Reintroducing John Maurice Clark to the Accounting Academy

Abstract

This paper reintroduces economist John Maurice Clark to the accounting academic community while investigating his role in the development of managerial accounting. Clark was a prominent American economist during the early half of the 20th century, whose first major book, Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs (Clark 1923a), has been described by diverse authors as foundational to the field of managerial accounting, especially overhead estimation and differential analysis. An overview of Clark's life is provided, followed by discussion of the importance of his work to accounting. Citation counts of his work in various accounting journals reveal that although widely referenced by accounting scholars for a short time after the publication of Overhead Costs, his name then disappeared from the literature, and indicates that his work is underappreciated. The paper discusses why this lacuna in accounting history is significant, and gives possible explanations for why Clark's work has been overlooked.