According to the Kuhnian conception of scientific development, a paradigm is a pattern, reference model or set of rules and procedures that are applied to explain the reality of a phenomenon or to solve a problem (Kuhn T., 1962). Of the numerous paradigms identified by various authors for the evaluation of accounting science, the three most representative and those that best define the main opposing positions of the scientific community are: that of economic benefit, that of usefulness of information and that of positive accounting theory.
For its part, a Lakatosian program of scientific research consists of a series of methodological rules, some of which are indicative of the research patterns that should be followed (positive heuristic) and which ones to avoid (negative heuristic). (Lakatos I., 1978).
Trying to relate the epistemological evolution and the historical evolution of Accounting, Professor Requena (1989) points out that “although in his explanation of the historical evolution of accounting, Professor Cañibano does not expressly specify time intervals between his programs, of the text From his proposal it is not difficult to deduce it, in the following way: legalistic (1494-1918), economic (1918-1945) and formalized (1945-1980), without this having to be interpreted in a pure diachronic sense, since, in Sometimes the author himself admits a certain overlap ”.
The profit measurement paradigm
The first accounting paradigm, that of profit measurement, reached its peak between 1795 and the First World War.
In the opinion of Professor Requena (1986), although the enunciation of the 'double entry' by Fray Lucas Pacciolo in 1494, does not precisely mark a milestone of greater consistency for the scientific qualification of our discipline, it can be seen as the beginning of a period of normal science in which Accounting breaks with its past, thus initiating a development process "in which, successively, different conceptions take shape and in which the characteristic effects of the rupture appear. After Pacciolo a period of 300 years opens in which the postulates of the double entry are developed and disseminated until the appearance in 1795 of Edmon Degranges's work that gives rise to the emergence of the first school of accounting thought, called: Escuela Contista.
According to the historical research carried out by Fabio Besta (1872, Cited by Daminato E. (1966) in Benaroya L., and Galante S. 2008), the initial evolution of accounting science revolved around two trends: the first which establishes a legal basis for Accounting, and the second, in that this basis is economic in nature.
The Legalistic approach
This is the first trend assumed in the profit measurement paradigm. It arises between 1873-1886 and the maximum expression corresponds to Giuseppe Cerboni, in opposition to the Contismo of Edmon Degrange who to explain the mechanism of the accounts used by the double entry method, assumed that all the accounts represented the owner, therefore This is the debtor when he receives and the creditor when he delivers. Degrange also argued that all accounts open to both people and things are at the same time accounts of the owner that should be debited or credited, crediting or debiting one of the company's accounts. So the owner's account represents the reverse of the totals for all the company's accounts, for which reason it is effectively suppressed.
The Economic approach
The second approach taken by the profit measurement paradigm is represented by the first economic doctrine of Accounting: Neocontism. This doctrine championed by Fabio Besta, presents the notion of value in the background of his approaches. "The neo-contista doctrine rejects the fiction of the personification adopted by the classical contismo, and instead is concerned with the notion of" value "captured and manifested through the accounts and balance sheets."
“Fabio Besta in 1872, and from the chair of Accounting at the Verona School of Commerce, discovers and extracts from the accounts a primordial and indispensable element -value- and emphasizes that the values, set in the same account currency, are not useful. only to correlate the variations expressed in them, but also to reveal the variable measure of a fund that is the object of a registration system and, especially, of the securities fund to which the patrimonial system obeys ”(Benaroya L., and Galante S., 2008). Besta also directs the attention of Accounting towards the control of estate wealth. Besta assigns so much value to the controller that in studying its principles and the standards derived from it, it finds the purpose and object of Accounting, and calls our discipline Science of the Economic Controller.
Another great one, champion of the economistic approach, was Vicente Masi, who, according to the principles supported by those doctrines, maintains that the object of Accounting is the “landholding heritage considered in its static and dynamic, qualitative and quantitative aspects; and that the purpose of Accounting is the timely, prudent, convenient government of such assets in companies and entities of any nature, whether in a situation of incorporation, in a situation of management, or in a situation of transformation, assignment, merger and liquidation ”.
The information utility paradigm
The paradigm of the usefulness of information for decision-making, emerged in 1961, with George J. Staubus (1961, cited by Ackine, 2007), based on works developed by the AICPA “American Institute of Certified Public Accountants”, at time that the accounting community raised issues such as historical cost, objectivity, but fundamentally it definitely drives the utilitarian conception of accounting, recognizing that investors constitute the largest group of users of the accounting product and for this it modifies the objective of the accounting of presenting information to management and creditors, while providing financial information to investors and shareholders.
