Knowledge that Transforms

Reviews the book "Planning and Control Systems: A Framework for Analysis," by Robert N. Anthony.

In this article the author investigates the mathematical propriety of accounting measurement and calculations. The author has seen that the ratio scale and mathematical fields govern the mathematical propriety of accounting measurement and calculation, respectively. Given that p is the property to be measured and F the set of items a, b, c, ... possessing property p, one can quantify the content of property p in each item of F. A substantial portion of the problem of accounting measurement was then reduced to determining p and m(F).

The article presents news briefs on the accounting profession in the U.S. as of October 1966. James M. Fremgen has been appointed chairman of the Department of Business Administration at the U. S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Meanwhile, Roger L. Hermanson has been promoted to associate professor at the University of Maryland. The Myra Fox Skelton Foundation has announced broad support of a Program of Excellence in Accounting Education at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

Reviews the book "Law and Contemporary Problems: Uniformity in Financial Accounting," vol. 30.

The article focuses on the issue of revolutionizing accounting theory, which has been a left out proposal in the past few years. Revolutionaries have devoted a high proportion of their total effort to the related problems of profit determination and asset valuation. C.T. Horngren, a scholar, suggested a compromise plan which attempts to accommodate clashing interpretations of the significance of realization only. Horngren's article attempts, through a critical examination of some important proposals of recent years, to discover the root cause of disagreement over the optimum concept of value and to suggest a compromise path along which the revolution in valuation and income theory may progress. The article concludes that a compromise solution to this conflict of widely divergent views in this area would be to adopt a valuation rule that requires each asset to be valued according to the basis offering "sufficiently definite verifiable evidence" and yielding what is believed to be the closest approximation to the present value of the asset's future cash flows.

Reviews the book "Accounting: Basic Financial and Control Concepts," by W.T. Anderson, C.A. Moyer and A.R. Wyatt.

Reviews the book "Business Finance: A Management Approach," by Louis K. Brandt.