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Jeanjean e Ramirez (2009)
Jeanjean e Ramirez (2009)
Jeanjean e Ramirez (2009)
To cite this article: Thomas Jeanjean & Carlos Ramirez (2009) Back to the Origins of Positive
Theories: A Contribution to an Analysis of Paradigm Changes in Accounting Research,
Accounting in Europe, 6:1, 107-126, DOI: 10.1080/17449480902896510
Download by: [Universidade de Sao Paulo] Date: 14 January 2016, At: 17:14
Accounting in Europe
Vol. 6, No. 1, 107– 126, 2009
ABSTRACT In this article, we analyse factors that explain the success of the empirical
methodology of ‘positive accounting theory’ (PA) in accounting research. In fewer than
ten years, between 1960 and 1967–1968, PA became dominant in the main accounting
journals, and normative theories disappeared from academic publishing. The reasons for
this success are not clearly established. The propagators of PA (Ball and Brown, 1968;
Watts and Zimmerman, 1986) advocate the fertility of their approach, while others (e.g.
Mattessich, 1995; Mouck, 1988; Whittington, 1987; Williams, 1989) denounce their
ostracism and systematic denigration of rival approaches. Both proponents and
opponents of PA consider the emergence of positive theories as a radical severance;
however, we suggest that the move from normative to positive theories occurred
gradually. Even if they took advantage of the reform that took place in US business
schools during the 1950s, the proponents of PA also benefited from a decoupling
between the academic world and accounting practice initiated by their predecessors.
Introduction
In any research touching the sociology of sciences, one work quickly emerges as
central: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (1962). In this
book, which was praised to the point of being called a ‘historical turning point’
in the study of sciences, Kuhn does not see knowledge as following a linear
progress. Instead he considers that it advances sporadically, through cyclical
Correspondence Address: Thomas Jeanjean, HEC Paris, Department of Accounting and Management
Control, 1, rue de la Libération, 78351 Jouy-en-Josas, France. Email: jeanjean@hec.fr
Frank Pierson. They called for a radical overhaul of Business Studies, emphasis-
ing the value of economic and organisational analysis of management decisions
and harshly criticising the lack of academic training among teaching staff in
business schools and university business courses. Not only did these reports
contain an aspiration for methodological renewal, they also called for a complete
rethink of the way researchers’ work is produced and legitimised. Consequently,
we see how the rise of the advocates of the positive approach was supported by
the new hiring and tenure conditions for business school faculty members, and
the greater importance placed on publication of research in scientific journals.
Mattessich. In 1955, Chambers insisted that the search for accounting axioms
should free itself from the trend of producing rule systems rather than theories.
The theorist’s position should not be that of a mere supplier of rules to the
practitioner, as that should be the role of the standard-setter.
The link between the theoretical and practical dimensions was thus asserted:
theory was a response to the needs of practice (Littleton, 1948; Ross, 1967).
The theorist’s position naturally stimulated debate among university teachers,
in a new reflection of the opposition between the inductive approach and the
deductive approach, leading notably to a divergence of views between Mattessich
and Chambers: Mattessich believed that accounting concepts should be induced
from observation of ‘accounting micro and macro-systems’ while Chambers
wished to see more focus on production of a general theory of accounting.
Chambers’ idea was that separating accounting systems from their specific
interpretations would make it possible to construct several interpretations on
the basis of a single theory. Depending on the empirical objectives, specific
standards could be deduced from the same series of general principles. The
accounting practitioner could thus be seen as an acrobat, juggling with these
general principles to find a suitable response to his problem.
