The Rise of the Accounting Profession: From Technician to Profession, 1896–1936. By John L. Carey. New York, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, 1969. Pp. xvii + 387. $7.50.
SUMMARY
A perennial challenge in the accounting profession is how to aggregate and share instances of practitioner misconduct among numerous relevant parties. At present, both the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) offer solutions for centralized collection of misconduct, but both likely experience issues with incomplete reporting from key constituents. I propose a novel use of blockchain technology to address this issue, such that all key parties in the accounting profession leverage an accountancy blockchain to aggregate and share instances of practitioner misconduct across the country on a nearly real-time basis. Such a network creates an immutable record of misconduct and allows key constituents in the accounting profession to work together and share information as peers without the risk of one party taking control of the ledger. I close by discussing blockchain-specific roadblocks to realizing this proposed model.
Alvin R. Jennings (1905–1990) was a rare breed of an accountant. He was trained as a practitioner and rose to become a managing partner at Lybrand, Ross Bros. & Montgomery, but he kept a constant watch on the academic field of accounting research. Jennings served on the influential American Institute of Accountants' Committee on Auditing Procedure (1946–49) and later as the president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (1957–58). This paper explores these activities and Jennings' contribution to the professional, academic, and institution discourse of the accounting discipline.
The University of Mississippi Library has digitized the Accounting Historians Journal from 1974 through 1992, cover-to-cover. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' gift of their library to the University of Mississippi was, fortuitously, the impetus for the AHJ digitizing project. A complicated chain of events followed which included discussions with the Academy of Accounting Historians for copyright permission, an application for a federal grant, negotiations with software vendors, and decisions about search capabilities and display formats. Each article in AHJ is now full-text searchable with accompanying PDF page images.
The recollections of John L. Carey about the policies and politics in professional circles during the very important period when the Securities Exchange Commission first came into being. Mr. Carey served the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in various capacities from 1925 to 1969, including editor of The Journal of Accountancy and Administrative Vice-president, and received the Institute's gold medal for distinguished service to the profession.
Using Blockchain to Aggregate and Share Misconduct Issues across the Accounting Profession