SAMUEL J. BROADS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ACCOUNTING PROFESSION

In: Accounting historians journal: a publication of the Academy of Accounting Historians Section of the American Accounting Association, Band 23, Heft 2, S. 69-85

Abstract

In the decade following the passage of the Federal Securities Laws of 1933 and 1934, the reform of accounting and auditing practices directed authority for selection of accounting principles and auditing procedures away from the discretion of the individual accountant and auditor. Instead, a self-regulatory peer driven process to establish general acceptance for a more limited set of principles and procedures was being initiated. Two events which occurred in 1938 indelibly affected this process, the SEC's decision to issue Accounting Series Release No. 4, which empowered non-governmental entities as potential sources of authoritative support, and the McKesson & Robbins fraud which called into question the value of the independent audit and the role of external auditing at the very time a momentum had been established for self-regulation by the nascent and recently reunified accounting profession.
The contributions of Samuel J. Broad in both the initiatives for self-regulation of accounting principles and of auditing procedures is examined in this paper. Further, several examples of Broad's rhetorical technique of employing analogous reasoning to facilitate dissemination of complex economic and accounting issues are examined.