Description:
The increasing gap between the theory and practice of accounting should be taken as a warning that academics have emphasized the economics and sociology of accounting, while neglecting the applied science of accounting. This treatise points a way out of the present dilemma by focusing on the need for dealing with moral and other normative issues as well as the problem of relating means to ends. It also attempts a bold synthesis of the two major opposing camps of present-day academic accounting, the Critical-Interpretive Perspective of Great Britain, on one side, and the Positive Accounting Theory of America, on the other. The challenging issues that this book raises should be of great interest to practitioners, no less than academics, to senior undergraduates, no less than to graduate students and all those interested in an unorthodox perspective of an exciting, but often misunderstood, field.
Brief description:
RICHARD V. MATTESSICH is Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia, where he held the Arthur Andersen & Co. Chair. Mattessich and his work have been discussed in Twentieth-Century Accounting Thinkers (1994) and similar surveys, and his professional memoirs were published in Japan by Chuo University. His practical experience comprises several years as an engineer and accountant. He is a Ford Foundation Fellow (USA), a distinguished Erskine Fellow (New Zealand), a Killam Senior Fellow (Canada), and a member of two national academies (Italy and Austria), as well as an honorary Life Member of the Academy of Accounting Historians. He has served on the Board of Governors of the School of Chartered Accountancy of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia and was on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Certified General Accountants Research Foundation for six years.
Review Quotes: "Professor Richard Mattessich is one of the most eminent accounting thinkers of our century....In this book (Critique of Accounting) Professor Mattessich has integrated his views and research conducted for almost four decades....the book is Mattessich's protest against aspects prevailing in contemporary accounting such as the relative neglect of ethics and norms, the methodological intolerance of positive accounting theory, the searching for an absolute value notion, and the treatment of academic accounting as a pure science....The book will be of interest to many researchers in accounting--not only to those working in an analytical accounting area but also to those interested in empirical research. It should be one of the most important works for doctoral students and young faculty members..."-European Accounting Review