Abstract In the October 1964, issue of the journal "The Accounting Review," professor Neil Churchill presented four applications of matrix algebra in cost allocation situations. Where functional relationships between allocation sources and destinations are determinable and stable, linear algebra is shown to be a convenient tool for getting the cost allocation job done. Churchill presents a technique that is finding increasing use as accountants become more experienced with formulative methods. However, the artful economy of wording and symbolism that makes his presentation compact is also a source of frustration for one who bootstraps his way to an understanding of such matters. As long as the allocating relationships and proportions remain stable, Churchill's foreshortened approach works very well. The same matrix approach can be expanded to allocations of larger dimension, and of more than one layer. While the problem appears frightening when viewed in its entirety, a step-by-step venture through it will lead eventually to placement of all costs in the service using departments. The utility of such allocations, from a cost-control viewpoint, can be questioned, but that is an entirely different question with which researchers do not propose to engage here.

Abstract The accounting professionals are quite preoccupied with "The New," and much of its vitality stems from its pursuit of "The New." Society seems to equate newness with progress, either rightly or wrongly. For one thing, there have been some pretty important changes in accounting technique or emphasis or methodology, arising out of developments in political economy, in physical technology, and in the organization of commerce. In political economy proposed methods of getting economic growth have their accounting implications. Federal tax policy and federal monetary policy are important agents or retardants in economic growth, and important determinants of changes in the accountant's task. To parallel these continuing changes in the practice of accounting, there are some necessities and some opportunities for change in educational methodology. When an accounting teacher begins to survey these areas in which innovation and/or change has taken place, he finds himself right in the middle of a complex in which everything seems to be shifting one way or another. This article attempts to explore the patterns in which people respond to change in their work situations, the ideas going in a man's mind-unknown even to himself, that causes him to react in a particular way to impending changes and accounting people's reaction, when someone else's new idea begins to affect them.

Reviews the book "The Appraisal of Capital Expenditures," by C.G. Edge.

Reviews the book "Management Organization and the Computer," edited by George P. Schultz and Thomas L. Whisler.

Abstract The most pervasive feature of "businessman's culture" atmosphere is change. Change, in a commercial culture equates to progress, something new, something different, is intrinsically valid. Change results in new markets, new jobs, new opportunities for investment and for profit. This enthusiasm for innovation, for obsolescence through social temperament rather than through physical necessity, is so much a part of conditioning that one hopefully embrace every new gadget, nostrum, or notion, whether social, medical, or managerial, without really critical examination. Computer systems have an important place to play in part of faculty education and ultimately in student education for management. The scope of these kinds of systems is so large that only high-speed processing systems can let one experiment with whatever ideas one dream up. One can fly businesses many times without the danger of getting hurt by crashing. One become more sophisticated in refining management games and process simulators, one will be able to deal more and more with the unpredictable's that affect business results. And will also be moving slowly toward discovering a real "science of management."

Abstract The article presents information on acquisition of electronic data processing (EDP) by universities. Universities contemplating the acquisition of commercial electronic data processing equipment face a situation which makes their approach at once both like and unlike that of industrial firms. The university is at one time both a cost-justifying business establishment (in its business office operations) and a purposefully loss-incurring experiment station (in its research and teaching operations). The duality of viewpoint places university administrators in a position of having to be sympathetic toward academic demands for tremendously high-priced equipment and at the same time to be hard-boiled about cost justification, for the school's own commercial uses. The uncertainties of prospective cost savings and the relatively costly long-term manpower requirements in making ready, are good reasons for university comptrollers to take a long, slow look at EDP. The writer suggests that to meet the need for qualified faculty, more teachers must extend their educational backgrounds to include the whole "management science" area and specifically the EDP specialty.

The article reviews the book "Contemporary Issues in Cost Accounting: A Discipline in Transition," edited by Hector Anton and Peter Firmin.

Abstract The article focuses on recommendations made by the 1964 American Accounting Association Committee on Courses and Curricula--Electronic Data Processing. The committee recommended that at the undergraduate level, accounting students should be exposed to electronic data processing in stages. Added emphasis should be placed in the accounting systems course on logical information flows and on multi-dimensional information requirements rather than on the form and content of specific accounting records. At the master's degree level, the student must have at least the same proficiency as an undergraduate, but hopefully it will be at a more sophisticated level. At the doctoral level, accounting systems instruction is a distinct subject-matter area, as are accounting theory, internal accounting, taxes and auditing. A doctoral degree presumes at least a sound foundation knowledge in each of the broad accounting areas, with a high degree of expertise in the candidate's specialist area. The committee also recommended that substantial attention should be given both by individual schools and by the American Accounting Association, to the need for a re-orientation of accounting toward an analytical approach rather than one which is mainly descriptive.