Abstract ABSTRACT: This paper reviews the circumstances attending five major turning points in the process by which accounting principles have been established in the United States. Particular attention is directed to the apparent reasons why the new approaches or reforms were undertaken. The review, which covers a 56-year period, concludes that generalizations about the factors that were influential in the shaping of the decision-making process, especially over so long a period, are difficult to make. Nonetheless, a motivating force seems to have been the accounting profession's fear of government involvement. The American Accounting Association is seen to have played a role at several of the junctures.

Abstract The article reviews actions taken by the author as the editor to the journal "The Accounting Review." According to the author, one of the most important decisions taken by him was to decentralize the editorial review process and to designate three individuals to serve as sub-editors beginning in 1980. Approximately one in five of the new manuscripts received since the second half of 1980 were handled by sub-editors, who chose reviewers and made editorial decisions. Sub-editors were assigned manuscripts falling within their respective areas of expertise, thus enabling a more sensitive assessment of the potential of each manuscript. In his opinion this experiment with decentralization has been a success. While the concept of decentralization has thus been shown to work, the measure of its success is unquestionably a function of talents of the three academics Bob Swieringa, Bill Kinney and Dan Collins, who so ably served as sub-editors. Another decision requiring considerable thought and consultation was related to the journal's policy on reproduction of articles. Although some journals had begun assessing a per-page or per-article fee for such reproduction and others had announced no policy at all under the Copyright Act of 1976, the journal decided upon perhaps the most liberal of possible policies.

Abstract ABSTRACT: Kenneth MacNeal was the author of Truth in Accounting, a 1939 book known for its undiluted advocacy of "economic value" accounting. Thus far, MacNeal's book and other writings, though cited, have not been subjected to in-depth analysis. Nothing is publicly known about MacNeal's background, how he came to write the book, how it was received, and why he ceased contributing to the accounting literature a scant two years after the appearance of the book. In this article, MacNeal's work is placed in an historical frame, and the principal arguments in his book are critically examined. Finally, an incident, hitherto unreported in the accounting literature, in which MacNeal was commissioned by Fortune to write an article critical of the accounting profession in the wake of the McKesson & Robbins scandal, only to be told, under suspicious circumstances, that the commission had been rescinded, is related.

Abstract In this article the author comments on the impact of economic consequences on intermediate and advanced accounting. The author uses some textbooks to discuss these accounting practices. In all of the textbooks, an accounting model has dealt with the matching of costs with revenues in order to arrive at a proper measure of income. The emergence of the decision usefulness approach to accounting theory has led textbook authors to refer more to the possible uses of accounting information. The article also aims to argue for a course of reform.

Abstract The article focuses on the role and function of the "intermediate" course in the accounting curriculum. According to the author, an acceleration in the issuance by standard-setting bodies of highly specific and definitive accounting pronouncements has burdened intermediate textbooks and intermediate courses with what has come to be called legal accounting. The issue of what to do about "intermediate" accounting is confounded by discord over the relative weights to be assigned in the accounting curriculum to preparing students to pass the Uniform Certified Public Accountants Examination and preparing students for longer-term assignments in the profession. Accounting teachers have placed almost the entire burden of conveying the contents of the most controversial accounting pronouncements on the intermediate course that precious little time remains for acquainting students with a theory of the field which they are about to enter. One reaction to this predicament has been to expand intermediate from three semester hours to four, or from one course to two.

Abstract The article reports on the process of editorial review. It is the object of this article to describe and explain the reviewing process and to comment on the points of particular sensitivity. Except when associate editors are involved, the entire review process is conducted anonymously. Many reviewers prefer not to know the author's identity, and authors sometimes believe that factors attendant to their identity may serve to prejudice the reviewers. Apart from the design of the process itself, much of which is inherited from one's predecessors, the two most critical decisions are the choice of the reviewers and the editorial decision to be made on the basis of the reviewers' analyses and recommendations. Reviewers serve in an advisory capacity to the editor. It is important to emphasize that it is the editor who decides on a manuscript. It is to be hoped that the editor will be guided in the great majority of instances by advice furnished by the reviewers. But the responsibility for making sound editorial decisions is necessarily his, and it must be understood that he may disagree with their counsel. In such circumstances, he may seek advice from still other reviewers until he believes that a particular course of action deserves his support.

Abstract The article focuses on the issue of communicating accounting research results. With the research into the accounting literature, it has been asked whether the findings of the research are being transmitted effectively to those who would endeavor to understand the implications of the research for the future of the discipline. It may be urged that a disservice would be done to the cause of path-breaking research if its results must be seen to be conveyed in the same widely understandable terms as might be found in the more familiar applications. Journals do not perform the same role as seminars or colloquia to which only a small circle of highly trained researchers might be invited. Authors of frontier research may communicate among themselves at such gatherings and through the circulation of working papers. Those who would seek publication in a journal are assumed to be prepared to make their research accessible to a wider audience, and it is the responsibility of a journal editor to facilitate this dissemination by encouraging authors to remove the unnecessary obstacles.