Financial reporting, Financial reporting users, Controller, Stakeholders of Accounting

Book review, Theory of the firm

Conservatism

Abstract The article focuses on repairs and replacements concerning depreciation policy. Accountants writing in the field of depreciation, particularly with regard to repairs, renewals, replacements, betterments, etc., have placed what seems to the author undue emphasis on the physical and productive aspects of the problem. Such criteria for accounting procedures do not offer a rational basis for the solution of many accounting difficulties which arise in this field. There are cases, no doubt, in which the replacing of a simple rivet or bolt will increase the productivity of a complicated machine from zero to one hundred per cent. Moreover, the fact that an "extraordinary" repair will probably increase the service life of the entire machine or make the unit perform more efficiently, while of critical importance in guiding the management in reaching the decision to make the change, ordinarily does not constitute a rational basis for determining whether the expenditure should be taken to operations in the period of incurrment or deferred to future operations.

Abstract The paper examines some methods of inquiry and suggests certain types of investigation that seem to be appropriate for the study of accounting. More specifically, a tentative framework is set forth to indicate some possible levels of abstraction at which research in accounting could be undertaken. Such a framework, to be complete, would need to cover an area that ranges from the simplest aspects of fact collection to the philosophical boundaries of concept formation. Various broad areas are explained that are related to accounting investigation. These areas include logical structure and deductive systems, measurement and induction, behavioral relations and welfare and normative responsibilities. Measurement and induction deals in an elementary way with some non-deductive problems of scientific method and in passing with its application to research in accounting. The accounting research may not be related to problems concerned with the efficient measurement of transaction flows unless efficiency itself is defined in terms of the accomplishment of socially worthy objectives.

Reviews the book "Social Science Research on Business Product and Potential," by Robert A. Dahl, Mason Haire and Paul F. Lazarsfeld.

Reviews the book "Accounting--A Social Force in the Community," by Mary E. Murphy.

Reviews the book "Marginal Cost Price-Output Control," by Burnham Putnam Beckwith.

Abstract Almost all standard textbooks in accounting, as teachers well know, open with a chapter devoted to the field of accounting and its relationship to law, engineering, economics and the social order in general. Unfortunately in their haste to get to the condition statement, the operating report and the mechanics of debit and credit many teachers devote a small part of the organizational period to such broad relationships and thereafter uniformly neglect the material of formal economics. It is probably not unfair to add that many instructors who later refer to economics do so in a manner that is unenlightening if not downright objectionable. The lack of agreement among economists leads to such diverse positions that the problem of rapid integration becomes almost impossible. The two comparatively recent revolutions in economics have added to the difficulty of integration. The Keynesian revolution of the late nineteen-thirties placed emphasis on the problem of employment and its determinants.

Reviews the book "Marginal Costing," by F.C. Lawrence and E.N. Humphreys.