Professor Keith Hoskin BA, MSc, PhD

Professor Keith Hoskin

The Department of Accounting
Professor of Accounting

Contact details

Address
Birmingham Business School
University House
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT

Keith joined Birmingham Business School in September 2015 as a Professor of Accounting. He was previously a Professor at Warwick Business School and the Manchester School of Management, UMIST (now the Alliance Business School, University of Manchester).

His major research and publication interests are in the historical and conceptual study of accounting, management, strategy and modes of valuing. The focus in the first instance is on (i) developing better conceptualisations of accounting as naming-and-counting ‘statement’ across its 10,000 year history, and (ii) its constitutive status as first form of writing and initiator of the ‘non-glottographic’ naming-and-counting statement form (today manifest in not only in accounts but in charts, tables, graphs, equations, forms of money, etc). In the second instance Keith focuses on the genesis of modern management, strategy and governmentality via accounting, approached as a way of doubly disciplinary thinking and acting developed via learning under written, graded examination and manifested first in business management in the USA.

Prior work in these areas is continuing via papers and articles, with book publication in view. Both projects extend Foucault’s ‘critical history of thought’ in engaging in forms of ‘bottom-up’ theorizing of human thinking and acting, but making explicit the constitutive roles of accounting and pedagogy in shifting our modes of thinking and acting and modes of veridiction.

Qualifications

  • PhD in History, University of Pennsylvania, 1973
  • MSc in Educational Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 1970
  • BA in Classics and Modern Languages, Oxford University, 1968

Biography

Keith is currently Professor of Accounting at Birmingham Business School. From 1999 to 2011, he was Professor of Strategy and Accounting at Warwick Business School, having previously held academic posts in the fields of accounting and in comparative education and educational history. 

Keith has lectured widely in Britain and beyond, and has previously held posts as a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Venice, and the University of Bologna, as well as a Simon Fellowship in 1995-6 at the University of Manchester. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Bergamo.

Teaching

  • BSc Accounting and Finance
    • Decision Making and Control
    • Business Law
    • Extended Essay Supervision
  • MSc International Accounting & Finance
    • Professional Integrity and Reflective Practice
    • Dissertation Supervision

Research

His major research and publication interests are in the historical and conceptual study of accounting, management, strategy and modes of valuing. He focuses in the first instance on (i) developing better conceptualisations of accounting as naming-and-counting ‘statement’ across its 10,000 year history, and (ii) its constitutive status as first form of writing and initiator of the ‘non-glottographic’ naming-and-counting statement form (a form of statement with no verbs, and today manifest in such forms as statistics, charts, tables, graphs, equations, frequency distributions, and forms of money). In the second instance he focuses on the genesis of modern management, strategy and governmentality via accounting, approached as a way of doubly disciplinary thinking and acting developed via learning under written, graded examination and manifested first in business management in the USA.

Both projects extend Foucault’s ‘critical history of thought’ in engaging in forms of ‘bottom-up’ theorizing of human thinking and acting, but making explicit the constitutive roles of accounting and pedagogy in shifting our modes of thinking and acting and modes of veridiction.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Charnock, R & Hoskin, K 2020, 'SDG 13 and the entwining of climate and sustainability metagovernance: an archaeological-genealogical analysis of goals-based climate governance', Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, vol. 33, no. 7, pp. 1731-1759. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2018-3790

Bassnett, S, Frandsen, A-C & Hoskin, K 2018, 'The unspeakable truth of accounting: on the genesis and consequences of the first “non-glottographic” statement form', Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, vol. 31, no. 7, pp. 2083-2107. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2017-3099

Hoskin, K & Macve, R 2016, '‘L’État c’est moi’ … ou quoi? On the interrelations of accounting, managing and governing in the French ‘administrative monarchy’: revisiting the Colbert (1661–1683) and Paris brothers (1712–1726) episodes', Accounting History Review, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 219 - 257. https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2016.1236530

Hoskin, K 2015, 'What about the box? Some thoughts on corruption prevention and the disciplined and ethical subject', Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol. 28, pp. 71-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2015.01.011

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Frandsen, A-C & Hoskin, K 2023, Accounting, governing, and the historical construction of the “governing subject”. in GD Carnegie & CJ Napier (eds), Handbook of Accounting, Accountability and Governance. Research Handbooks on Accounting series, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 393-422. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800886544.00029

Frandsen, A-C & Hoskin, K 2018, On the scope and significance of the Venetian accounting innovations from the Sixteenth Century: pedagogic practices, accounting statements and modes of thinking and acting. in M Sargiacomo, S Coronella, C Mio, U Sostero & R Di Pietra (eds), The Origins of Accounting Culture: The Venetian Connection. 1st edn, Routledge, pp. 327-345. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315102627-17

Other contribution

Frandsen, A-C, Bassnett, S & Hoskin, K 2017, Rethinking Accounting and Translation through analysis of the ‘accounting statement'..

Other report

Frandsen, A-C, Bailey, N, Ben Khaled, W, Brackley, J, Hoskin, K, Mantzari, E, Rozenfeld, G, Sobkowiak, M, Thomson, I & Zakaria, I 2023, The Role of Improvised Role Play: Learning and Teaching Professional Ethics in Accounting and Finance. University of Birmingham.

View all publications in research portal