Reviewed by Michael Gaffikin University of Wollongong
On first learning of this book I was somewhat skeptical that such a volume could ever come close to doing justice to the history of accounting or even that an encyclopedia was an appropriate vehicle for serious accounting history. I also felt that as there were several authors it would be difficult to approach consistency in style let alone content. In fact, there is a very large number of contributors many of whom have no association with accounting history that I am aware of; actually there are some I know who would deny that accounting history serves any intellectual or other purpose and have never had any priorassociation with accounting history, so I find it surprising that they are prepared to be associated with such a deliberate accounting history work (and I doubt they would have “seen the light”!). On the other hand, there are some very notable accounting historians amongst the contributor list.
When I received the volume I was quite impressed with the presentation and with many of the entries I read. I have not read the entire work but have spent very many hours (days) poring over the entries, skipping from one to another as the mood took me. It is the intention that the work be used at all level of accounting scholarship and education. However, my skepticism was again aroused when I read in the Introduction that the work has works such as Chatfield’s A History of Accounting Thought as one of its underpinnings as I have always found that to be a light work. However, the other works of the editors have also be drawn on and Vangermeersch’s accounting history work has always impressed me.
Thus, many of the entries are by the editors but they have turned to the expertise of others for many of the entries they obviously felt was beyond their own areas. The work is truly encyclopedic in that it has entries for topics (subjects), definitions and biographies. The choice of those for whom there are biographies is surprising and there are many that I find hard to accept as having made other than a normal contribution to the discipline. I feel it is misplaced to have them alongside others who have made very significant contributions, some as early accounting writers, some as pioneers of theoretical and technical innovations. There seems to be undue deference to some who, in my opinion, have done very little to advance the discipline (quite the reverse, in fact). It was cozy to see that Ijiri wrote on Cooper and Cooper on Ijiri. However, there are some biographical entries which are informative and interesting and it would be difficult to find information on these people so the work serves a valuable service in this respect.
For the purist, encyclopedias present problems as no entry can ever “do justice” to a subject. For someone having devoted much of their work to defining and refining income measurement to find the whole subject summarized in two and a half pages ( a large entry) would be disappointing. However, the encyclopedia never pretends to anything else. But should the entries have the obvious biases of the contributor? This is to be expected in cases where the contributor has written in the area so the reader will be directed to read that work, for example, Brownell’s work on budgeting is slanted to performance evaluation. The entry for inflation accounting is not correct when it asserts that Chambers proposed a “black box”. Some topics have been omitted. Thus, if the work is to be for nonaccountants as well as accountants where would an introduction to the notion of an asset be found? There is an entiy for liabilities. There seems little point to the illustrations of cost curves for the entry on microeconomics in Germany—they could be found in an introductory economics text.
There are very many positive attributes of the work. Despite a natural U.S. bias, the editors have made every effort to make the work truly international. Entries on accounting in many countries (perhaps they can be forgiven for ornitting New Zealand?) and on significant accounting figures in those countries have been included making this the first work to attempt to do this. At the end of each entry is a brief bibliography enabling those who wish to pursue further study of the topic to do so. There is a high degree of uniformity in the style of the entries so the editors must have worked hard on this aspect.
It is difficult to review an encyclopedia. People have differing views on the merits of such works; some of these works have achieved great recognition others have done this cause a great disservice. With the increase in information resulting from the information technology age, such works are usually found through some on line service. However, the hard work of researching the subjects must have been done first. The editors of this volume have performed a great service for accounting by having the energy and skills to draw together such a useful data base of information on accounting. It is easy to pick fault with aspects of such a work. Whether one believes in the concept of encyclopedias or not, this work is well worth acquiring for the information in includes as well as the directions it provides. Despite my skepticism I certainly would have bought a copy of this book and I recommend it to all accounting scholars (and institutions) whether or not they have the perception to be interested in accounting history.
