The Sociology of the Professions by Keith M Macdonald

Author:Keith M Macdonald [Macdonald, Keith M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, General, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9780803986343
Google: hv4S5PPzggEC
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 1995-11-13T04:05:26+00:00

With the outbreak of war, these efforts were abandoned and not resumed, for reasons that will be discussed below. In the last of these periods, however, the joint efforts of ICAEW and ISAA came closest to realizing their goal and it is therefore logical to look at this period for evidence of ‘interaction’ and ‘articulation’ of state and profession. A contrast will then be drawn between these years and those after the First World War.

Drafting the bill The Professional Accountants Bill was first debated on 15 July 1909, but that event was preceded by two years of drafting, negotiation and redrafting. The first mention of it in the ICAEW Council Minutes in October 1907, when the President reported on a conference with the ISAA, gives no reason why the matter should have become important again. The level of interest in registration among accountants may be gauged by the number of items a year on the topic appearing in The Accountant. It appears to have been an important topic in the period up to the granting of the charter in 1880 and again in 1893, when both the Institute and the Society sponsored bills. In 1896/7, when five bills were drafted, interest reached a peak, but slumped again after the joint propsals of these two bodies were rejected by their members. While the pages of The Accountant show that the topic never disappeared from view entirely, there is a marked upswing of interest from 1905 onwards. It is possible that the circumstances of other professions stimulated the interest of accountants. Architects had had a registration bill defeated in 1903, and had set up a special committee to consider the matter in 1904; and in 1906 there were actually two rival bills before Parliament (Carr-Saunders and Wilson 1933: 181; Kaye, 1960: 147–8). It was in 1906 also that dentists became aware that their Registration Act was an inadequate protection against competition from dental companies (Carr-Saunders and Wilson, 1933: 112).

Not only are the motives of the Council of the ICAEW not apparent, the details of their deliberations and negotiations are also unavailable because their records for this period consist purely of council and committee minute books which record only documents tabled, actions taken and resolutions passed. The reports they received and the letters they wrote have not been preserved. The organ of the State with which they interacted (the Board of Trade) has left even less. The Public Records Office contains no material’at all that relates to accountants at this period.

However, it is clear that the ICAEW and the ISAA negotiated steadily and successfully until June 1908 when they sent their draft bill to the Board of Trade and had a meeting with the Parliamentary Secretary. The matter was put before the President of the Board of Trade (Winston Churchill) who wrote in January 1909 on the subject of admitting women to the ICAEW and ISAA. A matter of judicial procedure was sorted out with the Lord Chancellor and a letter was received

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.