On the methodology of a conceptual framework for financial accounting

Abstract

This is the second of two papers which examine some important questions raised by the ‘conceptual framework’ (CF) project carried out by the FASB in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first paper provided a critique of the approach used by the FASB, by analysing the Board's methodology as it appears from key documents published by the Board, against a background of methodological insights available from studies of policy formulation (Lindblom, 1959) and of legal validity from a systems perspective (Raz, 1979). The present paper extends the analysis from a systems approach to jurisprudence (Raz, 1979), into the field of ‘soft systems’ analysis, against a historical background of developments in systems methodology during the 1970s (Rowe, 1977; Checkland, 1981). It concludes by summarizing a number of epistemological implications for accounting, both as a profession and as an intellectual discipline. The implications are that accounting as a discipline can either stagnate as a ‘folk-science’ in a vain sear...