Reviewed by Thomas R. Robinson University of Miami
This volume is a professional, biographical essay prepared by Richard Mattessich at the request of faculty members of Chuo University so that it might be published to celebrate Professor Mctttessich’s upcoming (1997) 75th birthday. Professor Mattessich’s important contributions to accounting theory and practice were recently highlighted in a chapter by Cheryl McWatters in Twentieth-Century Accounting Thinkers [edited by J. R. Edwards, Routeledge, London, 1994]. While that volume provides an excellent summary of his accomplishments, a single chapter can not fully do justice to his contributions. This volume helps to complete the picture of Professor Mattessich’s life from the best available source, he who experiences it. This book is an excellent source of information on Professor’s Mattessich’s life, publications and philosophy. It provides a great deal of informa-tion not available elsewhere including correspondence between Dr. Mattessich and other notable accounting theorists. It should be must reading for accounting historians and would also be useful to doctoral students, particularly those who complain about their hard life. Dr. Mattessich’s recollections of completing his dissertation in a cellar/air raid shelter should stifle any complaints about the current doctoral environment.
After the Preface, Dr. Mattessich begins with a chronologi-cal summary of his career from 1940 to 1994. The chronology leaves out his birth date (August 9, 1922 according to McWatters), but is otherwise complete and is greatly supple-mented by the text itself. The first two chapters describe Dr. Mattessich’s early educational and professional experiences leading up to this completion of a Doctorate in Economic Sciences in 1945. This includes his work as an engineer and the perils of working and completing a doctorate during the war.
The next three chapters detail Dr. Mattessich’s subsequent career including research at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, teaching in Switzerland, actuarial work in Canada, and faculty positions at various institutions, most notably the University of British Columbia and the University of California at Berkeley. These chapters show the variety and international extent of his professional career.
Chapter 6 discusses in detail one of Dr. Mattessich’s most prominent publications, Accounting and Analytical Methods (AAM). Some introductory remarks on this manuscript are also found in earlier chapters. This chapter not only explorers the response to the original publication, but provides a thorough discussion of and responses to written reviews of AAM. Further, Dr. Mattessich presents his feelings about “Positive Accounting Theory” and excerpts from his new book, Critique of Accounting. Here, Dr. Mattessich stresses the importance of having multiple accounting models from which to choose, rather than one restrictive model that all must follow.
Chapters 7 through 15 (considered together in the interest of the space available for this review not their importance), describe the academic environment and research performed at the University of British Columbia, as well as, Dr. Mattessich’s continuing international visits. Chapters 16 and 17 provide a review of the Twentieth-Century Accounting Thinkers volume and Mattessich’s own Critique of Accounting.
The final chapter is philosophical in nature. Here Dr. Mattessich poses a number of questions to himself such as “What is the meaning of life?” and “What do I think is knowledge and truth?” The answers are interesting and intended to provide a glimpse at the inner person beneath the biographical data. They more than accomplish this goal. The reader may want to peruse this chapter first.
Last but not least, Dr. Mattessich provides an extensive bib-liography of his writings including several non-English papers published in 1943 and 1945. These could easily have been missed by scholars other than the author. If you are searching for a definitive bibliography of Dr. Mattessich’s writings, here it is (at least through 1995). Given the volume of publications by Dr. Mattessich each year in the 1990’s, I expect it will require frequent updating.
