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The increasing gap between the theory and practice of accounting should be taken as a warning that academics have emphasized the economics and sociology of accounting, while neglecting the applied science of accounting. This treatise points a way out of the present dilemma by focusing on the need for dealing with moral and other normative issues as well as the problem of relating means to ends. It also attempts a bold synthesis of the two major opposing camps of present-day academic accounting, the Critical-Interpretive Perspective of Great Britain, on one side, and the Positive Accounting Theory of America, on the other. The challenging issues that this book raises should be of great interest to practitioners, no less than academics, to senior undergraduates, no less than to graduate students and all those interested in an unorthodox perspective of an exciting, but often misunderstood, field.
List of contents
Illustrations
Preface
The Historic and Cultural Mission of Accounting
Social Reality and the Measurement of Its Phenomena
Foundational and Conceptual Issues
Formalization and Information
Valuation Models, Capital Maintenance, and Instrumental Hypotheses
What Has Post-Kuhnian Philosophy of Science to Offer?
Research Traditions of Accounting
Empirical Research and Positive Accounting Theory
Normative Accounting and the Critical-Interpretive School
Conditional-Normative Accounting Methodology
Summary and Conclusion
Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index
About the author
RICHARD V. MATTESSICH is Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia, where he held the Arthur Andersen & Co. Chair. Mattessich and his work have been discussed in Twentieth-Century Accounting Thinkers (1994) and similar surveys, and his professional memoirs were published in Japan by Chuo University. His practical experience comprises several years as an engineer and accountant. He is a Ford Foundation Fellow (USA), a distinguished Erskine Fellow (New Zealand), a Killam Senior Fellow (Canada), and a member of two national academies (Italy and Austria), as well as an honorary Life Member of the Academy of Accounting Historians. He has served on the Board of Governors of the School of Chartered Accountancy of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia and was on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Certified General Accountants Research Foundation for six years.
