RIS ID
77771
Abstract
This paper uses Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to investigate periods of leadership and accounting change throughout Chinese history. In particular, this paper provides an understanding of how accounting systems have changed across four distinct periods of hegemonic leadership in China: the Confucian tradition, the rise of the socialist system followed by the Cultural Revolution under the Maoist era, and the move towards the socialist-market system in the Dengist era. This paper shows how political leaders in these different time periods effectively achieved leadership by destroying an existing hegemony, creating a new ideology, and implanting this into people’s daily lives in order to successfully mobilise their ideological systems. Consistent with changes in leadership, Chinese accounting systems are shown to have responded to hegemonic shifts across these periods. This paper contributes to understandings of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, explanations of, and motivations for, accounting change, and provides an insight into the evolution of accounting systems throughout time in the context of China.
Publication Details
Xu, L., Cortese, C. L. & Zhang, Y. (2012). Exploring hegemonic change in China: a case of accounting evolution. Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference (pp. 1-22). Melbourne, Australia: The Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand.