Harold Cecil Edey: A Collection of Unpublished Material from a 20th Century Accounting Reformer

by Martin E. Persson

Overview

Harold Cecil Edey (1913–2007) and his colleagues David Solomons (1912–1995) and William T. Baxter (1907–2006) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) were instrumental in the development of British accounting thought in the mid-1900s. These three influential scholars influenced a generation of students who came to populate the British accounting profession and academia to the point where, in the early 1970s, half of all full-time accounting professors in the United Kingdom were LSE alumni. Edey’s role in these developments, however, remains relatively underappreciated. 

 This edited volume contains 13 of Edey’s unpublished manuscripts written during the heyday of the LSE Triumvirate. These manuscripts address issues of accounting education, measurements, and theory, and they are accompanied by editorial comments that put the material in its historical context. The volume also contains an aide-mémoire of Edey’s professional activities and a complete bibliography of his published work. The material offers new insight into Edey’s contribution to the British accounting profession, and developments at the LSE, during a critical period of academic expansion and struggle to address the problem of accounting for rising inflation. The material is of value to anyone interested in the development of accounting thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789736700
Publisher:	Emerald Publishing Limited
Publication date:	09/30/2019
Series:	Studies in the Development of Accounting Thought , #23
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x (d)

About the Author

Martin E. Persson is an Assistant Professor of Accountancy at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and a former Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Business School. His research interests are broadly within the field of accounting history, with a particular interest in the development of accounting thought. He has published numerous articles, books, and cases for which he has received several awards, including a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant from the Government of Canada.

Table of Contents

1. Accounting and the Imagination 
2. Hire Purchase 
3. Doubly Entry and Electronics 
4. Asset Values, Depreciation, Profit and Management Information 
5. Valuation
6. The Teaching of Accounting and Financial Management 
7. Special Characteristics of Accounting in Great Britain 
8. Economics and Accounting 
9. Depreciation and Price Control 
10. Current Cost Accounting 
11. Implications of Cash Flow Accounting for Management 
12. The 130-Year Lag 
13. Financial Accounting 
Appendix 1. Aide-Mémoire 
Appendix 2. Publications

Editorial Reviews

The collection contains 13 essays, manuscripts, and speeches written by Harold Cecil Edey (1913-2007) during his tenure at the London School of Economics that have been stored in the British Library but not formally published. Four of the papers address accounting education, particularly the benefits of incorporating economics and computer science into the accounting curriculum, and the remaining nine papers deal with matters of accounting measurements for various items and under different conditions.

Copyright 2019