The main antecedent of this paradigm dates back to the great stock market crisis of 1929, which led to the ruin of large companies, despite the fact that these had shown a solid financial and economic situation a short time before, backed by the opinion of independent accountants.
“Perhaps the most important thing in this entire stage is the existence of a collective awareness of the need for accounting research as a power source for the normative process, norms cannot continue to be extracted from practice, research is needed to give a new meaning to the standardized process ”(Cañibano L. and Gonzalo J., 1966).
The normative approach
From this perspective, the objectives of accounting to provide useful information for a wide range of purposes generate different sets of accounting principles and standards for the purposes of each user, such as: the so-called financial accounting (oriented to external users), accounting managerial (internal users, management), tax accounting (the state as user for tax purposes), all with different sets of accounting principles and practices.
For example, in mid-2000, the European Commission, responsible for the administration of the European Union, informed the European Parliament that as of January 2005, all companies listed on the stock exchange and affiliated with the European Union will prepare consolidated financial statements in accordance with a single set of accounting principles, that is, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). For listing purposes, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada and the United States do not allow foreign companies to use international accounting standards (IFRS) without reconciliation based on local accounting standards.
In Colombia, Presidential Decree 2649 of 1993 regulates the standards of the Commercial Code in accounting matters and sets the generally accepted accounting principles and standards (GAAP) in Colombia. This Decree includes 13 principles of accounting information, in the manner of some reference standards with which it is sought to base an Accounting Theory and from which to logically derive a set of general or specific technical standards that are applied in the solution of particular problems. Through Law 1314 of July 2009, the legal regulations on accounting and information assurance, issued in Colombia until then, will remain in force while a new provision issued in development of this Law that modifies, replaces or eliminates them comes into force.
Law 1314 defined the regulatory and standardization authorities and the entire procedure for preparing and issuing accounting standards and established that from January 1, 2010 and until June 30 of the same year, the Technical Council of Accounting Public will make a first review of the accounting, financial information and information assurance standards, at the end of which it will present for its disclosure, a first work plan to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.
This plan must be executed within 24 months after the delivery of said work plan, that is, between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2012, during which time the Council will present for consideration by the Ministries of Finance and Public Credit and Commerce, Industry and Tourism, the projects that may be required. In addition, the norms issued in development of Law 1314 will enter into force on January 1 of the second taxable year following its promulgation, unless by virtue of its complexity, they consider it necessary to establish a different term. Thus, taking the terms defined by the Law, the new accounting standards in Colombia may be enacted in July 2012 and would only come into effect on January 1, 2014.
The economic value of information approach
Information is an essential factor insofar as the possession or not of this information is going to be a determining factor in the quality of the decisions that are adopted and consequently of the strategy that can be designed at a given moment and subsequently put into practice.
The company's information-communication systems are in charge of managing the information and making its use possible. The information system can be defined as a system that uses computer systems to help people in their management, execution and decision-making functions. The purpose of the communication system is to circulate information within the company and also from inside to outside the company.
An information system is made up of a set of components that collect data, store it for future use, and process it for use by end users. In order to develop effective decisions, in addition to the information that each activity gathers, it is necessary to know complementary information about the environment under which such activity was carried out. However, it often happens in practice that the computer system acquires such importance that it is sometimes confused with the information system. In any information system, especially if large amounts of data are to be used, the information system cannot be separated from the organization or the environment. In this sense, not all the decisions that are made have to use predetermined, formalized and computerized information.
Computer science or information technology refers to the hardware, software, and auxiliary system components that organizations use to create computerized information systems. Computer technology has had important implications for accounting. Accounting Information Technology is therefore a transversal knowledge between the disciplines of accounting and information systems.
In this abstract model of data input, storage, processing and output, almost all traditional accounting cycles, such as payroll payments, sales and expenses, can have applications. The end users of accounting information systems are not always accountants, since they can be clients, investors, suppliers, financial analysts and government agencies.
An accounting information system is defined as a collection of data and its necessary processes to convert them into useful information for users. Accounting information systems should not be considered as support for business accounting and financial processes, but rather should be considered as creators of information for non-accountants, for example, personnel working in marketing, production or talent human. For this information to be effective, the people who work in these subsystems must help information systems developers to identify the type of information they require for their planning, decision-making, and control functions.
