Accounting researchers have shown how accounting is implicated in the creation of power relations. Most studies assume a unidirectional relationship between the ideological beliefs of those in power and accounting practices. The study adopts Gramsci’s understanding of power relations to analyse how Italian Fascists enlisted accounting information to ensure that two important organisations, the University of Ferrara and the Alla Scala Opera House, would become a conduit for the diffusion of Fascist ideology. The article shows how there is not an uncomplicated, unidirectional relationship between ideology and accounting. The illusorily neutral appearance of accounting allows it to be adapted to play different roles and acquire different meanings even in the achievement of the same set of ideological beliefs. The study also shows how Gramsci’s thought offers an alternative reading of power relations to that of Foucault and Marx and considers a set of ideological beliefs which are scarcely analysed in accounting history studies.

会计研究人员已经证明了会计与权力关系的建立有何关系。大多数研究都假设在权力者的意识形态信念与会计实践之间存在单向关系。该研究采用了葛兰西对权力关系的理解来分析意大利法西斯主义者如何获取会计信息，以确保费拉拉大学和阿拉斯卡拉歌剧院这两个重要组织成为法西斯意识形态传播的渠道。本文说明了意识形态与会计之间没有简单，单向的关系。会计的虚幻中立的外观使它能够适应扮演不同的角色并获得不同的含义，即使在实现同一套意识形态信念的过程中也是如此。