Proceedings

However, after 10 years, the Transylvanian accounting school was reborn like
Phoenix bird. In 1961 was founded in Cluj, The Faculty of Economic Sciences in the
framework of Babes Bolyai University who continued the tradition of Academy of
High Commercial and Industrial Studies.
The punctuated equilibrium theory was used for the first time in accounting research
by Alexander and Servalli (2010), to investigate the complex process of accounting
change. The model of Alexander and Servalli was used by Albu, Albu and David
(2010) to analyses the processes and causes of change in history of Romanian
accounting. The main objective of the study was to explore the Romanian accounting
histories in the context of the model as proposed by Alexander and Servalli (2010), in
order to critically examine Romanian attitudes and perceptions today and suggest a
number of rational predictions of likely future developments in an EU/IFRS
environment, in a world where accounting seeks to serve organizations of vastly
different sizes, with vastly different user needs, in vastly different attitudinal contexts.
Tosh (1991:12-13) explained the fundamental premises of historicism as follows:
,,Each age is a unique manifestation of the human spirit, with its own culture
and values. For one age to understand another there must be recognition that
the passage of time has profoundly altered both the conditions of life and the
mentality of men and women – even perhaps human nature itself – and that an
effort of the imagination must be made to relinquish present-day values and to
see an earlier age from the inside.”
For this reason, in our research we consider important to analyze the coordinates of
the Transylvanian accounting school evolution linked with the economic
environment, the historical context at the national level. In this respect we’ll try to
look at the main defining moments of the accounting history marked by the evolution
of capitalism and implicitly the development of Transylvanian accounting school.
We apply the contextual analysis, that helps us to assess the text within the context of
its historical and cultural setting. A contextual analysis combines features of formal
analysis with features of “cultural archaeology,” or the systematic study of social,
political, economic, philosophical, religious, and aesthetic conditions that were (or
can be assumed to have been) in place at the time and place when the text was
created. While this may sound complicated, it is in reality deceptively simple: it
means “situating” the text within the milieu of its times and assessing the roles of
author, readers (intended and actual), and “commentators” (critics, both professional
and otherwise) in the reception of the text.
Our contribution in this paper is to identify the main influences that have an effect on
the beginnings of school of accounting from Cluj Transylvania in XIX century and
first part of the XX century connected with the political and socio economical
changing contexts of that historical period. We focus our attention mainly on the
accounting school created in the institutional environment of the Academy of High
Commercial and Industrial Studies. This is due to the excellence of this school of
accounting, taking into considerations the follows arguments: the ancientness of the
school, the school reputation, professors' fame, the ideas presented in school research
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