Whether Accounting Can be Treated as a Science: Retrospective of Views and Tendency

Abstract

The modern model of accounting evolves more than 600 years, however in the last 50 years discussion concerning legitimacy of treatment of accounting as a science became aggravated. Refl ections of a number of representatives of Anglo-American accounting school are given in the article concerning possibility of application to accounting of T. Kuhn’s concept about change of paradigms. Such approach can be considered as evidential base of an explanation of crisis in accounting science and formulations of the reasons of new registration paradigms emergence in addition to the operating paradigm based on the idea of double-entry model. The main reason for criticism of accounting as a science is government intervention in the process of regulation of accounting and reporting. As this process can’t be stopped, there is a question of fi nding a compromise between state regulations and professional standards. In the article, parallels with discussions of prerevolutionary Russian accountants about scientifi c character of the accounting are drawn, as well as Professor Ya.V. Sokolov’s views concerning applicability of Kuhn’s ideas to accounting, its argument about paradoxes in accounting as the testimony of legitimacy of reference of accounting to the system of scientific knowledge are shortly characterized. Th e perspective of modern Russian accounting science concerning a level of development of theoretical researches, preparations of monographic textbooks, creations of profi le magazines of a theoretical orientation is mentioned.

Keywords:

accounting theory and history, Luca Pacioli, paradigms, paradoxes, postulates and principles of accounting, Global GAAP, control and communication, concepts of Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos