Prelims

Half Title Page

William A. Paton

Series Page

Studies in the Development of Accounting Thought

Series Editor: Gary J. Previts, Case Western Reserve University

Recent Volumes:

Title Page

Studies in the Development of Accounting Thought Volume 22

William A. Paton: A Study of his Accounting Thought

by

Kelly L. Williams

Assistant Professor of Accounting

Jones College of Business

Middle Tennessee State University

Murfreesboro, TN, USA

Howard J. Lawrence

Clinical Professor of Accountancy

Patterson School of Accountancy

University of Mississippi

University, MS, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78756-408-4

ISBN: 978-1-78756-410-7 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-409-1 (Epub)

ISSN: 1479-3504 (Series)

Dedication

To our families, whose patience, encouragement, and understanding compelled us to finish what seemed an imposing task, we dedicate this book.

To our readers, we also dedicate this to you in the hopes that it will help you understand and appreciate one of the great individuals who helped to make accounting the respected profession it is today.

Contents

Acknowledgments

This project has been an intense period of learning for both of us, not just on a professional level but on a personal level as well. Accordingly, we want to reflect on the people who have been so generous with their support and understanding.

To our editor, Dr. Gary Previts, we thank you not only for your insightful comments and encouragement but also for the hard questions which incentivized us to broaden our research and view the project from a variety of perspectives.

To our professor and colleague Dr Dale Flesher, we thank you for suggesting this project and thinking of us as one’s capable of completing it. We hope we have earned the trust you placed in us.

To Charlotte Maiorana and the Business, Management, Economics, and Finance team at Emerald Publishing, we want you to know how much we appreciate the guidance and the immediate responses to all our questions throughout the process.

To Dr Royce Kurtz of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants library at Ole Miss, we thank you for finding so many articles and documents that might otherwise be lost and forgotten.

To our colleagues and friends at the Jennings A. Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University and the Patterson School of Accountancy at the University of Mississippi, we thank you for your wonderful collaboration and assistance.

We wish also to thank our families for “putting up with us” throughout this endeavor. Without your understanding and support this project would never have been completed.

Last, but certainly not least, we must acknowledge the subject of the document himself. While alive, Dr Paton and many of his family members, friends, students, and colleagues agreed to be interviewed, shared documents, and exchanged letters with one of the authors that have proved invaluable in analyzing the thoughts of this very complex man. It is our fondest wish that we have prepared a study that does, indeed, capture his accounting thoughts.

Abstract

For more than 70 years, William A. Paton contributed his considerable energy and knowledge to the development of accounting thought. He wrote over 100 articles and was a principal contributor to, and editor for, The Accounting Review and Accountants’ Handbook. Paton was a member of numerous honorary and professional societies, and on scores of occasions, Paton appeared as an expert witness at (or testified before) Congressional committees and both federal and state courts and commissions.

Paton was one of the early accounting educators to express the high purpose of accounting and its importance in the university. He believed that an accountant’s education had to go beyond the education provisions of the state Certified Public Accounting (CPA) laws. The significant development of modern accounting education programs, as well as the prestige accorded to them, can be largely traced back to the high aims of such professionals as Paton. He was among the early theorists in accounting to argue that just listing the assets and liabilities of a company was not sufficient. Rather, there had to be a coherent, theoretical structure that would guide the accountant in preparing financial statements.

Paton was an active participant in the professional accounting organizations of his day. Paton was a leader in urging early societies to conduct research to develop a coherent body of knowledge and in developing the first issues of The Accounting Review. That beginning, along with the contributions of such notables as editors Eric Kohler (1928–1942), Ananias Charles (A.C.) Littleton (1944–1947), Frank Smith (1950–1959), and Robert Mautz (1960–1962) helped make the Review into the outstanding publication it is today.

Paton’s thoughts on accounting were influenced by many factors, including his family, his background in economic theory, his work in the public utility sector and with the War Trade Board, and such accounting luminaries as Thomas Jones, Charles Ezra Sprague, and Henry Rand Hatfield. In studying a man such as Paton, one realizes that certain basic propositions, postulates, and assumptions influenced the man and shaped his thinking and philosophy. As early as his first professional textbook, Accounting Theory, Paton expounded his postulate approach and his basic assumptions.

For this huge body of work, Paton received practically every major honor an accounting educator could receive. He was one of the three chosen to enter the Accounting Hall of Fame, in its first year; he was also chosen as the Dickinson Lecturer in Accounting in 1940 – the first academic to be so honored by Harvard (Zeff et al., 1979). In 1944, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) established an award for distinguished service to the profession, including notable contributions to the accounting literature. Paton was one of the three first-year recipients of the gold medal and citation. Perhaps Paton’s most significant honor came in 1987 when, on the occasion of its 100th annual meeting, the AICPA named Paton the Educator of the Century. Paton arguably contributed more to the development of accounting thought than any other person in the twentieth century.

List of Tables, Exhibits and Appendices

List of Abbreviations