Richard Mattessich’s Accounting and Analytical Methods (1964) and Yuji Ijiri’s Theory of Accounting Measurement (1975) are two classic works of American accounting literature written by eminent scholars. Mattessich’s work contributed to the debate around the role of accountants in designing systems, and it made a sweeping case for accounting as a management science within an emerging interdisciplinary movement. Ijiri focused on proposing a theory of the conventional accounting system that has facilitated accountability among interested parties during five centuries. Understanding Mattessich and Ijiri takes a 21st-century view of these authors and their work, which was well ahead of its time in the challenges it offered to formidable institutional arrangements. This volume emphasizes Mattessich’s and Ijiri’s processes and circumstances that are irreducible to the argument of rigorous research which had been used to explain 1960s accounting literature, and it re-examines important axiomatic views as foundations for accounting research, views to which both scholars dedicated their early careers. Ultimately, this work unveils how their ideas fit with economic theories and technologies created principally during the first half of the 20th century.
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Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 38, 2013, pp. 72–91
The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently published the final version of Chapter 1 of their joint Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (IASB/FASB, 2010). In this article, we focus on two of the key issues addressed in Chapter 1: stewardship and the definition of the primary user groups of financial statements. To address the discourses surrounding the evolution of Chapter 1, we introduce the concept of 'living law' from sociological jurisprudence into accounting scholarship. We first trace the role of stewardship/accountability in the evolution — from antiquity to the present day — of the living law of accounting. We then explore the origin, nature, and implications — from a living law perspective — of the moral traditions associated with stewardship/accountability. Our analysis suggests that stewardship has been, and continues to be, embedded in the living law of accounting — notwithstanding the formal pronouncements of standard setters. We also examine the social accounting project from a living law perspective and we suggest that such an analysis provides new possibilities for addressing core social accounting concerns. We conclude by arguing that, particularly in light of the far reaching impact of the neoliberal agenda, there is an urgent need for scholars in both contemporary 'social' and 'mainstream' accounting to recognize and build upon their shared living law heritage rooted in the age-old traditions of stewardship/accountability.
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