Basic Approaches to Formulation of Accounting Thoughts: Evidence from Financial Accounting Framework

Abstract

For more than a century, accounting has been offered as a discipline course in most of our various Universities and higher institutions. For the first time in a century, American Institute of Accountant (AIA) has put forward an effort to assemble the General Acceptable Accounting Principle (GAAP) back in 1939, since then, it has been observed that there are more efforts in setting accounting standards alongside with expansion of accounting theory or thought. All of the efforts are signs of the facts that accounting is going through a change from a profession into a field of science. Thus, no author can claim accounting as a scientific field without any justifications, reasoning, postulates and assumptions. Nevertheless, this article tries to study basic approaches to formulation of accounting thought: evidence from financial accounting framework. There is an attempt to elucidate the various roles in developing the accounting thought, meaning of accounting theory or thought, classification, structure and element of accounting theory, explaining the relevancy of various approaches to formulation of accounting thought, as well as merits and demerits of each approach in accounting thought.