In the normative approach to accounting research, economic reality at least
appeared to exist independently of its accounting representation. The researcher’s
task was to determine the general laws of accounting nature. Once those laws had
been discovered, it would be possible to use them to improve production of
accounting standards. Normative theory can thus be envisaged as assisting the
accounting profession in production of solutions to the problems encountered
by practitioners. Accordingly, progress in accounting would consist of inventing
responses that provide the most satisfactory translation of constantly changing
reality into accounting terms (Hopwood, 1983; Robson, 1988).2 It can be con-
cluded that this theory established a connection running from the theorist to
the practitioner: the former influences the latter, but is also supplied with food
for thought by the ‘research questions’ inevitably thrown up by changing prac-
tices. By virtue of the very principle of the activity of theorisation, this connec-
tion from the grass-roots practitioner up to the ‘high priest’ of accounting covers
112 T. Jeanjean and C. Ramirez
several levels. Higher education faculty members are at the top, the opposite end
to practitioners, while the accounting standard-setter is a kind of applied
researcher acting as a cog in the machinery for conveying the theorist’s work.
We shall see later how this theoretical posture acquires meaning in relation to
its social context. Normative theory, which paradoxically distances its authors
from accounting practitioners in attempting to incorporate their practices into
an abstract system, simultaneously helps to bring accounting theorists closer to
other theory-makers.
Business schools go back a long way in the United States. The first such school
was founded in 1881 thanks to a donation by Joseph Wharton to the University of
Pennsylvania. The Universities of Chicago and California set up their Schools of
Commerce in 1889, followed by Dartmouth with its Amos Tuck School in 1890.
In the ensuing half-century, many American universities introduced business
courses. They were so popular that business students accounted for 3% of Bache-
lor’s degrees awarded in 1909 – 1910, 10% in 1939 – 1940 and 17% in 1949– 1950
(Jeuck, 1986). The number of Masters’ degrees in business awarded followed a
similar trend: under 100 in 1914, 20,000 in 1945, and 60,000 in 1950 (15% of
all Master’s degrees).
These figures should not be allowed to mislead our perception of the role attrib-
uted to business education in the US university system.3 Business studies had to
earn recognition not only in the world of business, where it was initially con-
sidered that being a manager was primarily something learned through practice,
but also in the Universities, where introduction of business courses was perceived
as inappropriate. Engwall and Zamagni (1998) point out that many staff on arts
and science faculties had little esteem for Business Schools, and some were of the
opinion that their courses were out of place in the academic world. ‘Should we let
Chaucer and Shakespeare be sullied by gold-diggers?’ asked a Harvard professor
(Daniel, 1999, p. 123). The attitude was, in practice, ambiguous, since those same
business schools were bringing the universities extra resources, all the more so
after the Second World War when the numbers of students registering for
business school programmes saw much greater increases than the numbers regis-
tering for other courses.4 This paradox is illustrated by the relationships between
economists and Business School faculty. In the US, the birth of a Business School
had often been preceded by business courses offered by economics departments
or economists. Some such business schools became independent before very
long, while others remained attached to the economics department that had
created them. It was not until 1940, for instance, that the business studies and
research programme at Berkeley (University of California), which had opened
in 1898, became independent (Engwall and Zamagni, 1998). The accounting tea-
chers from these institutions were thus often in contact with their economics
Back to the Origins of Positive Theories 113
Littleton, who was born in 1886, only gained his degree in business adminis-
tration from the University of Illinois in 1912, and after a short spell in an
audit firm he joined the university’s teaching faculty in 1915 as an instructor.
Until his retirement in 1952, Littleton worked hard to carve out a position as
uncontested leader in his discipline, both in terms of his intellectual contribution
and his capacity to devise and manage courses. He was the first to offer account-
ing theory courses, in the 1920s. After obtaining his PhD in 1931, he was also the
driving force behind the creation of the world’s first PhD in accounting. Between
1938 and 1952, he supervised 24 of the 26 students who registered for this PhD
(Degos and Previts, 2005).
Whatever the merits of men like Littleton, Paton and Mattessich, they were
representatives of a discipline considered of secondary importance, taught in
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The Gordon and Howell Report (1959) and the Pierson Report (1959)
In 1959, two reports were published on business education. Robert A. Gordon and
James E. Howell published Higher Education for Business, commissioned by the
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to law and the social environment. This combination would be rounded off by
courses in specialist areas (finance, marketing, accounting, etc) and general
(liberal arts) courses. This proposed general structure was in stark contrast to
the courses on offer in the late 1950s. The study reforms had a twofold, even
threefold, aim. One of those aims was to attract quality students by broadening
the field of teaching. In addition, according to Gordon, Howell and Pierson,
more conceptual teaching should enable the graduates not only to find their
first job, but also and above all to change within the enterprise. Incidentally,
such a reform of the curriculum would require the emergence and promotion
of a new faculty.
Both reports recommended setting up an excellence-based faculty whose
members would hold PhDs and be assessed on the quality of publications. The
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central idea of these reports was to guide business research towards a system
in which theoretical research would come before applied research. MBA
holders would thus be ‘enlisted’ to test the results of their professors’ investi-
gations and spread them in enterprises. Talking of his work on the report in a
1984 interview, Howell declared he had acquired the conviction that Business
School managers should not let themselves be influenced by the demands of
firm managers, because managers represent the business world as it currently
exists. On the contrary, the accent should be placed on research which, in his
opinion, determined the face of the business world to come. In short, researchers
needed to be in contact with other researchers in priority, rather than business
managers (reported in Zimmerman, 2001). This accent on research was to
make academic journals highly important in hiring and promotion decisions
affecting American professors/researchers. Gordon, Howell and Pierson stressed
the need to develop research based on the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
This was nothing more than an adoption of the concept of scientific activity
described by Friedman (1953), or by the founders of Management Science in
1954 and Administrative Science Quarterly in 1956. It should be remembered
that Gordon, Howell and Pierson were all University professors of economics.
The reports’ recommendations had resounding repercussions in the academic
world in general, and accounting research in particular. In terms of content,
Daniel (1999) considers that the reports simply crystallised the terms of the
debate on the primacy of research over practice in the operating strategy of
Business Schools, which had been running since the end of the Second World
War. Their originality lies instead in defining the resources needed to pull
business studies up to a level of academic excellence that would enable them
to bear comparison with other university disciplines. Regarding financial
resources, the fact that one of the two reports was commissioned by the Ford
Foundation is not insignificant. The Ford Foundation was already giving research
grants to universities to improve the quality of doctoral programmes in business
management.9 The number of business management PhDs awarded each year
rose very significantly: from 148 in 1960 (for all 31 institutions awarding this
type of PhD), the total reached 287 (for 41 institutions) in 1965, 584 (64) in
Back to the Origins of Positive Theories 117
1970, and 787 (79) in 1975 (AACSB, 2003). In 1961, the Ford Foundation even
financed a seminar at the University of Chicago which discussed the application
of behavioural theories and quantitative methods by researchers in accounting
(Dyckman and Zeff, 1984).10
What reasons lay behind the emergence and success of the empirical approach,
all achieved in the space of a few years? The very generous grants given out by the
Ford Foundation ($35 million to 1964, Schlossman et al., 1998) partly explain the
success of the Gordon/Howell/Pierson recommendations. But they are not the
only explanation. The report authors proposed a change in strategy for Business
Schools that would turn them from simple schools of application into places of
intellectual training. A broader conceptualisation and the introduction of behav-
ioural and economic theories into business course curricula were needed. In the
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accounting world, these recommendations were widely taken up. A special com-
mission of the American Accounting Association was set up to analyse the reports
and their effects on accounting education (Canning et al., 1961). The changes
would not be created out of nothing, nor by ‘importation’ of researchers trained
in other disciplines with higher theoretical content. On the contrary, a favourable
breeding ground needed to be developed within accounting research itself. Para-
doxically, this was to be achieved through further pursuit of the decoupling
between the academic world and the world of practitioners, which had begun
with the development of normative theory (Sundem, 1999).
As seen, there was already a separation between practice and normative
research in the world of accounting. Although their work had been built on the
premise that theory should continue to guide practice, their normative theorists
had taken sufficient distance from practitioners to assert their status as producers
of pure knowledge, principally in respect of university academics in other disci-
plines. In positive theory, explanation and prediction of accounting practices, to
borrow the expression of Watts and Zimmerman (1986), have few links with
determination of the practices themselves, and require a high degree of decou-
pling between research and development of accounting techniques. But this
high degree of decoupling, although necessary at an epistemological level,
does not at institutional level necessarily represent a radical break from the
position of the normative theory researcher. Distance from the world of the
practitioners was already necessary for normative theorists, in order to assert
themselves as such. Therefore, paradoxically, the success of positive theory (in
the broad sense) could be considered to derive from the success of normative
theory. This conclusion appears to be confirmed by examination of the careers
of the earliest representatives of the positive school and the histories of the
journals in which they were to publish their key findings.
The Research Community: Between Continuity and a Break with the Past
The Pierson and Gordon/Howell reports called for a change in the strategy of
the American universities’ Business Schools. Generous grants from the Ford
118 T. Jeanjean and C. Ramirez
Foundation helped to put their recommendations into practice. The vectors of this
change were clearly the teaching staff, and it is implicit in the reports that
improvement of business courses would involve renewal of faculty. In account-
ing, business PhDs developed and contributed to the emergence of a new gener-
ation of accounting teacher/researchers trained according to the principles set
forth in the Pierson and Gordon/Howell reports. They applied methods and tech-
niques from neighbouring disciplines (econometrics and micro-economics) to
accounting and financial issues (see Bricker and Previts, 1990, for a summary
of the changes to the make-up of accounting teaching faculty). Ross Watts and
Jerold Zimmerman, for example, gained their PhDs, respectively, in 1971 from
the University of Chicago and in 1974 from the University of California
(Berkeley). These two universities (particularly Chicago) were among the
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as empirical was very small, and that only work related to the normative approach
could be published.14 Next, by publishing ‘normative’ research, i.e. with a well-
established scientific status at the time, the JAR helped to legitimate the ‘positive’
articles published alongside normative research. Although the JAR originally
vaunted a fairly open-minded methodological outlook, it still wanted to play a
role as a stimulus in development of new approaches to accounting research.
The JAR’s first editor, Sydney Davidson, observed that ‘The emergence of the
computer indicated that large new data bases of financial information would be
readily accessible to researchers [. . .] aspects of behavioral science were devel-
oping. Research in accounting was beginning to capitalize in these advances in
the related fields. A more scientific approach to accounting research was
clearly on the horizon’ (Dycklman and Zeff, 1984, p. 282). Disputation of norma-
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tive theory as a cutting-edge research programme emerged shortly after the cre-
ation of the JAR; Gaffikin (2003, p. 300) dates it to 1964 with the publication in
The Accounting Review of an article by Myron Gordon, at the time a professor at
the University of Rochester, entitled ‘Postulates, principles and research in
accounting’. In that article, Gordon stressed the need for the researcher to con-
front reality, particularly with the help of statistical methods. To encourage pro-
duction of research using databases and a hypothetical-deductive approach, the
JAR organised an annual Conference on Empirical Research in Accounting
from 1966 onwards. Initially these conferences were sponsored by the Ford Foun-
dation, and it was later joined by the AICPA, the Ernst & Young foundation and
the American Accounting Association (AAA). They were very successful,
attended by several editors of The Accounting Review (Robert Mautz, Lawrence
Vance and Robert Trueblood) and well-known figures in the profession (Ray
Ball, Robert Jensen, and Anthony Hopwood, to name just three). From 1974
onwards, the word ‘empirical’ was dropped from the conference title. Nicholas
Dopuch declared that ‘Our reason was simply that it no longer seemed necessary
to promote empirical research per se since the methodology has now achieved the
status and influence among accounting researchers that we had in mind at the time
of our first conference’.
The papers presented were subsequently published by the JAR in issues called
‘supplements’. These conferences had a ratchet effect, to such an extent that no
later than the end of the 1960s the ‘empirical’ current was well-established in the
JAR, which stopped publishing ‘normative’ articles from 1968. From 1971, the
editor of the JAR supplements on the empirical conferences was also the editor
of the regular journal issues, whereas in the 1960s the two functions had been sep-
arate. The discontinuation of publication of normative or historical research was
in fact one of the causes of the London School of Economics’ withdrawal from
the JAR editorial board in 1974 (Dyckman and Zeff, 1984).
In keeping with the spirit of the Gordon/Howell and Pierson reports, the JAR
had become an instrument for the development of accounting research, and a
journal publishing nothing but research. Then, throughout the 1960s and early
1970s the JAR editorial board progressively sought to promote a particular
Back to the Origins of Positive Theories 121
between the two journals: right from the start of the 1960s, TAR also published
empirical articles. There was in fact no sudden break between the two types of
research. What we observe instead, with the JAR considered as the instrument
of this shift, is a gradual change: first the JAR achieved recognition as a research
journal to the exclusion of all other concerns, then it became the leading vehicle
for empirical research.
Conclusion
Normative research was not killed off by the rise of positive research; articles and
books in the normative tradition are still being published today. The successors to
the figureheads of the 1950s and 1960s no longer dominated the academic world,
and abandoned their plans to construct an axiom of accounting in order to address
the needs of practitioners. The growth in activity by national and international
standard-setting bodies from the 1970s undeniably kept these researchers busy.15
Empirical research, which supplanted ‘ex post’ research,16 did not owe its
success to a break from the past brought about by new men with new ideas.
Paradoxically, the success of the normative theorists appears to have paved the
way for the success of ‘positive’ theory. It was the normative school that
trained the proponents of the empirical approach. Moreover, by formulating
abstract conceptual frameworks for accounting practice, the normative theorists
helped to legitimise the decoupling between the academic world and prac-
titioners. Paradoxically, normative and positive theories, which epistemologi-
cally are at odds, thus seem to share a relative continuity in terms of the
academic field’s growing independence of accounting practice.
To borrow Kuhn’s analysis and speak in terms of paradigms, this shift to
positive theory was only possible because normative theorists had already dis-
tanced themselves from accounting practice, thereby opening up the possibility
for legitimisation of research completely detached from practice, in that it con-
siders this practice and its governing rules as a sign of specific interests that
are not convergent with the researcher’s scientific interests. We have attempted
to connect the epistemological and the social in this article, showing that the
122 T. Jeanjean and C. Ramirez
with social and epistemological factors intertwined. On the contrary, the empiri-
cal turn taken by accounting research appears to be accompanied by a loss of
independence. With the emergence of the positive approach, soon joined by
social studies of accounting that were to develop with the creation of the Account-
ing Organizations and Society journal in 1975, accounting in fact became a
subject of study. Researchers in the discipline of accounting were characterised
by the use not only of concepts, but also methods developed in other disciplines
(economics and econometrics for the positive current, sociology and anthropol-
ogy for social studies of accounting). Maybe this transition from research in
accounting to research on accounting is the real revolution induced by replace-
ment of the normative paradigm.
Notes
1
In the rest of this article we shall use the (neutral) expressions of ‘empirical’ current or ‘posi-
tive’ current to designate the school of thought that aims to explain and predict accounting
choices. Note that several ‘positive’ publications predate the articles of Watts and Zimmerman
(e.g. Ball and Brown, 1968).
2
According to Galbraith (1961) and Zeff (1972), the US is the country that took use of account-
ing theory furthest to justify certain choices in preparation of standards in the period 1945–
1970.
3
Most of the history presented here is American. Our close focus on the US given the country’s
central importance in analysis of paradigm shifts in accounting research is not an indication that
we believe it was the only country to have researchers. Among the authors mentioned earlier is
Raymond Chambers, whose university career was in Australia, not the US, but whose career
path shows similarities with that of the American normative theorists (of native or foreign
origins). Chambers often worked in collaboration with economists as, before becoming the
first head of the department of accounting in his university, he occupied the chair of accounting
within the economics department (Colasse, 2005).
4
This high growth in numbers is largely explained by the homecoming of draftee soldiers. Many
of them had grants for their university studies and a large number (750,000 between 1945 and
1950) chose to study business.
