Two Hundred Years of Accounting Research (Routledge New Works in Accounting History)

630 Pages·2007·2.51 MB·English

by  R. Mattessich

Two Hundred Years of Accounting
Research
This book offers a rich survey of the efforts that accounting academics, and
often enough theoretically inclined practitioners, have invested in accounting
research during a 200-year period. Although there are several prominent histor-
ical books and encyclopaedias on accounting history, an integrated work con-
centrating on accounting research from an international point of view has long
been overdue.
Mattessich’s book is the first and only one to offer a comprehensive survey of
accounting research on a broad international scale for the last two centuries. Its
main emphasis is on accounting research in the English, German, Italian, French
and Spanish language areas; it also contains chapters dealing with research in
Finland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland and the Ukraine as well
as Argentina and Japan. A separate chapter summarizes research activity in the
rest of the globe from Eastern Europe to Israel, the Arab and African countries
as well as India, China and other countries of the Far East.
In a time of financial globalization, familiarity with accounting research in
countries beyond the English language boundary is no less important than
familiarity with the recent, comprehensive research activity in the English lan-
guage area. This book fulfils both of those needs; it may serve practitioners and
auditors all over the world, no less than students of accounting interested in the
evolution of its research efforts. It also offers a survey of the present state of
the art (from empirical to analytical accounting and from such esoteric subjects
as gender issues to the archaeology of accounting); finally, it casts a glance into
the future.
Richard Mattessich is Professor Emeritus of Accounting at the Sauder School
of Business, University of British Columbia, Canada. He has received many
awards and is profiled in such works as Edward’s Twentieth Century Accounting
Thinkers, Chatfield and Vangermeersch’s A History of Accounting – An Inter-
national Encyclopediaand Colasse’s Les Grands Auteurs en Comptabilité.
Routledge new works in accounting history
Edited by
Garry Carnegie
Melbourne University Private, Australia
John Richard Edwards
Cardiff University, UK
Salvador Carmona
Instituto de Empresa, Spain
Dick Fleischman
John Carroll University, USA
1 The Institute of Accounts
Nineteenth-century origins of accounting professionalism in the United
States
Stephen E. Loeb and Paul J. Miranti, Jr
2 Professionalism and Accounting Rules
Brian P. West
3 Accounting Theory
Essays by Carl Thomas Devine
Edited by Harvey S. Hendrickson and Paul F. Williams
4 Mark to Market Accounting
‘True North’ in financial reporting
Walter P. Schuetze, edited by Peter W. Wolnizer
5 A History of Auditing
The changing audit process in Britain from the nineteenth century to the
present day
Derek Matthews
6 Contemporary Issues in Financial Reporting
A user-oriented approach
Paul Rosenfield
7 The Development of the American Public Accountancy Profession
Scottish chartered accountants and the early American public accountancy
profession
T.A. Lee
8 Two Hundred Years of Accounting Research
An international survey of personalities, ideas and publications (from the
beginning of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first
century)
Richard Mattessich

Two Hundred Years of
Accounting Research
An international survey of
personalities, ideas and publications
(from the beginning of the nineteenth
century to the beginning of the twenty-
first century)
Richard Mattessich
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
in collaboration with (in alphabetical order): Svetlana M. Bychkova (St Peters-
burg State Agricultural University), Daniel Carrasco Díaz (University of
Málaga, Spain), Jean-Guy Degos (University Montesquieu of Bordeaux,
France), Belén Fernández-Feijóo Souto (University of Vigo, Spain), Giuseppe
L q
Galassi (University of Parma, Italy), M. Frendzel (University of od ), Esteban
Hernández Esteve (University Autónoma of Madrid), Alicja Jaruga (University
L q
of od ), Yoshiaki Koguchi (Chuo University, Tokyo), Hans-Ulrich Küpper
(Maximilian University of Munich), Konstantin Redchenko (Academy of Com-
merce, Lvóv, Ukraine), Yaroslav V. Sokolov (St Petersburg Institute of
L q
Commerce and Economics), Anna Szychta (University of od ), Enrico Viganò
(University of Naples), Cristina Wirth (University of San Andrés, Buenos Aires)
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2008 Richard Mattessich
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-93985-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-77256-7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-93985-9 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-77256-3 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-93985-7 (ebk)
To Hermi

Contents
Preface xvii
Acknowledgements xix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The need for a broad international survey 1
1.2 Accounting research as an intellectual endeavour 2
1.3 The methodology pursued 5
1.4 Overview of the book 7
1.5 General remark to the reference sections of all chapters 20
2 The nineteenth century: an international survey 21
2.1 The pioneers of early accounting research 21
2.2 Theories of ‘accounts’ 23
2.3 Personalistic versus materialistic theories of ‘accounts’ 25
2.4 The proprietary theory 27
2.5 The entity theory 29
2.6 Other accounting theories 30
2.7 Developments in budgeting, valuation, depreciation and
costing 31
2.8 Further advances, particularly in cost and factory
accounting 34
2.9 Concluding remarks 37
2.10 Appendix 39
3 German language area: first half of the twentieth
century 41
3.1 Introduction 41
3.2 ‘Accounts’ as the centre of theories 43
3.3 Inflation after the First World War and accounting
theories 46