About
Publication Information
Subscriptions
Permissions
Advertising
Journal Rankings
Best Article Award
Press Releases
Resources
Access Options
Submission Guidelines
Reviewer Guidelines
Sample Articles
Paper Calls
Contact Us
Submit & Review
Browse
Current Issue
All Issues
Featured
Latest
Topics
Videos
Cases
Subscribe
California Management Review
California Management Review is a premier academic management journal published at UC Berkeley
Search
Article Information
The Accounting System as Operating Model
Kaufman, Felix
14
/
1
(
Fall
1971
):
103
-
109
The article presents information on the accounting system as an operation model of firms. It goes without saying that management is interested in the financial implications of the operating decisions being made within the firm. Thus, the general ledger in the illustrations given provides a means for transferring the actual and forecasted operating changes into their financial statement consequences. This is a straightforward application of the accounting system applied to hypothetical data. On a second level, the accounting system makes a much more significant contribution. Many individual operating models have been developed over the years as a means for solving specific problems. The accounting system may thus be viewed as an executive system which calls these individual programs into use and determines the financial statement implications of the individual operating models. When used in this manner, the accounting system provides a mechanism for coordinating the results derived from these individual programs and for checking the consistency between them. Procedures for performing routine business operations are actually models of segments of the business environment.