In general, the objectives of accounting information should be:
- Help to make rational decisions about investment and credit operations
- Provide criteria for estimating cash flows (collections and payments)
- Report on the equity, results, and cash flows of an entity.
Information is considered a scarce economic good, that has a cost and that in return provides a benefit to its users. The production of information is governed by the laws of supply and demand determined by consumers who try to maximize their utility functions.
In recent times, programs called “business accounting software” have been available at very low cost. Still, basic accounting programs such as "free software" are available, which typically include a chart of accounts and modules for the general ledger, income accounts, and expense accounts, and are capable of delivering various types of reports. such as basic financial statements and budget execution in the form of a bar or pie chart. However, even if certain software may be temporarily or permanently licensed free of charge, it is still a challenge for the employer or employee to learn how to use the software and obtain the best benefit for their products.
The most appropriate thing is that to obtain the greatest possible benefit from a software, you should go to a firm of Certified Public Accountants or a local software advisor, who can help you select the appropriate software, train employees, advise on the preparation of reports. useful for making decisions in the company, or in the event of a disaster, helping to rescue or recover lost information.
Not all information systems are computerized, nor do all of them need to be, but most of those used in business today are automated and then the term "data processing procedures" has gradually been replaced by "computerized data processing". When a business is no longer a "micro-business" to a "small business," it is time to purchase accounting software. The most important criterion for determining the choice of a certain accounting computing package is the number of transactions that the system can process during a given period of time (for example, monthly).
It is very important for small businesses to acquire "scalable" computer packages, that is, software capable of growing as the business grows, which is achieved by adding modules that update or make the software more powerful without having to reinstall or reconfigure information. It is then possible to understand the significance of cost savings when the entrepreneur acquires some software that avoids having to re-enter the historical and current data of the transactions, or having to create new codes for users, employees or products or redefine their plan of accounts, every time the company changes software.
Accounting software for medium and large companies can cost between $ 2,000 and $ 300,000 (Simkin, Rose and Norman, 2011), which offer a variety of modules and interfaces that allow users to choose their intercom by text, conversation or server in the clouds. These systems may have the ability to convert transactions from one type of currency to another immediately and, if necessary, distribute the commissions among sales personnel in various countries. They also have the triple advantage that their level of processing is always scalable, the guest server assumes the maintenance, security and updates of the information, being the programs and data accessible wherever and whenever.
The main argument of the defenders that Accounting is an information system is that an information system configures a focused process of which Accounting is just one of its subsystems, such as the large (expanded) system of a company that sees accounting as a primary component that produces and distributes information, inserted among many other types of information not necessarily referring to financial systems.
In reality, the role of accountants has always been related to the communication of accurate and relevant financial information to the parties involved with the performance of organizations, but in this information age, fewer and fewer public accountants do true accounting since more and more of them are engaged in producing, examining, manipulating and distributing accounting information for business users.
The paradigm of positive accounting theory
The movement called by Cañibano "formalized program" in order to "reduce Accounting positions to logical or mathematical calculations in order, by virtue of inferential rules, to reach results capable of being semantically interpreted and whose contrast with reality will increase, from day to day, its explanatory and predictive potentiality ”(1975, cited by Tua, 1988), had its definitive emergence since the middle of the last century.
Since then, the scholars who defend the scientific nature of Accounting have adopted the position that only the positive and verifiable by cognitive causation could contribute to the construction of accounting science, with which the remaining types of knowledge are relegated to the meta-scientific character, in which normative constructions, typical of teleological interpretation, have no place in the concept of science.
In the current scientific literature, two currents of positive accounting thought can be distinguished: the field of Positive Empiricism and the field of Pure Accounting:
The realm of Positive Empiricism
In the program of Positive Empiricism, theories must be conceived as a set of intentional models that apply to certain physical or empirical domains. The Models of a theory are the entities (structures), of a logical-representational type, that serve to analyze how a phenomenon and its components are and how it manifests itself through the measurement of one or more of its attributes and their interrelation with the expectation of identifying fundamental laws and then generalizing it to any type of theory with a conceptual and mathematical apparatus, such as the types of physical systems to which it is actually applied and explained, which allows defining the theoretical element of a theoretical tree network.
