Reviews the book "Paton on Accounting," edited by Herbert F. Taggart.

Abstract The article presents results of a field inquiry directed to ascertaining some of the perceptions of internal auditing held by persons who have been subjected to one or more phases of an audit process. It is part of an extensive research effort into the control functions of management, as distinguished from planning and decision making, and more particularly, into auditing as a major instrument of organizational control. The laboratory experiments on audit effects indicate that an audit can exert its influence through an audit report whose preparation is a focus toward which audits are customarily pointed, and through an auditor's actions as seen or heard about by those audited, for example, what the auditor looks at, what he ignores, what be pursues vigorously, how he behaves, etc. The interviews with 52 of the 54 individuals included in this study produced reports that allowed the content coder to classify the extent of each respondent's contact with internal auditors. Almost 75% of the respondents indicated either a neutral or a positive attitude toward the internal auditor and the internal audit.

Abstract The article discusses the distinction between the conventional and some of the suggested methods of reporting fixed assets as they affect business income. This is done by presenting an article by professors R.L. Dickens and J.O. Blackburn published in the April 1964 issue of the journal The Accounting Review. These published accounts aid stockholders and other outsiders to project the future earnings and financial condition of the corporation and to assist with the evaluation of the performance of management. According to the author, as the individual requirements of different users of published accounts are unlikely to be cognate, one set of accounts will scarcely fulfill the needs of all stockholders and other outsiders, no matter how "objectively" the asset values contained therein are determined. He suggests that replacement cost, "realizable value," "historic cost," and "historic cost adjusted for price level changes," can provide a basis upon which stockholders and other interested external parties can project the earnings and financial condition of the enterprise according to their own requirements.

Abstract The article reports on recommendations made by the 1964 American Accounting Association Committee on Teacher Development regarding methods and approaches for development of individuals with no teaching experience who aspire to be career accounting instructors. A good teacher should restrict subject matter to be presented in a course to the level of the students' comprehension. At the same time he should stress the relationship of accounting to other fields of business and economics. Accounting teachers must be able to explain accounting. The explanation must be clear, to the point, and adequate. Teachers can identify significant concepts that should be understood and remembered, so that student learning efforts can be channeled to subject-matter areas of major importance. The committee was charged to be primarily concerned with three groups of teachers--doctoral candidates, beginning part-time teachers, and newly-employed staff members with no prior experience in teaching. Doctoral candidates who expect to become teachers should have some carefully supervised teaching experience when pursuing graduate studies.