Inclusion, exclusion and control: The case of the Kenyan accounting professionalisation project

This study explores the concept of closure within professional projects and its application to the development of the accounting profession in Kenya, an ex-British colony. It draws on oral history techniques and archival research to examine the construction of the institutional arrangements for accountancy, from 1970 to 1978, within a political, social and historical context. Responding to calls for a more nuanced theorisation of Weberian closure [Chua, W., & Poullaos, C. (1993). Rethinking the profession-state dynamic: The Victorian chartered attempt. Accounting, Organisations and Society, 18(7/8), 691–782; Chua, W., & Poullaos, C. (1998). The dynamics of ‘closure’ amidst the construction of market, profession, empire and nationhood: An historical analysis of an Australian accounting association, 1886–1903. Accounting, Organisations and Society, 23(2), 155–187], the Kenyan case is used to illustrate that not all professionalisation projects are simply the pursuit of monopolistic control driven by collective social mobility. The inclusion of all qualified accountants rather than exclusion was, in this instance, vital in order to ensure that a viable association was formed amidst existing neo-colonial societal divisions along racial lines and the demands of the newly-formed State. The evidence presented shows how different strategies were adopted by different interest groups at different stages of the project.