With the current and growing globalization and not too far away the conclusion of the free trade agreement in the world, companies have seen the need to make their accounting reports more reliable and with higher quality, all this due to the increasing demand that users both internal and external (more the second than the first) have done the same. Professional organizations have taken responsibility and have dedicated themselves to creating an accounting system capable of unifying information and making it more useful.
Introduction:
Scientific research is the only possible way to overcome the crisis, the objective should be the search for scientific solutions that reduce the degree of uncertainty of the users.
For this, it is necessary that capitalist companies adopt for themselves an accounting system capable of unifying their information and that can be evaluated in advance of their presentation, but from there drawbacks may arise, perhaps based a little on “creative accounting”, to overcome The aforementioned drawbacks must be answered to a series of logical questions that users arise, for example, is accounting considered as a science or as a technique?
Of the possibilities in accounting research, there is the prospect of a methodology known as "research programs", a concept that must be defined, since there is a management of this term in another sense, in addition to achieving a complete understanding of what accounting refers to and how it is applied, that is why we have described here the characteristics that knowledge must meet in order to be classified as science.
To be a science of knowledge you must:
1. Have your own subject or specific object of study (must be dedicated to a defined subject)
This does not imply that said knowledge cannot be interrelated with other subjects, but this interrelation can generate that knowledge applies more as science.
2. Study the facts with analytical rigor
For this, knowledge must be based on the changes that have been generated in its constant study and those that may appear in the future.
3. State truths of general meaning.
4. Possess observations, concepts, propositions, hypotheses, theories, laws and sources of information, all in a systematic way.
5. State the experimental or verifiable.
6. Be useful.
7. It is related to the other fields of human knowledge ¹.
Accounting has fulfilled all the conditions and that is why it has been taken as a science, although it is not unknown that it can be used as a technique, since the technique leads to the application of knowledge until it becomes practice.
1. Accounting in crisis
2. Accounting in crisis, described by Richard Mattessich, has to do with a loss of confidence of external users, due to bad practices and the lack of research in accounting to improve social function.
With reference to the study and research in accounting Richard Mattessich, points out that it is a phenomenon difficult to locate among members of professional schools "this indicates something very disturbing, a growing gap between an increasingly sophisticated academic cadre and a group of practitioners, who take less and less interest in new accounting research, in part because it is not an issue in which they participate and do not see relevance to their own work.²
"Accounting is much more difficult than other disciplines, such as finance, medicine or architecture, client requirements have been considered more as a matter of political level than as a matter of research."
Academic bodies and especially students would be used to reduce research costs, since it would be taken as academic work since on the side of research companies the costs are high.
On the other hand, greater reliability would be generated for the study and the result of the investigation since interests are not involved.
3. Concept of accounting
To form an accounting concept we must abstract from what has been written about it over time.
3.1 accounting as art: it is the art of imagining, keeping and using account systems that correspond to a previously defined objective. The art of invention since it tries to create methods that correspond to very diverse objects, accounting is not just a record, that is one of its procedures, one of its expressions, another thing is that some reduce it to this.
3.2 Accounting as an activity: accounting is considered as a practice and not as a result of man's thinking in society, it is considered that it is the count, registration and control without taking into account the knowledge that it implies.
3.3 Accounting as a technique: as a procedure, system or mechanism to accumulate, process and report data, reducing it to its practical part. If we reduce accounting to its merely instrumental or procedural part, we are accepting an underdevelopmental position (science and technique will come from other countries), accepting its dependencies on other disciplines (economics, administration).
Ankylosing and repetition will be supported (a technique falls into disuse, is maintained or is perfected) and a situation of professional crisis characterized by the absence of own ideas will be established.
3.4 the core in the accounting program: there are a number of concepts that are driving the entire accounting practice; They are there and are often unacceptable, but since they are the only ones that exist, they are used to perform accounting work. This is an artifact that would be generally accepted accounting principles and may have different conformations.
