Financial Statements and Positive Accounting Theory: The Early Contribution of Aldo Amaduzzi

This paper examines some of the accounting ideas that were developed in the late 1940s by an Italian professor, Aldo Amaduzzi, with regards to positive accounting studies and the content of financial statements. The paper briefly reviews the aim, methodological assumptions and key findings of the so-called 'positive accounting theory' based on the works of the Rochester school of accounting. A content analysis of the early work of Amaduzzi, in relation to his view that the contents of financial statements can be seen as the equilibrium outcome of a conflict of interests between corporate stakeholders, shows that many of the methodological issues on accounting theory stressed by the 'Rochester school of accounting' were raised by Amaduzzi (1947, 1949). The paper concludes that although some key differences between the two approaches do exist, Amaduzzi may be considered as a forerunner of positive accounting theory.     

The Methodology of Early Accounting Theorists

If, as Watts and Zimmerman (1986) suggest, a unique methodological foundation is the hallmark of a mature discipline, accounting fails to qualify. In this article, methodological arguments of accounting theorists in the first part of this century are examined. 'Pattern Modeling' is suggested as a basis for methodological appraisal. The conclusion reached is that the major theoretical works in accounting were methodologically unsophisticated-particularly in comparison with other disciplines such as economics.     

Carl L. Nelson: The Interrogator (1910–2007)

During the 1940s–1970s, Carl Nelson was an imposing figure, literally and figuratively, in American academic accounting. With high expectations for his students, he taught several generations of accountants, practitioners, and professors. He made accounting exciting and provocative by encouraging his students to critique GAAP, to explore alternatives to conventional accounting wisdom, and to search for substance in transactions regardless of form. He urged his students to question every thing, regardless of who said or wrote it. As a classroom professor and a reviewer of academic works, he was at times a harsh critic. As an advisor to students, he was generally helpful, if not gracious. Carl Nelson was most assuredly a rare breed in accounting academe. This paper examines his controversial teaching approach and considers his legacy.     

The possibility and utility of positive accounting theory

Watts & Zimmerman's Positive Accounting Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986) celebrates the growth of “scientific” accounting research in the U.S.A. and the intellectual progress it has made. The extent to which this sort of research does follow the precepts of empiricist philosophies of science, however, is a matter of some debate. Moreover, the coherence and applicability of the methodological rules Watts & Zimmerman claim to follow is questionable. In particular, the Popperian research programme is of doubtful utility for accounting researchers. Particular characteristics of social phenomena also raise doubts about the feasibility of engineering models for theory-based social technologies. These doubts about the epistemological and practical value of “positive accounting theory” lead to an alternative, sociological. explanation of its growth and institutionalisation in academic accounting research.     

Schmidt's Betriebswirtschaft Theory

Those only speking English are confronted with considerable confusion regarding the precise nature of Fritz Schmidt's contribution to the German Betriebswirschaft (business economics) movement during the 1920s. The similarity between his theory and the Bedrijfseconomie theory attributed to Theodore Limperg has also been less than clear. The primary cause is that their repective works have not been translated from the original German and Dutch and published in English. This paper draws upon translations to illustrate the substantial similarity between the accounting content of Schmidt's Betriebswirtschaft and that of Limperg's Bedrijfseconomie . Translatio of the 1951 biography of Schmidt by his student and then colleague, publications are contained in Appendix B. Contrary to some perceptions of Schmidt's work, he did address the general price level problem in his theory. And contrary to Limperg's criticism that Schmidt's mechanism for adiusting accounts for prifce and brice level changes was'incident specific', it was an integral part of a theory of business economics which appears to have been at least as comprehensive as Limperg's theory of Bedrijfseconomie .     

Stuck in the middle with who? (Belatedly) engaging with Laughlin while becoming re-acquainted with Merton and middle range theorising

The paper engages with Laughlin's 1995 and 2004 contributions to the literature on accounting research methodology, seeking to critique and thereby extend his insights. It does so at a time when the discussion of methodological issues appears less important to many empirical accounting researchers than demonstrating a familiarity with the growing range of theoretical perspectives available to pursue such enquiries. The paper initially outlines Laughlin's original and revised frameworks, following which a number of the resultant attributions of specific schools of thought are questioned. The original categorisation exercise is concluded still to offer an insightful basis on which to compare and contrast empirical research approaches. For this reason, the same exercise is extended to locate three further, currently popular ways of seeing: institutional theory, actor network theory and practice theory. The focus then shifts to a more detailed exploration of the relationship that exists between Laughlin's idea of middle range thinking and Merton's characterisation of middle range theory and theorisation. Informed by the resultant insights, the middle range or substantive theory credentials of a range of schools of thought currently widely subscribed in interdisciplinary accounting research are then examined.     

