. DOI: 10.1016/0361-3682(80)90017-3

  • The musical, cultural and financial life and legacy of Tito Schipa Stefano Adamo, David Alexander, Roberta Fasiello, Tito Junior Schipa, in CONTABILITÀ E CULTURA AZIENDALE 2/2023 pp.53
    DOI: 10.3280/CCA2022-002004

Luca Papi, Michele Bigoni, Giorgia Gobbo, Enrico Deidda Gagliardo, Using accounting as a political weapon. The University of Ferrara and Italian Fascism in "CONTABILITÀ E CULTURA AZIENDALE" 1/2020, pp 7-31, DOI: 10.3280/CCA2020-001002