Importing and ‘refracting’ accounting: traces in over a century of a long-lived Italian accounting journal

According to the seminal study of R. Parker (1989) accounting knowledge needs to be transferable from one country to another, following business exchanges, dealers, entrepreneurs and accounting professionals in all markets and institutions. In this study we have referred to the influences on Italian Accounting arriving from abroad, conducting our investigation through the analysis of scientific journals and the articles published in them. Our observations have been conducted on the longest-running Italian Accounting journal: the Italian Journal of Accounting and Business Administration (first published in 1901). Our research was performed on articles published from 1901 to 2000 in over 700 issues, covering a total of over 6,000 articles and examining the different kind of “international” citations. This analysis has allowed us to follow the evolution that has characterized Accounting in Italy in relation to the influences connected to importing ideas, knowledge, practices, concepts and institutions from other countries and the waves of knowledge observed in a hundred years