RAYMOND J. CHAMBERS' CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACCOUNTING THOUGHT

Abstract

Raymond J. Chambers was an internationally recognized scholar, influential theorist, as well as an important contributor to the study of the history of accounting thought. He was an advocate of the needs of financial statement users. He investigated what users, not accountants, considered important and what in fact was relevant to their decision-making. He challenged existing theoretical propositions which he believed were only rationalization of current practices. He argued that the lack of a rigorously developed theory of accounting led to contradictory and less relevant accounting practices. In his theory of continuously contemporary accounting (CoCoA), he demonstrated with logic and evidence that only an accounting system based on market selling prices is relevant to users' evaluation and decision-making process. Chambers dedicated a significant amount of his most recent work to his Thesaurus [1995] and to the origins and developments of conventional accounting. He endeavored to refute the widely held assumption that cost-based accounting is a superior rule. Besides launching Abacus in 1965, his works, Accounting, Evaluation and Economic Behavior [1966] and An Accounting Thesaurus [1995] are among Chambers' notable contributions to the accounting literature.