From Taylorism to Ms Taylor: the transformation of the accounting craft

The history of professionally quali®ed accountants and their regulatory processes command considerable attention in the academic accounting literature. In contrast, ``non-quali®ed'', clerical employees have been virtually excluded from serious accounting research. This paper aims to overcome this serious de®ciency in the academic literature. The framework used in the paper to analyse the work practices of accounting clerks draws strongly on the theoretical foundations of Marx and subsequent development by Braverman. We will show that the majority of work experience in the accounting industry is one of deskilling according to Tayloristic ``Scienti®c Management'' principles. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. The history of professionally quali®ed accountants and their regulatory processes command considerable attention in the academic accounting literature. This is the case even in the critical accounting literature. In contrast, ``non-quali®ed'', clerical employees have been virtually excluded from serious accounting research. Despite both the concerns of Hopwood (1987) and Loft (1992) that this is an under researched area, and Crompton and Sanderson's (1990) and Kirkham and Loft's (1993) valuable contributions, there is still no thoroughgoing analysis of this majority employee experience. This paper aims to overcome this serious de®ciency in the academic literature. It is centrally concerned with the changing work practices of non-professionally-quali®ed workers in accounting clerical roles. Adopting a long term perspective, the paper charts the changing work practices of accounting clerks from the mid 19th century until the publication of Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital (1974). It continues where Braverman left o€ in 1974 by studying the skills required by employers of accounting clerks from 1974 until 1996 through a longitudinal analysis of job advertisements and other contemporary changes within the accounting industry. The framework used in the paper to analyse the work practices of accounting clerks draws strongly on the theoretical foundations of Marx and subsequent development by Braverman. Although Braverman's work is widely acknowledged in the critical accounting literature, the narrow focus of accounting research, which typically equates ``accounting labour'' with ``the accounting 0361-3682/00/$ see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PI I : S0361-3682(99 )00052-5 Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 555±578 www.elsevier.com/locate/aos * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-141-552-4400; fax: +44141-552-3547. 1 In the UK in 1998, 78% of the accounting labour force of 1.3 million were ``clerical'' as opposed to ``professional''. Of the ``clerical'' stratum, 76.5% were women. More detailed information can be found in Appendix A. In obtaining these ®gures we have excluded ``debt, rent & other cash collectors'' and ``actuaries, economists & statisticians'', which form part of the National Statistics Oce accounting workforce classi®cations. profession'', means that Braverman's work has not been exploited to the full. Braverman contended that in the monopoly capitalist era, Scienti®c Management is used both to deskill workers and to progressively relieve them of autonomy in their working lives. One reason for choosing a Marxist/Braverman Labour Process theoretical framework is that it problematises the myth that we are living in an age which requires greater skills of its workforce than for any previous generation and that, consequently, people cannot ®nd jobs because they ``do not have the necessary skills''. Our analysis, using Braverman's work, will present a contrasting picture. We will show that the majority work experience in the accounting industry is one of deskilling according to Tayloristic ``Scienti®c Management'' principles. This has meant that the ``skill premium'' paid to bookkeepers has all but disappeared resulting in the driving downwards of bookkeepers' wages. The fact that Braverman's work is as much about the loss of autonomy as the loss of skill has several serious implications for the clerical workers in accounting in the sense that their working conditions are continually dehumanised. While this paper is not concerned directly with ``accounting professionals'' the broader implications of our work gesture towards some serious implications for the accounting profession. The contemporary fusion of the commercialization of the accounting profession, the division of the organisations into ``core'' and ``non core'' elements, and the continuing impact of Scienti®c Management on accounting work has already led to several organisations outsourcing their ®nance function. The outsourcing accounting organisations may represent the most ``ecient'' scienti®cally managed accounting/bookkeeping practice to date. It is likely that more senior accountants' work will remain unchanged if their organisation decides to outsource its accounts. However, middle level or more junior quali®ed accountants' jobs are likely to disappear making quali®ed accountants' scienti®c management's newest victim. The paper is structured as follows. The ®rst section assesses the progress of the debates since the publication of Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital. This is followed by an outline of the principles of Taylor's version of Scienti®c Management and how the deskilling of work has been organised in practice. Following a history of bookkeeping we develop an analysis of more than 1000 accounting clerical and bookkeeping job advertisements which appeared in the (Glasgow) Herald newspaper for the period 1974±1996. Our conclusion gestures towards possible futures for the accounting industry. 1. Braverman and the labour process When Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital (Braverman, 1974) ®rst appeared a quarter of a century ago no one could have imagined the breadth and intensity of debate which this pathbreaking account of the capitalist labour process would stimulate. A recent summary (Noon & Blyton, 1997, pp. 105±120) of the current state of the debate divides Braverman's critics into ``sympathizers'' and ``agnostics'', those, on the one hand, who accept his general approach with quali®cation, and those, on the other, who consider it inadequate as an explanation of the capitalist labour process. The litany of criticism is now commonplace; that Braverman ignored workers' resistance (Edwards, 1987) or alternatively, workers' accommodation and consent (Burawoy, 1979), that he ``privileges'' the extraction of surplus value at the expense of the realisation of that surplus (Kelly, 1985), or that he overestimated the universality of management ``control'' strategies, neglecting, for example, the possibility of ``responsible autonomy'' strategies (Friedman, 1977, 1990). Space prohibits a full assessment of these criticisms but one line of argument ``in defence of'' Braverman appears, to the authors, to have even more validity now than when written in the late 1980s. Peter Armstrong (1988), in urging a rereading ofLabour andMonopoly Capital, resurrected the rich and subtle, non-deterministic Braverman 2 For example, Hanlon (1994), dismisses Braverman when he writes that he, ``will argue that the deskilling thesis is an inappropriate theoretical framework for examining accountancy, and most likely the professions in general''. 556 C. Cooper, P. Taylor / Accounting, Organizations and Society 25 (2000) 555±578