Habermas, law and accounting

This essay provides a critical review of Habermas' theory of law in Faktizität und Geltung against the backdrop of attempts to apply his work to the field of accounting. First, we analyse the core themes of this theory: the tension between facticity and validity from which Habermas' book takes its tide; the problem of the foundations of critical theorizing; Habermas' views on public administration and the role of expertise. Second, we consider the implications of this theory for critical accounting research. This discussion addresses Habermas' theory of money and the significance of the facticity of accounting. We also make some suggestions about how Habermas' counterfactual sensibilities remain relevant to critical accounting.     

Making Sense of Social Practice: Theoretical Pluralism in Public Sector Accounting Research: A Comment

This paper offers a comment on Jacobs (2012) published previously in this journal. Particular attention is paid to how theoretical pluralism may be defended on paradigmatic grounds whilst being mobilised as a vehicle of generating practice‐relevant insights. My critique of Jacobs focuses on his ambiguous positioning of multi‐paradigm research and the possibilities of developing some ‘indigenous’ accounting theory to render research relevant for practice. As an alternative mode of addressing these issues I propose a position based on critical realism and elaborate on how it may be used to stimulate and defend theoretical pluralism in public sector accounting research.     

Americanism and financial accounting theory – Part 3: Adam Smith,the rise and fall of socialism,and Irving Fisher's theory of accounting

A previous paper (Part 1) rejected the conventional wisdom that America was ‘born capitalist’ and the historians’ consensus that it had become capitalist by the early-19th century; another (Part 2) rejected Chandler's thesis that the ‘modern business enterprise’ brought a ‘new form of capitalism’ to America from the 1840s. The accounting evidence suggests that America began to make the transition to capitalism around 1900 in a period of intense conflict between ‘capital and labour’ generated by ‘big business’ from the 1880s, a process not completed until the 1920s. This paper (Part 3) examines the consequences for America's political ideology and financial accounting theory. America's exceptional transition, it argues, explains the history of its political ideology, and this history explains Irving Fisher's theory of accounting. Section A argues that America lagged behind Britain because it started from a society of simple commodity producers and semi-capitalists, which created an exceptional ideological problem for its ruling elite. Big business generated hostility from workers, farmers and small employers – expressed in labour movements, ‘populism’, socialism, and ‘progressivism’ – and created an ideological problem by contradicting the ‘independent producer’ ideology of workers and farmers, and the ‘individual liberalism’ of small manufacturers and merchants, both underwritten by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The paper argues that Smith's theory of price articulates as semi-capitalist accounting, which explains his popularity in America until the appearance of big business in the 1880s. Socialism and progressivism became political forces in America from 1900 to around 1920. Progressivism produced ‘corporate liberalism’, the ideological counter to socialism that corporations could be made ‘socially responsible’ by government regulation and ‘publicity’ to ensure they earned only ‘fair’ returns, but this left two problems. First, socialists argued that no profit was ‘fair’, and second, fear of the ‘labour danger’ made American financial reports secretive and conservative. Section B argues that Irving Fisher responded to these problems with a theory of accounting, which he developed as a refutation of Marx and the American brand of socialism advocated by Eugene Debs, the threateningly successful presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America. An important but neglected reason for socialism's abrupt collapse around 1920, it argues, was that the socialists lost the intellectual argument with the middle classes, and that Fisher's theory played an important role in this defeat. Fisher was a vigorous self-publicist, strongly influenced the teaching of economics and accounting in the universities and, the paper argues, changed the language of American accounting. Fisher claimed that accounting practice supported his theory of ‘capital’ and ‘income’, but the paper shows he did not understand double-entry bookkeeping or the accountants’ ‘cost theory of value’, and therefore divorced accounting from the reality of business transactions. As his theory underlies the FASB's framework, the paper concludes that Fisher's legacy to the world is a pathological theory of financial accounting.     

