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.

This is the first and only book to offer a comprehensive survey of accounting research on a broad international scale for the last two centuries. Its main emphasis is on accounting research in the English, German, Italian, French and Spanish language areas; it also contains chapters dealing with research in Finland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland and the Ukraine as well as Argentina and Japan.

In a time of financial globalization, familiarity with accounting research in countries beyond the English language boundary is no less important than familiarity with the recent, comprehensive research activity in the English language area. It also offers a survey of the present state of the art (from empirical to analytical accounting and from such esoteric subjects as gender issues to the archaeology of accounting); finally, it casts a glance into the future.

This is the first and only book to offer a comprehensive survey of accounting research on a broad international scale for the last two centuries. Its main emphasis is on accounting research in the English, German, Italian, French and Spanish language areas; it also contains chapters dealing with research in Finland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland and the Ukraine as well as Argentina and Japan. In a time of financial globalization, familiarity with accounting research in countries beyond the English language boundary is no less important than familiarity with the recent, comprehensive research activity in the English language area. It also offers a survey of the present state of the art (from empirical to analytical accounting and from such esoteric subjects as gender issues to the archaeology of accounting); finally, it casts a glance into the future.

Series Information:
New Works in Accounting History

This book discusses and summarizes the revived interest in reality issues (ontology) within accounting, economics, and the information sciences, with a view to informing scholars from these different disciplines about each other's endeavours in ontological research. Even more importantly, the book aims at familiarizing scholars from various disciplines with an evolutionary approach for examining questions about reality in the social sciences. The book is based on a partly pluralistic approach that assures unity in diversity. Unity, because all existence arises from physical reality; diversity, because emergent properties create biological and social realities that cannot be reduced to physical phenomena. Hence, the book recognizes not only concrete but also abstract entities. It shows, however, that the actualization of these abstract entities requires objectification and concrete manifestation. This pluralistic approach is central to this book. It also is a challenge to those who reject abstract entities as socially real, as well as to those who defend a non-realist position. The major task of this book is to explore proposals towards a uniform ontological basis. This uniform and universal presentation extends beyond traditional ontology (asking 'what is real?') to such questions as 'on which reality level is something real?' and 'in which (temporal and modal) way is it real?'. Such an extended analysis) is relevant to accountants, economists, information scientists, other social scientists as well as philosophers.

Based on recent archaeological, historical and accounting research, this book presents a series of well-supported, but often surprising hypotheses on the 10,000 year-old history of accounting. Mattessich also illustrates the astounding sophistication manifested in some of the accounting and budgeting procedures throughout history. The second part of the book deals with the first manuscript containing sections describing accounting activities, the Kautilya's Arthasastra, written about 300 BC in India.

This book has been written primarily for the applied and social scientist and student who longs for an integrated picture of the foundations on which his research must ultimately rest; but hopefully the book may also serve philosophers interested in applied disciplines and in systems methodology. If integration was the major motto, the need for a method ology, appropriate to the teleological peculiarities of all applied sciences, was the main impetus behind the conception of the present work. This need I felt a long time ago in my own area of analytical and empirical research in accounting theory and management science; later I had the opportunity to teach, for almost a decade, graduate seminars in Methodology which offered particular insight into the methodological needs of students of such applied disciplines as business administration, education, engineering, infor matics, etc. Out of this effort grew the present book which among other things tries, on one side, to illuminate the difference and relationship between methods of cognition and methods of decision and on the other, to sketch a framework suitable for depicting means-end relationships in a holistic setting. I believe that a systems methodology which incorporates recent endeavours of deontic logic, decision theory, information economics and related areas would be eminently suited to break the ground for such a future framework. Yet systems theory has two major shortcomings which might prevent it from evolving into the desired methodology of applied science."

This book discusses and summarizes the revived interest in reality issues (ontology) within accounting, economics, and the information sciences, with a view to informing scholars from these different disciplines about each other's endeavours in ontological research. Even more importantly, the book aims at familiarizing scholars from various disciplines with an evolutionary approach for examining questions about reality in the social sciences. The book is based on a partly pluralistic approach that assures unity in diversity. Unity, because all existence arises from physical reality; diversity, because emergent properties create biological and social realities that cannot be reduced to physical phenomena. Hence, the book recognizes not only concrete but also abstract entities. It shows, however, that the actualization of these abstract entities requires objectification and concrete manifestation. This pluralistic approach is central to this book. It also is a challenge to those who reject abstract entities as socially real, as well as to those who defend a non-realist position. The major task of this book is to explore proposals towards a uniform ontological basis. This uniform and universal presentation extends beyond traditional ontology (asking 'what is real?') to such questions as 'on which reality level is something real?' and 'in which (temporal and modal) way is it real?'. Such an extended analysis) is relevant to accountants, economists, information scientists, other social scientists as well as philosophers.