The Routledge Companion to Accounting Information Systems

5

Change management

Krister Bredmar

Introduction

Accounting has always played an information system function in an organisation. When Luca Pacioli wrote his Summa in 1494, a chapter described how merchant families in Venice used a double-entry bookkeeping methodology to keep track of goods and money (Thompson, 1994). At that time, the accounting function played the role of documenting juridical transactions, but also was a means of showing ethical actions. In addition to this, the geometrical dimension was important, which helped the user to document a transaction in more than one dimension. In many ways, financial reports and information have always been about understanding the business and operations (Littleton, 1953). Through the gathering ...