{"title":"George Sorter’s Influence on Accounting Thought","authors":"R. Bloom","doi":"10.2308/aahj-2020-015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/aahj-2020-015","url":null,"abstract":"An innovative accounting theorist and educator, Sorter was concerned about how accounting information could be used in financial and management decision making. He formulated an events approach to accounting that called for providing a vast array of presumably relevant information to users of financial reports to allow them as individuals to select whichever data they deemed suitable to make their own long run forecasts and their own financial and management decisions. He emphasized that valuation of the firm is a subjective endeavor, a matter of individual user perception. He served as the research director of the AICPA’s Trueblood Report (1973), which laid the foundation for the FASB’s Conceptual Framework.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47613658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Early Internal Control Practices in the United States Army and the Evolution of Internal Control Practices in Businesses","authors":"W. Bowlin","doi":"10.2308/aahj-18-017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/aahj-18-017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This research analyzes, via an examination of documents from a frontier fort, Fort Abercrombie, Dakota Territory, the internal controls the U.S. Army had in place in the mid-1800s. Findings include: (1) that there are controls in place that safeguard assets, encourage efficient and effective use of funds, and comply with appropriations passed by the U.S. Congress; (2) the army's control system is similar in nature to the effective control system identified by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission; and (3) the army contributed to the evolution of internal controls in business.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43692791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Salmagundi: A Mixture or Assortment–A Potpourri","authors":"W. Black","doi":"10.2308/aahj-10713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/aahj-10713","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48160321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Oleo, Whiskey, and Cigars: How William Henry Osborn Implemented the 1913 Federal Income Tax","authors":"M. Stolberg","doi":"10.2308/aahj-52542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/aahj-52542","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Many scholars have chronicled the long political and legal battle that led to ratification of the 16th Amendment on February 25, 1913. However, none have described how the Bureau of Internal Revenue implemented the tax in only six months on a shoestring budget. William H. Osborn, the commissioner who oversaw the effort, left a diary of his experiences, which sheds light on the political, budgetary, and bureaucratic challenges he faced. While most internal revenue commissioners work in relative obscurity, Osborn won public acclaim by pursuing long-neglected evasions with headline grabbing criminal cases, pushing against patronage to hire qualified agents, and instituting cost-saving efficiencies. He melded political acumen, administrative genius, and a talent for inspiring his employees to build the basic framework for modern federal income tax collections. His experiences highlight the important, but often overlooked, role played by skilled bureaucrats.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46831127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reflections on Biography in Accounting History","authors":"W. Black","doi":"10.2308/aahj-52543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/aahj-52543","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Discussion of the role of biography and biographical analysis in the study of accounting history.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43344432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Australians and New Zealanders Taking Their Accounting Doctorate in the United States: 1960s to 2018","authors":"S. Zeff","doi":"10.2308/AAHJ-52537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/AAHJ-52537","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This is a compilation of Australians and New Zealanders taking their accounting doctorate in the United States.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49532348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
V. Antonelli, E. M. Cafaro, R. D’Alessio, M. Bigoni
{"title":"The Roles of Accounting in Agro-Pastoral Settings: The Case of the Landed Estates of Prince Sambiase in the Mid-Eighteenth Century","authors":"V. Antonelli, E. M. Cafaro, R. D’Alessio, M. Bigoni","doi":"10.2308/AAHJ-10667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/AAHJ-10667","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 International literature on agricultural accounting is yet to pay a significant level of attention to the investigation of the roles that accounting can play in the agricultural domain beyond its traditional function of promoting efficiency and rational decision making. Informed by Miller and Power's (2013) analysis of the functions that accounting can have in different socio-institutional contexts, the paper adds to extant literature by studying the roles of accounting in Prince Sambiase's properties, located in Southern Italy, in the mid-eighteenth century. On his lands agricultural and pastoral activities were managed in a semi-feudal setting, combining serfdom and waged labor, barter and monetary exchange, consumption and production. Based on primary and secondary sources, this study focuses on the property lists, inventories, the double-entry bookkeeping system and workers control practices used on Prince Sambiase's estates to document how they were employed as territorializing, adjudicating, mediating and subjectivizing practices.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49241096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Audited Financial Statements Facilitated Shareholder Activism for the Colonization of Western Canada","authors":"Gary P. Spraakman, A. Kemper, Ken Ogata","doi":"10.2308/AAHJ-52527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/AAHJ-52527","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In 1863, ownership of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) was transferred from a small group of patient shareholders to a much larger group of rent-seeking investors. These new shareholders obliged the HBC to introduce audited financial statements beginning in 1866. These shareholders assumed that audited financial statements were credible artifacts for sharing in the HBC's wealth (by facilitating the sale of the HBC's Charter to the Canadian Government, thereby enabling the creation of Western Canada). This paper contributes to the literature by showing how audited financial statements enable shareholders to become more knowledgeable about a company's prospects through emancipatory accounting, and thereby to be more demanding of management for performance. The underlying conjecture that financial statement knowledge leads to shareholder activism was not disproved.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48953623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Past, Present, and Future of Accounting History","authors":"D. Matthews","doi":"10.2308/AAHJ-52535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/AAHJ-52535","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper seeks to establish statistically and explain the past, present, and likely future of accounting history. The article is based on a recently constructed database of publications in accounting history from 1989 to 2016. The data reveal that the output of accounting history articles grew very rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s attributed to the increased demand from the profession for accountancy teaching in universities, out of which emerged a relatively small number of accountancy academics who took an interest in history. From the turn of the millennium the output of articles has gone into a slow secular decline largely because the growth of accountancy teaching at universities has stalled. If the downward trend continues, the viability of the discipline is threatened. However, action might be taken at least to slow the “death rattle” of accounting history feared by Radcliffe; and some suggestions for doing so are made.","PeriodicalId":43735,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Historians Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41699198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}