Reconstructing “behavioural accounting”

This paper adopts a critical stance towards behavioural accounting research methodology. It is argued that most accountants have based their behavioural research on the natural scientific approach, a paradigm whose relevance and suitability for conducting social research has been increasingly questioned in recent years. The author discusses some alternatives to the positivistic research methodology of the natural sciences as a way of developing social science and the implications these have for providing a coherent theoretical and methodological perspective for future “behavioural accounting” research.It is the contention of this paper that the study of the behavioural aspects of accounting has largely failed to develop into a coherent theoretical or practical body of knowledge. In an attempt to overcome this state of affairs, there is an increasing trend to employ organizational and sociological theory as a basis for research, as opposed to psychology and social psychology which informed earlier conceptual thinking and research. While accountants may see this conceptual development as an advancement in that it locates accounting processes in their organizational and social contexts, the way in which it is being conducted is criticized in this paper because, like psychology, it is characterized by an essentially positivistic methodology.This article will first provide a broad overview of the relationship between accounting research and the behavioural sciences. From that overview it will be argued that accounting researchers are unlikely to make much progress by borrowing behavioural scientific concepts unless they develop a deeper understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of these concepts and the competing schools of methodological thought which exist within the behavioural sciences. In an attempt to fill this apparent gap in understanding, the paper will discuss the scientific approach of the natural sciences, why it is felt to be inappropriate for the behavioural sciences and what alternatives exist.     

Chambers on Price and Price-Level Variations: Exiting Intellectual Grooves

From early in his enquiry, Chambers perceived the price variation problem in accounting to not be a separate phenomenon related to inflation or deflation, but to be the failure in conventional accounting to incorporate the full financial effects of the medium, money, in which its calculations were made and its output expressed. He absented himself from the inflation accounting focus early in the 1950s and set about an enquiry into the nature and meaning of monetary calculation and measurement, within a framework of accounting functioning to provide indications of the wealth and progress of firms. Accordingly, when the substantial literature on the topic and the report of governmental enquiry into accounting and inflation emerged during the early 1970s he addressed the various proposals by drawing upon his theory of Continuously Contemporary Accounting (CoCoA) with devastating effect.     

Patrick Colquhoun

Patrick Colquhoun, ‘the father of Glasgow’, established his reputation as an able accountant, businessman and manager in the 1780s. This reputation was overshadowed by his contributions to penal reform which he made in the 1790s when he resided in London. Radzinowicz (1956) and Foucault (1977) showed that Colquhoun, in conjunction with his friend Jeremy Bentham, the famous utilitarian economist, made a significant impact on penal reform. Their contribution was encouraged by the British government in the period of turmoil which followed the French Revolution. Bentham understood the role of accounting in the management of businesses (Goldberg, 1956; Hume, 1970; Gallhofer and Haslam, 1993). He alone recognized the importance of Colquhoun's accounting knowledge and business experience and how his pragmatism enhanced his powerful cases for the adoption of new socioeconomic systems. Until now this view of Bentham has been ignored. Other historians, driven by their special interests, concentrated on one phase of Colquhoun's diverse life. None attempted to analyse the relationship between his ideas for the reform of punishment, police and poor systems and his prior experience as an accountant, businessman and manager. That relationship is the subject of this article and the objective of my research is to answer two questions. First, where did Patrick Colquhoun acquire his knowledge of business and accounting techniques? Second, how did he use his knowledge in the 1790s to build cases which influenced those in power to adopt new socioeconomic systems?     

Further critical reflections on a contribution to the methodological issues debate in accounting

Laughlin's (1995) contribution to the methodological issues debate in accounting (Laughlin R. Empirical research in accounting: alternative approaches and a case for “middle-range” thinking. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 1995;8(1):53–87.) is often cited. Here, we assess and clarify the contribution, including in reflecting upon some critical reception. We initially provide an overview of Laughlin (1995), enhancing appreciation of this by relating it to prior work. We then appraise some previous critical assessments of Laughlin (1995) and take into consideration Laughlin's interaction therewith. We go on to elaborate our own critical appreciation. We conclude that Laughlin (1995) substantively provides for a number of insights that continue to be positive for the development of research into accounting and related practices. Developing our analysis, we indicate the continuing strengths of a German critical theoretical orientation in researching and developing theoretical appreciation of accounting and related practices today.     

