There has been significant focus in accounting historiography on the use of occupational labels for the purpose of group identification and profe ssional trajectory in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. The writing master was active from medieval times as the authority on calligraphic representation, while the writing master and accountant emerged as a specialist pedagogue providing the expert business knowledge required in the counting houses of business concerns that flourished during the rapid commercial expansion which took place in mercantilist Britain. Writing masters and accountants pursued occupational trajectory by developing a desirable social identity based on a range of strategies that included aligning the services they provided with national interest and projecting an image of the gentlemanly professional. Their demise as an occupational group may be attributed to factors that include internecine conflict, the increasing homogeneity of the written word and the likely pursuit by accountants of more remunerative engagements.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: