Chambers on Accounting: Logic, Law and Ethics

This volume is dedicated to the life work of Ray Chambers, who was continually seeking ways to stimulate and advance the development of a demonstrably rigorous and serviceable system of accounting. This search for an ideal led Chambers into myriad environments, an aspect of his life exhaustively illustrated in his "Aide Memoire," which forms part of this memorial volume. Accounting functions to provide input into decisions about financial matters, in particular, it identifies the present financial position. But this function has been, to a large extent, eclipsed by rules of convenience, habits and traditions that seriously distort the representation of one's financial position. The papers reproduced in Chambers on Accounting Vols. I-VI aim to rectify this situation. These and Chambers' other works have led to a system of continuously up-to-date, money-equivalent accounting of incontestable relevance to the management of solvency, profitability and financial flexibility. Of other schemes proposed before andduring the years represented here, no such claim could be justified. The first part of Volume VI contains the texts of some 26 papers and addresses presented since 1986, the date of publication of Volumes I-V. They deal with varied aspects of accounting- logical, ethical, psychological, mathematical, economic, regulatory- which are disregarded or given only cursory noticed in the professional and theoretical literature. The second part, the "Aide Memoire," gives in chronological order the places and circumstances that gave rise to the contents of Volumes I-VI and to other publications and unpublished material over some 60 of the most turbulent years in the history of accounting. The contents of Volumes I-V are grouped by material content. The references to volume-location given in this volume ease access to any item reproduced.