PAPER PROPHETS AND THE CONTINUING CASE FOR THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT ACCOUNTING RESEARCH

This review of Tony Tinker’s Autocritique presented at the First International Accounting Seminar, Department of Finance and Accounting, Glasgow Caledonian University, is not a critique of what Tinker thinks of his own book. He should know best about what he wrote or wanted to write. It also does not assess the validity of his interpretation of the works of Marx or Hegel. What it does is to reflect further on an important issue underlying much of Tinker’s presentation—namely, the concern with research methodology. The review welcomes Tinker’s desires for change in approaches to accounting case studies but suggests that the underlying problems are more complex than Tinker suggests and demands a broader scale of response than that highlighted in his presentation.     

制度变迁理论视角下的事业单位会计改革研究

运用制度变迁理论,可以构建我国会计制度变迁的一般理论模型。该模型综合了’制度变迁的供、需理论,指出交易费用在会计制度变迁中的决定作用,并对我国会计制度变迁中的交易费用进行了科学分类。用1998年事业单位会计制度变迁和2006年企业会计制度变迁可以验证该理论模型。运用该模型,解释了目前事业单位会计制度改革现状,推断了改革前景。     

Spacek's Contributions to Accounting Thought Revisited

While he was managing partner and chair of Arthur Andersen in the l950s and 1960s, Leonard Spacek was an outspoken critic of public accounting, complaining about its failure to establish a coherent set of objectives for financial statements, its illogical principles and methods, and its principle-setting process. He was the conscience of the public accounting community during this time period, a critic from within. As far as Spacek was concerned, 'fairness' was the central objective of financial reporting, though he never specifically defined the term. In light of the recent high-profile corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron and World.com, both of which were audited by Arthur Andersen, it is useful to analyse Spacek's ideas on the public role of accounting from his speeches and writings with emphasis on the theme of fairness. Given the firm's long-term commitment to quality audits, it was ironic that Andersen fell victim to these scandals.     

Panglossian accounting theories: The science of apologising in style

Dr. Pangloss's comment about, “the best of all possible worlds”, is widely remembered, but what we tend to forget is how unpleasant his world really is. Candide's life is marred by pillage, murder, rape, war, torture and natural disasters. The only relief Voltaire provides Candide after each disaster is a bizzare re-iteration of Pangloss's absurd refrain that, “this must be the best of all possible worlds”. Voltaire's Candide warns us about scholarly self-deception and wishful thinking. This warning extends to theorizing about large organizations and corporate accountability: that monopolistic and oligopolistic elements may be underplayed: that the disciplining effect of market competition may be overrated; that managerial self-aggrandizement may be idealized as entrepreneurial heroics, and that research may be trivialized in the quest for objective results and tractable theories. This paper uses Agency Theory and Transaction Cost Theory to spell out the dangers of Panglossian theorizing. It rejects the notion that theories are dispassionate reflections of reality; instead, it views them as materialistically grounded in social conflict — as intellectual terrains on which social interests struggle to re-present and control their realities. In focussing on Agency and Transactional Cost Theory, three types of re-presentational distortion are considered here: those emanating from failing to acknowledge the constituitive potential of theorizing (stressing instead its natural and law-like character); those arising from overstating the empirical validity of theories, and those emerging from neglecting the interests that benefit from research. The implications of the paper are analogous to lessons that Voltaire teaches us through Dr. Pangloss: we may pay a high price if we listen to “simplifying assumptions” and “analytic approaches” of the Pangloss's of accounting thought. Their intellectual pollyannaism frequently promotes social causes that, after some reflection, we might prefer to dissociate ourselves from. Only by explicating the social underpinnings of accounting practices — contemporaneously and historically — and by investigating the social allegiances of different forms of theorizing, do we give ourselves the opportunity of such social self-awareness.     

Americanism and financial accounting theory – Part 1: Was America born capitalist?

