Louis Goldberg and the journey into accounting thought

Accounting History,  May 2003  by Burrows, Geoff H

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Abstract

The following review of Lou Goldberg's last work - Goldberg, L., (ed. by Leech, S.A.), (2001), A Journey into Accounting Thought, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-26021-3 - was commissioned by the editor. This review, written in the first person, draws inter alia on personal knowledge to examine Journey both as a stand-alone publication and as part of Lou's broader oeuvre.

Keywords: accounting history; accounting thought; commander theory; Louis Goldberg.

Acknowledgements: I am indebted to Steve Zeff, Phil Cobbin and John Richard Edwards for comments on earlier drafts. I am also obliged to Stewart Leech for fascinating discussions about the background to Journey, and to Garry Carnegie for his (perhaps misguided) faith in my ability to produce a work of the required scope and analytical depth.

Background

In 1959, my first undergraduate year at Melbourne University, Lou Goldberg gave several lectures. He seemed old - he was actually a decade younger than I am now - learned, and unenthralling. Two years later I enrolled in an Accounts III seminar, effectively an honours class, with only ten students. Utterly absorbing, it was enhanced by Lou's dry wit, scholarship - Plato's Republic was somehow brought into our discussions - precise expression and historical perspective. Inter alia, we examined the proprietary, entity, and fund theories of accounting. Trevor Johnson also participated in these seminars. Once, when I was querying some matter with Trevor (who was always "Dr Johnson" in those more-formal days), he mentioned that Lou was more dissatisfied with current theories of accounting than he had indicated in class and was developing his own theory. I particularly emphasised the limitations of extant theories in the inevitable exam question on the topic.

Joining the staff of the University of Melbourne in 1971, I was variously Lou's colleague, his student in a research-methods class, and the youngest lecturer in accounting. Another colleague, even more junior, was Stewart Leech. Of the Melbourne staff in the early 1970s, we were probably the two least likely to be Lou's future collaborators. Following his retirement in 1973, Lou remained associated with the Department. Occasionally over lunch he would mention his late colleagues, the Fitzgerald brothers, Alec (Sir Alexander) and Garry (Garrett), always with great respect and affection. In my decade away from the University, Lou's Inquiry into the Nature of Accounting (Goldberg, 1965) had appeared. I skimmed through it when I joined the department but the material appeared remote from my immediate needs. I vowed to read it later.

Lou's retirement - and he might have appreciated the chance link - coincided with the onset of double-digit inflation in Australia. Virtually alone amongst his contemporaries, he retained a studied neutrality in the ensuing debate over the virtues and vices of the CCA, CCP and CoCoA measurement systems. In Goldberg (1976, pp.659-67), he adopted the standpoint of the "gentle voice of moderation and balanced inquiry" to advance ten "outlandish propositions" on inflation and inflation accounting - including that "nobody really knows how inflation operates" - mocked advocates of the various schemes for their "proselytising zeal", and suggested that his own "commander" theory of accounting raised ethical considerations that made "absolute concepts ... impractical". I remember being slightly shocked at Lou's attitude which seemed to represent virtuoso fiddling while Rome was burning.

Sometime during 1989, "Bob Clift asked if he could include a draft "allocations" paper of mine in a Festschrift that he and Jean Kerr were preparing in Lou's honour. Bob confessed that I was not on their original list of invited authors but they had been let down by several contributors. Doubting Lou's interest in allocations, I undertook, instead, to write about Alec Fitzgerald. I quickly read all I could about Fitzgerald, contacted his three daughters and some of his former colleagues and threw the whole thing together quickly to meet the publishing deadline. Despite my efforts, Burrows (1989) was criticised by Edwards (1991) for breaching oral-history protocols.

Several years later, Lou and I jointly prepared an entry on the Fitzgerald brothers for the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) (Goldberg & Burrows, 1997). Co-authorship is an intimate relationship, akin to marriage in some respects. Each partner gains insights into the other's interests, style and sensibilities. Our study of Garry Fitzgerald's 1955 journal of a world tour revealed different Goldberg-Burrows outlooks: I was interested in what Garry said, particularly about World War 1 battlefields and opera performances at Covent Garden, whereas Lou was more interested in why Garry wrote what he did. "Who was Garry really writing for", mused Lou at one stage, "was it his family or future biographers?" In the course of this research we spent considerable time chatting while we motored to various appointments. I was surprised to learn that although Lou's daughter, Loretta, had been a professional pianist, Lou was not a devotee of classical music but relished Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.