Reviewed by Leslie S. Oakes University of Alberta
Margaret Hoskins’ biography of Mary E. Murphy provides a comprehensive review of Murphy’s contributions to accounting as both a profession and an area of academic interest. There is no doubt that Mary Murphy warrants such a biography. As Hoskins notes:
During her career, [she] published over 100 journal articles, authored or collaborated on at least twenty books, and wrote several book reviews. During the years 1946 through 1965 she published more articles in the Accounting Review than any other author. During the year 1926 through 1985 she was the fourth most published author in this journal exceeded only by A.C. Littleton, Harold Bierman, and Robert Mautz [p. 99].
In addition, Murphy was the first Fullbright Professor of Accounting. Her writings on international accounting and accounting history foreshadowed much of the work being done today. She recognized the important interactions between business organizations and their cultural, political, and legal environments, and she studied these interactions holistically. Not coincidentally, Murphy was also the first female CPA in Iowa, and when she completed her Ph.D. at the London School of Economics she became the second female Ph.D. in Accounting in the United States.
As with most biographies, it is just this characterization of Murphy as “unique” that creates the book’s tension and interest. In addition to the inherent difficulty of understanding the contributions of individuals to history, Margaret Hoskins must deal with the issues of gender and identity which raise inevitable questions about Murphy’s life and contributions.
The question that most permeates this book concerns Murphy’s relative obscurity as an accounting authority. Why do we know so little about one of the most published accounting scholars of this century? Furthermore, why did such a prolific researcher spend most of her career at California State University (then College), a relatively small and unknown school? Hoskins deals with these questions in several ways. First, she acknowledges the unequal status of women in both accounting and academia, and she explores the impact of these inequalities on Murphy’s professional life. Hoskins notes that women were largely discouraged from becoming accountants during the first half of the century, and there were few
University teaching positions for women outside women’s colleges. The book includes explicitly biased comments from colleagues including one that begins “Whilst I personally share your preference for a man, Dr. Mary E. Murphy is no mean scholar” [p. 68]. There are also subtle reminders that men and women were judged by different standards. Murphy is described both by acquaintances and by the author as being “agreeable,” “pleasing and charming,” and as being “helpful” [p. 85]. One colleague wrote critically that “she tended to ‘adopt’ the accounting faculty both from a professional as well as a personal point of view” [p. 84]. One wonders if these terms would have been used to describe a male colleague, and whether these terms would have carried the same evaluative connotation for a man.
Hoskins also deals with Murphy’s obscurity by attempting to carefully evaluate the substance of her writings. Hoskins quantifies the topics of Murphy’s research and notes where each article was published. Each area of research is summarized and diagrammed. These efforts seem to be an attempt to objectively evaluate Murphy’s work, and there is an anxiety that underlies this portion of the book. Hoskins wonders if Murphy’s work was too repetitive, too speculative or too normative to garner much interest. Hoskins suggests that Murphy’s lack of prominence may be due to her choice of research topics (education, international harmonization, and history) or perhaps because Murphy published in a wide variety of journals. It is as if Hoskins were trying to reassure herself that Murphy truly deserves more recognition for her work. Further, Hoskins seems to be trying to evaluate Murphy’s work by current standards for accounting research. Surely the same concerns would apply to the work of Littleton, Mautz and most of Murphy’s contemporaries, many of whom did receive significant public recognition. It is doubtful whether Murphy’s obscurity can be understood by comparing her writing to current definitions of research. If anything, reading this book reminds us that the criteria for accounting research narrowed considerably during the 1970s and 1980s, a narrowing that we have recently begun to lament.
Perhaps the most troubling tension in this book emerges from the author’s somewhat limited attempt to link Mary Murphy’s nontraditional professional and personal lives. Hoskins describes Murphy’s personal history, but she never integrates these parts of Murphy’s life into the analysis of Murphy’s accounting contributions. In a way, Hoskins can not be blamed for this as historians have tended to separate the public and private experiences of historical subjects. However, feminist historians and others have long noted that this separation frequently leads to the exclusion of women from history. In addition to the gender, race and economic circumstances, the contributions and/or problems of family are omnipresent in the lives of historical subjects. Ignoring these factors creates the false image of independent and fully creative individuals whose accomplishments can be divorced from their historical context. On the other hand, this book illustrates the difficulties inherent in attempts to integrate the personal and professional. In several places colleagues describe Murphy as “not a runofthemill person” [p.82]. Even her family described her as a “bit odd” [p. 57], and she was certainly nontraditional in many ways. She pursued an education when few women did.
She left Iowa at a young age intending not to return and, in fact, rarely returned although she traveled all over the world. In other words, she choose to divorce herself from her family and her childhood home. We also know that Murphy never married and had no children. Instead she spent over half her life with Ruth Deiches who Murphy met while teaching at Hunter College. Murphy’s relationship with Deiches may have been a reason for Murphy’s move to Los Angeles. Deiches also traveled with Murphy “serving as her secretary” [p. 71], according to Hoskins. This relationship must have enabled Murphy to pursue research and teaching goals that a married woman with children—or even a woman alone—would have found difficult. At the same time, these arrangements may also have created difficulties for Murphy, especially in a fairly conservative area like accounting. These issues are not explored in much depth, and we are left to speculate about the importance of these aspects of Murphy’s life.
Margaret Hoskins’ biography makes a significant contribution to the history of accounting thought by reminding us of the contributions of a whole age of accounting academics who were concerned about accounting scholarship in a broad sense. It also illustrates the power history has to force us to remember people and ideas that we have collectively forgotten.
