The article focuses on some of the most significant problems that have arisen in adapting laboratory experimentation to accounting research. Through the use of such systematic techniques, accountants are attempting to better understand many important problems in any laboratory experiment the selection of subjects is important. Selection of a group of subjects who are for some reason undesirable will invalidate the final results regardless of how elaborate and well conceived the remainder of the experimental design may be. Experience in studies to date suggests that the assumption about population homogeneity can not be made casually. A recent study in this area has shown that, in fact, students and businessmen do react differently to particular laboratory experiments. While a great deal of attention has been devoted to the selection of the proper subjects, not enough emphasis has been placed upon the selection of the experimental environment. It is in this area that accountants doing behavioral research ought to concentrate greater effort.

This article focuses on a study which investigated the implications of behavioral science for managerial accounting. Accountants have been involved with the behavioral dimension of accounting problems for quite some time. The management information system of any firm is not solely a technical communication system, one designed only to permit data to flow from one point in the system (i.e., the firm) to another. Very little research has been done on the form of the relationships between the organization and the individual and its implication for accounting data. A more decentralized form of organization would, he conjectured, ease many of the accounting problems by refocusing the attention of supervisors to other, less arbitrary sets of data. The study of management control systems has progressed in three areas: the problems in standard setting, the impact of the audit function, and the reporting of relevant data.

Reviews accounting books by Ahmed Belkaoui. `Behavioral Accounting'; `Human Information Processing in Accounting'; `The Coming Crisis in Accounting.'

Reviews the book "Behavioral Science: Concepts and Management Application," by Harold M. F. Rush.

Reviews the book "Managerial Economics and Operations Research," edited by Edwin Mansfield.

Reviews the book "Management Uses of Accounting," by Wilber C. Haseman.

This article focuses on a study which demonstrated how similar types of standard cost variance analysis may be applied to the control of the application and performance of formal decision models. Previous efforts to improve the usefulness of standard cost variance analysis have tended to focus on one of two related problems. Proposals have been offered that had as their objective either an improvement in the types of variances the accountant should calculate or in his methods for analyzing the significance of observed variances. The essential difference between process control and model control lies in the type of response management should make to an observed variance. The appropriate response by management depends upon the expected source of the deviation. Traditionally, standard cost systems have concentrated on the analysis of type 1 and type 2-a deviations. These systems have not been designed to indicate when and if type 2-b deviations are critical to the decision process.