Is double entry accounting here forever?

Some time ago, I read a blog post on the Zoho website about double entry accounting. Zoho provide a number of business related applications. The essence of the Zoho blog post is conveyed in the title of this post. Double entry accounting has been around for the last six centuries and has been embedded in the most simple and most complex accounting software. And there are no signs of it disappearing. The have been some proposed alternatives, such as the Resources, Events, Agents model (which is sometimes used in teaching). But like the DVORAK keyboard, even if some alternatives may be an improvement on the double entry system, they are likely never to catch on. Why you might ask?  Well, in my institutional theory thinking the answer is probably because the practices around double-entry accounting have been repeated so many times by so many people, that they have become the accepted way of doing things in business. In other words, the double entry system of accounting is a routine. And, not only that, there are also rules about double entry. I regard rules as written, and there are plenty of written rules of the double entry system – in text books, in software for example. If a practice has both been repeatedly performed for 600 years or so, and it has been written as a rule, the as the Zoho blog post says ” the traditional double-entry model was deeply ingrained in the business person’s and accountant’s psyches, and it was never going to be easily changed”. And it will probably remain so.