The increasing gap between the theory and practice of accounting should be taken as a warning that academics have emphasized the economics and sociology of accounting, while neglecting the applied science of accounting. This treatise points a way out of the present dilemma by focusing on the need for dealing with moral and other normative issues as well as the problem of relating means to ends. It also attempts a bold synthesis of the two major opposing camps of present-day academic accounting, the Critical-Interpretive Perspective of Great Britain, on one side, and the Positive Accounting Theory of America, on the other. The challenging issues that this book raises should be of great interest to practitioners, no less than academics, to senior undergraduates, no less than to graduate students and all those interested in an unorthodox perspective of an exciting, but often misunderstood, field.