This paper (Part 1), and two related papers (Part 2: The ‘modern business enterprise’, America's transition to capitalism, and the genesis of management accounting; and Part 3: Adam Smith, the rise and fall of socialism, and Irving Fisher's theory of accounting), explore historical links between American ideology and Irving Fisher's theory of accounting. They explain Fisher's theory as the product of America's exceptional transition to capitalism and the ideological consequences. Part 1 uses Marx's theories of the transition in England, of colonisation, and of ideology, to construct an accounting history model of America's transition to capitalism that identifies the dominant social relations of production and calculative mentalities, and uses them to predict the accounting signatures and political ideologies we should observe if the theories are correct. Parts 1 and 2 test the model. Part 3 explores the ideological consequences of America's transition, for America and financial accounting. Scholars generally assume that America was ‘born capitalist’; historians argue it became capitalist sometime from the late 18th to early 19th centuries. The model, however, identifies early farmers as ‘simple commodity producers’ who, it predicts, kept only single entry accounts of debt, and had a ‘producer’ ideology of ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’. It identifies planters and manufacturers as ‘semi-capitalists’ – part merchant capitalist and part simple commodity producer – who it predicts calculated ‘profit’ as consumable surplus, pursued the ‘simple rate of profit’, controlled only prime costs, and had an ideology of ‘individualism’ that combined the producers’ ideology with the merchants’ ‘laissez-faire’. Part 1 re-examines evidence from accounts to around the mid-19th century, which confirms that farmers were not capitalists and that even the most advanced merchants, manufacturers and planters were semi-capitalists. Part 2 searches for capitalists in the second half of the 19th century. It re-examines evidence from the accounts of the Boston Associates who historians have seen as ‘proto-industrial capitalists’; from the railroads heralded by Chandler as the beginning of ‘managerial capitalism’; and from ‘entrepreneurial capitalists’ like Andrew Carnegie who created the large corporations that conquered America from the 1880s. Their financial accounts and cost management systems reveal the same semi-capitalist mentality found in the early 19th century. Re-examination of the ‘costing renaissance’ in the 1890s and evidence from the DuPont Powder Company and General Motors from 1900 to 1920, suggests that only from around 1900, after escalating conflict between ‘capital and labour’, did the capitalist mentality appear in new management accounting systems focused on ‘return on investment’. Part 3 shows that the accounting evidence closely correlates with the history of American political ideology. It argues that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations dominated American politics until the late 19th century because it theorised a nation of simple commodity producers and semi-capitalists. It explains the delay in America's transition compared to Britain's, and the decline in the popularity of laissez-faire from the 1880s, as consequences of this exceptional starting point. ‘Big business’ capitalism created an ideological problem for America's ruling elite, particularly the threat of socialism from around 1900 to 1920. Part 3 argues that Fisher's neoclassical theory of ‘capital’ and ‘income’, designed as a critique of Marx, responded to this problem and played an important role in undermining middle class support for socialism. Fisher said he based his theory on accounting practice, particularly double entry bookkeeping, but Part 3 shows he did not use or understand it, which divorced his accounting from reality. American history's legacy to the world, the papers therefore conclude, is a pathological theory of financial accounting.     

Back to the future: New potential for structuration theory in management accounting research?

For three decades, the use of structuration theory has made a distinctive contribution to management accounting research. A recent development of the theory by Stones [Stones, 2005. Structuration Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke] advocates a move away from the relatively abstract concepts evident in the work of Giddens, towards providing more concrete constructs that give epistemological and methodological guidance to researchers in the field. In order to achieve this, he recommends deployment of the concept of position–practices, combined with use of a quadripartite model of structuration. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of this development for management accounting research. We do so by setting it within our own skeletal model of the structuration process, and then using it to analyse a case study of management accounting practices in a privatised utility company. We conclude that investigation of position–practices focuses attention on the strategic conduct of agents, the importance of power in social interaction, and a plurality of structures and theories of action. But, whilst the quadripartite model highlights the phenomenology, hermeneutics and practices of agents, we note that it provides few direct insights into the processes of reproduction, learning and change in management accounting. We suggest this limitation can be overcome by using structuration theory in a flexible manner, drawing inspiration from other theoretical perspectives which ascribe central roles to path dependency, contradiction and praxis.