The construction of the professional accountant: the case of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria (1886)

Abstract

Set in colonial Australia, this study examines the professionalisation trajectory of a group of accountants in Melbourne culminating in organisational fusion on the formation of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria (IIAV) in 1886. The study portrays professionalisation as a dynamic process involving a diversity of “signals of movement” towards occupational ascendancy that arise in periods before as well as after the formation of occupational associations. It employs the prosopographical method of data collection to interrogate the occupational and commercial backgrounds of the 45 founders of the IIAV in the pre-1886 period and is also informed through the critical-conflict analytical framework. The findings reveal that intraprofessional rivalries fuelled by international relations of power and nationalist self-interests provided the impetus to organisational assembly in this case.