Popular Accounting History: Evidence from Post-Enron Stories

This study reviews the concept of “popular history” in the context of accounting history, drawing on evidence from post-Enron stories about corporate collapse and accounting and auditing failure. The study complements the work of Carnegie and Napier [2010], which focused on how professional accountants and their firms and organizations were portrayed in books about Enron and Arthur Andersen that were published during the period 2002 to 2005. These books can be characterized as “popular histories”, and the present paper illustrates how the scholarly work of academic accounting historians is given little attention by the authors of these post-Enron stories. It points to the largely untapped potential for accounting historians to make their research findings and insights available for a general readership.