Use specific techniques in collecting information, such as observation, interviews, and questionnaires. Most of the time, sampling is used to collect information, which is subjected to a process of coding, tabulation and statistical analysis. You can conclude with third degree hypotheses formulated from the conclusions that can be reached from the information obtained.
Among others, the most popular accounting models currently in academic, stock market and large company activities are:
- Axiomatization of Accounting (PATON, DEVINE, LITLETON, CHAMBERS, MATESSICH, LOPES)
- The agency theory (JENSEN AND MECKLING).
- Models of economic information (FELTHAM, CHANDALL).
- Circulatory analysis (DE LA PORTE, DURMACHEY).
- CAMP financial asset price model / HEM market efficiency hypothesis (WATTS AND ZIMMERMAN).
- Estimation of the value of the company from the Clean Utility (OHLSSON)
The Accounting Technology Approach
In general terms, the application of the various accounting theories derived from logical propositions generates technological procedures of diverse nature that imply the adaptation of the economic and social system to the organizational innovations induced by the new production methods, the modifications in the forms of production. marketing and consumer habits, changes in infrastructures, the development of new information and communication technologies, education and training.
The existence of simultaneous complementarities that occur between accounting innovations gives rise to a network of systems (scientific and technological) highly linked to each other and among which are developed sets of leading sectors from which important phenomena are generated that configure a new paradigmatic program. The technology program concept attempts to capture a set of rules or principles that guide technology and investment decisions in a given period of time.
In the specific field of observation in question, the set of accounting techniques with objective content make up Accounting Technology (Lopes de Sa, 2009), among which the following can hardly be mentioned:
Technology in endogenous accounting events:
- General accounting information and value measurement
- Cost accounting
- Accounting audit
- Accounting expert examination
Technology in exogenous accounting events:
- Social accounting
- Environmental accounting
- Managerial and strategic accounting
- Human resources accounting
- Stock and regulatory accounting
The realm of Pure Science
Attempting a classification of accounting science in general has its own limitations and difficulties since this is only valid in the context of the current state of knowledge and depends very subjectively on our ability to analyze the specialized literature, especially if we take into account the breadth with which accounting science is characterized today (Gómez R., 2000).
Professor Calafell (1969, Cited by Gómez R. 2000), regarding his classification criteria of a philosophical nature, and according to the purpose of knowledge, classifies Accounting in Pure or General Accounting, on the one hand, and Applied Accounting, in other. Similarly, Professor Calafell (1969) points out that Accounting is the “science of an economic nature, whose object of study (material object) is constituted by the varied economic reality, not as a reality in itself but in its aspect of both qualitative and quantitative (formal object), through appropriate methods, with the general purpose of highlighting said reality in the most exact way possible and in a way that shows us how many aspects of it are of interest ”.
Similarly, Professor Requena (1986, Cited by Gómez R. 2000) distinguishes between Pure Accounting and Applied Accounting in his attempt to establish a General Theory of Accounting. Likewise, Professor Requena (1975, Cited by Gómez R. 2000) conceptualizes that Accounting is the “empirical science that with respect to an economic unit, allows us at all times the qualitative and quantitative knowledge of its economic reality, in order to generic to highlight the situation of said unit and its evolution over time ”.
Finally, we use the definition given by Professor Rodríguez Ariza (1992, Cited by Gómez R. 2000), who considers that “Accounting seeks the knowledge, interpretation and informative transmission of circulatory phenomena, generally economic, compatible with his methodology ”To verify that Accounting seeks the knowledge and interpretation of circulatory phenomena, generally economic.
According to Professor Calafell (1971, Cited by Gómez R. 2000), the specific methodology of Accounting is materialized in the functions of capture, symbolization, measurement, valuation, representation, coordination, aggregation, analysis and interpretation. To do this, it initially uses an inductive process to obtain data from an observed economic reality that later becomes deductive to reveal all the technical-accounting aspects of the same economic reality.
All of the above must have as its origin or starting point an accounting organization, in which all the purposes that are intended to be achieved are taken into account. The first sub-process is characterized by an inductive reasoning that culminates in obtaining the Balance, and within that one two fundamental parts are distinguished:
1) One of a scientific nature, in which the capture, symbolization, measurement and evaluation of the economic reality is carried out.
2) Another of a technical-formal nature, which deals with the representation, coordination and integration of said reality until reaching the formulation of the Balance Sheet.
