Accounting practices are the accountant's instruments for measurement and communication. Some practices attain general acceptance because they enhance the accuracy of measurement or reduce equivocation in the information presented. Others are dictated by the structure of particular environments. All may reflect, to some extent, the demands of practicality, expediency, technical and economic necessity, compromise, and diverse other influences. This paper is concerned with the forces contributing to the development of one accounting practice, the dollar-value technique for implementing the last-in, first-out inventory method, and with its legitimacy. Many of the accounting practices in the United States reflect the monetary postulate because measurement techniques have been insufficiently refined to permit other approaches. Recent improvement in the techniques of processing data has made more sophisticated measurements possible. More meaningful accounting data can be generated. But before this can be accomplished, accountants will have to abandon or modify some of their cherished but illogical practices which often lead to inaccurate and misleading measurements.

Reviews the book "Personal Deductions in the Federal Income Tax," by C. Harry Kahn.

The article focuses on the five-year accounting program, recommended by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. It recommended that the study of accounting be concentrated in a fifth year following a four-year undergraduate arts and sciences program. A fundamental assumption inherent in any five-year accounting program must be that the purpose of a university undergraduate program is to educate students rather than to train them. The implied objective of such a program is to place emphasis on stimulating and motivating the student to learn because education is of value per se rather than because it is a means to acquire a skill, which will provide a livelihood. The educational system in the U.S. utilizes the "course" as the mechanistic framework for imparting knowledge. Implementing the "education not training" objective requires that the content of a course be part of the fund of human knowledge, which should be acquired because of its intrinsic value. Furthermore, the ideas and concepts of such courses should be presented in an analytical and interpretive manner, which will stimulate logical and independent thought.

The article discusses about educating tomorrow's accountant. In many Universities there are courses of study, more or less formalized, which can be described as accounting "programs," "majors," or "curricula." These programs generally are designed to equip the student with the knowledge and attitudes necessary to enable him to enter the accounting profession and to develop in that profession his maximum inherent capabilities. The literature of accounting is punctuated with ideas about the nature of accounting education, and one rather monumental study of educational requirements for CPA's has been made. The generally accepted accounting principles in conformity with which so many accounts are kept consist not of fundamental truths or basic doctrines, but of conventions designed to enhance the usefulness of accountants' reports. These conventions are sufficiently broad to shield a wide variety of accounting practices. The rule-making function consists of two kinds of activities. The first establishing broad rules of conduct is carried on primarily by the academicians and the public accounting practitioners, the two most highly professionalized segments of the field of accounting. These broad rules of conduct are "generally accepted accounting principles." The accounting curriculum that extends itself through such courses as retail accounting, accounting for engineers, accounting for ranch hands, accounting for hotels, and other special accounting courses which are nothing more than specific systems and techniques should be frowned upon. Such problems can be solved upon contact by the well educated accountant.

Reviews the book "Management Systems: A Book of Readings," by Peter P. Schoderbek.

The article reports that product of any managerial accounting system, like that of all other information systems, is information. The nature of accounting is that of an information system. As an information system, accounting deals selectively with problems of the same order as more general information systems. Managerial accounting systems are comprised of eight functional elements: Perception, recordation, storage, retrieval, processing, transmission, presentation, and decision making. Like general purpose information systems, the output of accounting systems purport to educate the recipients of that output. One of the early effects of the information systems syndrome on managerial accounting was produced as a secondary result of computer-induced changes in the organizational structure of the enterprise. Many lower-level clerical and middle-management jobs have disappeared, and activities formerly performed at these levels have been "taken over" by the computer. In other organizations, middle-management positions have assumed even greater importance than before as planning and control functions have been moved to lower organizational levels.

The article focuses on fundamental changes in accounting system courses in colleges and universities of the U.S. Fundamental change is often characterized by independent efforts to find common solutions to problems, to devise the best method of attacking problems. These courses vary from those, which are quite similar to the traditional systems course to those, which have as a major tenet the assumption that the information system includes but is not limited to present-day accounting. A characteristic common to some is an emphasis upon the interrelationship between information and decision-making or control. Information and control systems are a requisite of survival for organizations of all kinds. In the business organization, the information and control system should be an integrated set of information networks, policies, procedures, decision functions, and control mechanisms. Management information and control systems should be integrations and syntheses of accounting and other organizational information systems.

Reviews the book "Prediction and Optimal Decision: Philosophical Issues of a Science of Values," by C. West Churchman.