In current accounting, the core of the research program is made up of the assumptions of the environment and the basic rules.
The assumptions of the environment have been the least studied or disseminated; They have always been at the core of accounting. They are basically qualitative conditions and aspects, that is, in current accounting theory, qualitative conditions are formulated for the existence of accounting.
3.5 formal science and factual science: not all scientific research seeks objective knowledge. Thus logic and mathematics - that is, the various systems of formal logic and the different chapters of pure mathematics are rational, systematic and verifiable, but they are not objective, they do not give us information about reality: they simply do not deal with acts.
Logic and mathematics are about ideal entities; these entities, both abstract and interpreted, only exist in the human mind³.
4. Towards a comprehensive accounting model
4.1 nature of accounting: accounting is subject to the movements that occur in economic relations and to the recognition of legal structures, linked to external conditions that do not allow it to advance to the construction of knowledge. What is concluded from the point of view of the nature of accounting there have only been two approaches: * legal nature (with legal acts give rise to accounting records.
Accounting is a documented information system tending to become judicial evidence). * Economic nature (economic facts determine the origin of accounting records, accounting is an auxiliary discipline of the economy). There has been talk of the social nature of accounting but a rigorous review of the accounting traditions to which the studies carried out can be ascribed; It shows that in the world, approaches have not been developed where the accounting problem is approached from the social point of view.
4.2 object of accounting: depart from the conceptualization of the nature of accounting which determines the existence of the community that demands information or control of the integral fields of identity, determining its essence as territory, culture and economy is can reach the object of knowledge has kept accounting in a state of empiricism, pragmatism essential cause of its scientific underdevelopment.
Determining a confusion with its nature to establish that the knowledge is descriptive. And this is determined by the legal and economic conditions established by some power relations existing at a given moment, conditions of the environment by which a truth is established for each historical moment and for each social reality.
An accounting with possibilities of surviving in this process of development of science and technology must have the capacity to inform the future and the environment. This conception must be advanced: accounting must not only inform the back and inside of companies, it must allow knowing the future and the environment of the same. Thus, accounting becomes an instrument for strategic control, a control that will not be regrettable, will allow avoiding the sudden emergency of crises by making it possible to predict them early enough to be able to reorient (4).
Opinion and conclusion
The difficulty that exists in distinguishing accounting between science and technique is that we as students and professionals have not done enough in the development of research and have used knowledge and practices that are not always exact and real, which Due to their mismanagement or due to the change of environment for which they were created today they are obsolete and do not meet the requirements that our development merits, and a climate of uncertainty has been created as to how real our information is and whether it is providing the objective of decision making,We have also created a question: is accounting a science? We can only say that accounting is a discipline that, due to its language and knowledge, is common in the fields of science and technology, since technology fosters science and new scientific knowledge enables new techniques.
Bibliography
Legis accounting and audit magazines:
- "Scientific development of accounting and quality of life" Marco Machado Rev. 3 of 2000 "Management information for the generation of value" Samuel Mantilla Rev. 1 2000- "action model of comprehensive accounting" Rafael Franco. Rev. 15 of 2003 “accounting in crisis? technique or science? Juan Viegas Rev15 / 2003 "scientific and accounting theory" Henry Romero Rev.8 / 2001 - "conceptual foundation of the accounting crisis" Luis A. Gonzalo Santos Rev. 21/2005
Science its method and philosophy Mario Bunge
Notes:
(1) Antonio López de Sa. "Autonomy and scientific quality of accounting". Faculty of Public Accounting UNAB / 1995 Page 3.
(2) Juan Carlos Vegas- “accounting in crisis, science or technique? Comprehensive Journal of Accounting and Auditing Legislation 2003 / pag160
(3) Mario Bunge "Science, Its Method and Its Philosophy"
(4) Rafael Franco Ruiz "towards a comprehensive accounting model, legis accounting and audit magazine