The second sub-process, for its part, takes place from the Balance Sheet and is characterized by deductive reasoning that will reveal the economic reality in all its aspects, thus constituting the accounting analysis process. In turn, in this sub-process two fundamental aspects are distinguished:
1.- Analysis of the economic history: it is deduced from the Accounting, and implicitly from the Balance Sheet and attached documents.
2.- Prospective or expectations analysis: serves as the basis for future decision-making on the management to be carried out.
In addition to both threads, Professor Calafell points out, there is another between them that he calls the intermediate thread and that deals with two important accounting problems:
1.- The verification or accounting verification (in its double internal and external aspect).
2.- The consolidation or accounting integration of various economic situations (internal).
The Applied Science approach
For Professor Requena (1986), Applied Accounting is discriminated in National Accounting and Micro-accounting. In turn, it divides the latter between Administrative Accounting and Company Accounting.
Professor Eugen Schmalenbach (1953, Cited by Gómez R. 2000) in his chart of accounts, implicitly suggests that there are two different problems in the company that should not be treated in the same way. Later, already explicitly, in his work Kostenrechnung und Preispolitik distinguishes between Financial Accounting and Company Accounting, and points out that the Company Accounting corresponds to what is related to the internal conditions of the operation, while the function of the first of They are the one that concerns the financing of the company and the requirements of Commercial Law, the administrative authority in tax matters, technical associations, etc.
Later, the split between General Accounting and Applied Accounting begins in the Spanish doctrine, highlighting in this regard the works of the Spanish writer Emidgio Rodríguez Pita (1956, Cited by Gómez R. 2000), who distinguishes in Applied Accounting between objective Accounting and Accounting subjective. Objective Accounting refers to the reason for the corporate purpose that collects all the economic events that occur in the company as a result of the management process, while subjective Accounting or the subject's reason includes the legal and economic relations of the company with the subject or subjects who own it but do not attend the management process.
About which Professor Fernández Pirla (1983, Cited by Gómez R. 2000) explains, these two areas, which have their own peculiar characteristics, are: the internal area, in which the economic process of cost formation takes place in the strict sense, which is characterized in that the subjective and discretionary element plays a fundamental role in it, and the external or financial sphere, in which all the circulation, also called external, of the company takes place, and which is characterized because the magnitudes that they are made up objectively determined by acts of purchase and sale with certain monetary expression or because they have been previously elaborated in the internal sphere ”.
An attempt to analyze the content of the company's Accounting, as it has traditionally been the object of study in Public Accounting Programs, leads us to consider the following question:
Could the problems derived from the legal framework in which the company operates, especially the legal form held by its owner (Subjective Accounting), could configure an independent branch within Applied Accounting?
This is the question, and we consider that this basically only constitutes a problem of classification and discernment about how valid it can be to consider subjective Accounting as an independent branch included in the framework of Financial Accounting or external Accounting already Objective Accounting as another independent branch included in Management Accounting or Internal Accounting, if this name is adopted.
On the other hand, since Accounting must provide economic-financial information that corresponds to the truthful image of the company, it is necessary to verify the degree of adequacy of the various business accounting statements, checking their adaptation to the principles of Accounting generally accepted, as well as the correct application of the standards of a formal technical and economic accounting nature, which is the object of special attention by the Verification, Review or Accounting Audit, within the intermediate sub-process (Gómez R., 2000).
Bibliographical sources
AcKine S. 2007, Paradigms of Accounting. Available in:
www.monografias.com/trabajos40/paradigmas-contabilidad/paradigmas-contabilidad.shtml, 12/24/2010
Benarova L. and Galante S. History of accounting. p.3. Available in:
sites.google.com/site/cuentasmstamos/historia-dela-contabilidad 24/12/2010
Cañibano L. and Gonzalo J. (1996) Medellín Accounting Research Program: Accounting Magazine of the University of Antioquia, No.29 p.24.
Gómez R., 2000. Accounting Science. Malaga: UNED.
Kuhn T. (1971) The structure of scientific revolutions. Mexico: Economic Culture Fund.
Lakatos I. (1975). Criticism and the development of knowledge. Barcelona: Grijalbo.
Lopes de Sa, A. (2009). Practice and theory of Accounting. Curitiba: Juruá, p. 35.
Simkin M., Rose J. and Norman C. (2012) Core concepts of accounting information systems. Jefferson City: Wiley.
Tua J. (1988) Evolution of the accounting concept through its definitions. Medellín: Journal of Accounting of the University of Antioquia. September, p.51.
