Problem
I. What was the Metcalf Report (1977) and what was its impact on accounting? Please discuss why the Metcalf Committee was established, what its findings were and what impact its findings had on accounting.
II. As accountants were determining the proper role to play at the beginning of the 1900s and well into the Industrial Revolution, early accountants like PW's (now PwC) Arthur Lowes Dickinson believed that an accountant should be an "impartial referee between business and government, dedicated to numbers and order." This was the predominant view of most British accountants at this time.
As we will later see, accountants chose a much different path. What do you think about Dickinson's approach? How would accounting be different now if that was the primary role of accountants? Would you have chosen accounting if you were limited to this role?
III. One of the key themes of The Reckoning is the following: "If there is any historical lesson to be learned here, it is that those societies that managed to harness accounting as part of their general cultures flourished. Republican Italian city-states like Genoa and Florence, Golden Age Holland, and eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain and America all integrated accounting into their educational curriculum, religious and moral thought, art, philosophy, and political theory."
What do you think? Is it necessary to somehow broaden the reach of accounting so that all have a basic understanding and it is part of most everyone's daily life? If so, how do we accomplish this? If not, how do we ensure people continue to trust the government, to trust the companies they are invested in and trust the companies they depend on for their jobs and livelihood's if they do not understand the financial reports they issue?