Reviewed by Marilynn Collins John Carroll University

Volume 4 of the Working Paper Series, contains papers on a variety of topics. Papers 61, 62, and 63 deal with cost accounting. WP No. 63, “The Wisdom of A. Hamilton Church,” by Van-germeersch [pp. 35-55] provides excellent analysis of Church’s contributions to cost accounting and identifies the relevance of Church’s ideas for today’s manufacturing firms.

Papers 68 and 72 are concerned with individuals. WP No. 72, “Luca Pacioli and Piero Della Francesca,” by Stevelinck [pp. 170-184] is a well-written and well-translated inquiry into the lives of the two men that logically refutes the accusation of plagiarism against Pacioli.

Papers 76, 62, and 79 discuss regulation. WP No. 76, “The Capitalization of Fixed Assets in the Birth, Life, and Death of U.S. Steel, 1901-1986,” by Vangermeersch [pp. 264-293] analyzes the impact of overvalued assets and the effects of government regulation and intervention, offering an excellent historical perspective to the topics by their discussion in the context of the social, economic, and political environment and the accounting standard-setting process. WP No. 62, Dusenbury’s “The Effect of ICC Regulation on the Accounting Practices of Railroads Since 1887” [pp. 23-34], is a thorough, in-depth review that includes an excellent statement of the reason for this historical study [p. 23].

WP No. 69, “Women in Accounting,” by Becker [pp. 134-150] reviews the century-long struggle of women to attain professional status as CPAs. By analyzing the struggle within the context of economic changes such as war, Becker provides a basis for additional research to analyze the nature of current sexual discrimination and to identify ways for its elimination.

WP No. 71, “The Development of Letters and Numbers as Tools for Accounting,” by Costouros and Stull [pp. 160-169] mainly traces the evolution of alphabetic symbols and Arabic numerals, contending, but not proving, that alphabetic and numeric writing were invented primarily as tools of accounting [p. 161]. This paper may be of interest to Foucauldian researchers. (See Hoskin and Macve [1986].)

Working papers 70, 73, 74, 75, and 78 deal with accounting standards. WP No. 70, “The Development of the Recurring-Nonrecurring Earnings Presentation” by Stewart [pp. 151-159] concludes that empirical research is needed to determine which presentation better assesses cash flows and illustrates the usefulness of historical research for contemporary standard setting. WP No. 74, “The History of the Accounting Research Bulletins: 1939 to 1946,” and WP No. 75, “The History of the Accounting Research Bulletins: 1947 to 1959,” by Becker [198-263] are excellent resources for adding historical perspective and economic consequences to discus-sions of any of the subject matters of the bulletins that are covered in financial accounting courses. WP No. 78, “An Historical Devel-opment of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards Number 95: A New Era of Solvency Reporting?” by O’Bryan [pp. 312-326] is a thorough history of the funds statement useful for including the history and economic consequences of cash-flow reporting in financial accounting courses.

Working papers 65 and 67 survey the application of stan-dards. WP No. 65, “A Comparative Analysis of the Financial Statements’ Content in Annual Reports of American Telephone and Telegraph Company and General Electric Company From 1900-1940,” by Carpenter and Tondkar [pp. 82-94] identifies causes for changes in financial reporting due to general developments in accounting, showing the response to official standards and illustrating the evolution of improvements in the quality of financial reporting. The paper demonstrates the difficulty of comparing time periods.

Papers 66 and 80 propose a theory of accounting history. WP No. 66, “A Paradigm for the Analysis of Accounting History” by Baladouni [pp. 95-109] should be evaluated in terms of its potential for achieving the objective of accounting history research: “possession of a viable perspective for the conceptualization and analysis of its object of consideration” [p. 95]. Baladouni’s paradigm is useful for ascribing value to historical research that may be implicit but not clearly stated in the writings of accounting historians.

REFERENCE

Hoskin, K. and Macve, R., “Accounting and the Examination: A Genealogy of Disciplinary Power,” Accounting, Organizations and Society (1986), pp. 105-36.