ACCOUNTING AND PROTECTION OF CREDITORS (1807-1942): AN ANALYSIS OF THE TECHNICAL-SOCIAL FUNCTION OF ACCOUNTING ; COMPTABILITE ET PROTECTION DES CREANCIERS (1807-1942) : UNE ANALYSE DE LA FONCTION TECHNICO-SOCIALE DE LA COMPTABILITE

Abstract

The thesis is divided into two distinct parts. The division is thematic and not chronological. This research is mainly set in the traditions of research that aim to explore the representative functions of accounting.The first part focuses on the protection of the "typical" creditor, symbolic representation of the general interest, savings and "related parties"; it aims to show how accounting has gradually become a social issue when it was decided to replace the unlimited personal liability of the partners with the only guarantee of the capital; the need to protect the public interest against certain practices deemed abusive forces the courts to make decisions that partially shaped accounting.In this judicial and legislative framework, three main forms of actors compete or cooperate; firstly, the businessmen and their conception of accounting oriented towards an anticipation of benefits and a concealment of their accounting methods; secondly, the judges and their decisions which must determine, between incipient anachronism and excessive modernism, the accounting practices they judge the most adapted to the general interest; thirdly, the legislature, to which may belong members of the first category, which oscillates between the defense of categorial interests and the consideration of the general interest. To these are added the commentators, mainly jurisconsults, but also accounting practitioners.In this first part, accounting is often in the hollow of practices and speeches; it is revealed surreptitiously, by successive keys. It is rarely at the heart of intentions; rather, it seems to be a necessary step for social actors, either careless to mention concealed processes, or not inclined to be interested in because it is considered to be too technical or too far away from their concerns or their fields of competence. Accounting thus appears as an object of social legitimation: legitimization of judicial decisions since its interpretation determines the orientation of the Court's judgment; political legitimacy, ...