5
As Gaffikin (2003, p. 294) points out, Chambers was influenced by Hayek and Von Mises, and
Mattessich by Debreu.
Back to the Origins of Positive Theories 123
6
One interesting episode described by Daniel (1999, pp. 212–213), historically outside the
period covered here but nevertheless a telling indicator of accounting’s role in business edu-
cation in the US, is the movement in the second half of the 1970s for the foundation of Account-
ing Schools independent of Business Schools. This initiative, which had the support of the
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and some of the leading firms in the pro-
fession, was short-lived. Among the reasons for the movement reported by Daniel were the
desire to strengthen professionalisation of accounting activity, but also the fear that accounting,
which formed the core of Business School curricula, would be supplanted by other disciplines
that were better suited to the new demands for research affecting the operation of those schools.
7
The Ford Foundation is a charitable organisation set up in 1936 by Edsel and Henry Ford.
Its mission is to ‘strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote inter-
national cooperation, and advance human achievement’ (see www.fordfoundation.org).
Jerold Zimmerman (2001) reports that the work of the Ford Foundation that led to the
Gordon/Howell report began in fact in the early 1950s against the background of fear of com-
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munism and a dread that higher education would not produce executives for businesses and
administration of sufficient quality to assure US supremacy over the Soviet rival. The Ford
Foundation’s role in ‘holding back the flow’ of communism extended beyond the US, since
it contributed to US aid to allies. For more on the action of the Ford Foundation in Europe
between 1950 and 1970, see Gemelli and MacLeod (2003).
8
The Carnegie foundation was set up by Andrew Carnegie and Henry Pritchett in 1905. Orig-
inally, the aim was to create a fund to pay a pension to retired university professors. Under
the influence of its first president Henri Pritchett, the Carnegie foundation published many
reports intended to guide developments in higher education (the Flexner report on medical
studies, the Reed report on law studies, etc). The Carnegie foundation was also a founder
member of the National Bureau for Economic Research (Lagemann, 1989).
9
The Carnegie foundation participated relatively little in the reform of business studies, for, in
the early 1960s, the foundation was in a difficult financial situation, as it had to cover the deficit
on the university professors’ complementary pension fund it had helped to set up.
10
While all business disciplines benefited from the accent on research, it should be noted that
accounting is one of the disciplines for which the effect of the Gordon/Howell and Pierson
reports took the longest to be established. Accounting benefited from no intervention other
than those associated with the reports, whereas other disciplines such as operational research
(Singhal et al., 2007) and human resources (Somers, 1966) were the targets of government-
financed incentive programmes.
11
Anthony Hopwood, although he does not belong to the positivist stream, was also educated at
the University of Chicago.
12
Source: http://fisher.osu.edu/Departments/Accounting-and-MIS/Hall-of-Fame/Membership-
in-Hall/William-Henry-Beaver/
13
Stephen Zeff gained his PhD at the University of Michigan in 1962 for a thesis on a typically
‘normative’ problem (‘A Critical Examination of the Orientation Postulate in Accounting, with
Particular Attention to Its Historical Development’), source: http://fisher.osu.edu/Departments/
Accounting-and-MIS/Hall-of-Fame/Membership-in-Hall/Stephen-Addam-Zeff.
14
We are indebted to one of our reviewers for this suggestion.
15
The increasing influence in the US of ex ante theorisation on accounting standardisation is
visible from the 1970s, when the normative current underway was eclipsed in the university
galaxy. Some academics found a way to retain intellectual influence through participation in
the work of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, founded in 1973: the desire to
develop a theoretical basis for standards was to be illustrated in the development of conceptual
frameworks used to define the quality of accounting information, in accordance with the objec-
tives of its users. Accounting standards would result from objectives set for this reporting, and
guide the establishment of accounting practices with them.
124 T. Jeanjean and C. Ramirez
16
It should be pointed out (Gaffikin, 2003, p. 300) that this term was invented by empirical
researchers who were critical of the normative approach, particularly Dopuch and Revsine
(1973).
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