Available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on doi:10.1006/cpac.2002.0549 Critical Perspectives on Accounting (2002) 13, 527–532 CRITICAL ACCOUNTING STUDIES IN ITALY: SOME PERSONAL NOTES EMIDIA V AGNONI† University of Ferrara, Via del Gregorio, 13, 44100 Ferrara, Italy Introduction This paper seeks to analyse the central characteristics of academic accounting studies in Italy, with a view to discussing the state of contemporary critical accounting research in that country. The critical accounting literature is particularly diffuse (Tinker & Koutsoumandi, 1997, pp. 454–467; Broadbent et al., 1996, pp. 259–284; Gray et al., 1993; Guthrie & Parker, 1989, pp. 343–352; Burchell et al., 1985, pp. 381–414; Tinker, 1985) in many countries, where accounting studies are based both on critical theories and on embracing contextual analysis. On the grounds that the label “critical analysis” has not until recently been used in Italian academic circles, I have chosen to distinguish the broader notion, in the sense of a thorough and penetrating analysis going beyond descriptive studies, from the specifically Marxist meaning of the term. I have chosen a more embracing contextual analysis, in accord with the majority of the critical accounting literature. Consequently, in discussing the state of critical accounting research in Italy, I will begin with a historical perspective. There is frequent reference in Italian accounting studies to the so-called “fathers of academic accounting”. Accounting research in Italy is replete with historical perspectives and the history of accounting techniques occupies much of the accounting literature. In answering questions about “critical accounting in Italy”, one has to first define “accounting” in the Italian context. The Italian theory of accounting is named “Economia Aziendale” and relies on the similar framework as the German “betriebswirtschaftslehre” and as the “bedrijfseconomie” in The Netherlands. It groups together accounting, finance, banking and management studies and has its origin in the attempt by Zappa in the early 1930s 1 to systematize the discipline. Beginning in this period, many studies took place around the concept of “azienda”/organization and its associated accounting methods. The pervasiveness of the concept can be seen in the paucity of differences between such authors as Giannessi, Masini and Amaduzzi, all of whom worked in the period between the 1960s and the 1980s. Each of them shared an underlying, systemic view of the † E-mail: vagnoni@economia.unife.it (recent past president of the Italian young accounting academics group) Received 1 October 2001 527 1045–2354/02/ $ - see front matter c  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.