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In Denmark, the development of accounting and of business economics has been closely intertwined during the twentieth century, a linkage formed, and reformed, through relationships between knowledge, teaching, and practice. Accounting was an essential part of business economics, and at the same time, business economics formed the framework within which accounting developed.

Related to the fact that Denmark is a small country where commerce and industry appeared relatively late, one of the distinct features of this development was the ‘travel of ideas’ from other countries into Denmark. Thus in the interwar period, German ideas about accounting and business economics played an important part, but after the World War II American ideas about marginal costing and about the nature of the firm to some extent replaced them, a phenomenon stimulated by activities set up under the Marshall Plan.

Ideas were imported from the US after World War II, and thus we can see some of the developments in Denmark as part of the ‘Americanisation’ of management knowledge. However, ideas about accounting were not simply imported into Denmark, they were translated both in language terms and in more subtle cultural ways, and by the 1960s two distinctive Danish management accounting ‘traditions’ had appeared, one in the capital city of Copenhagen, the other in Aarhus.  

Looking at this history raises issues concerning the role of the intellectual and institutional context in shaping accounting knowledge, and contributes to exploring the issue of the relationship between accounting and business economics. In examining these developments, it is shown that there are rich and complex histories to be told of accounting beyond the bounds of Anglo-Saxon countries.

Carsten Rohde is professor and head of department at the Department of Accounting