Seminar Title: The General Theory of Accounting Project – A Progress Report

Professor Gabriel Donleavy

University of New England, Business School

Friday 8th May in Lecture Theatre 5, W39 in EBL Building at 12:00PM

Abstract

Accounting has a coherent set of practices. It has fairly generally accepted principles and it has micro-theories borrowed from other disciplines. It has no general theory yet. Watts and Zimmerman’s positive accounting theory was the nearest attempt so far but stalled on its trio of hypotheses about earnings manipulation. A general theory that is explicative and predictive is a work in progress but one nearing completion of its first draft. In this presentation, its finished elements will be presented and its elements still under construction will be explored.

Gabriel Donleavy is UNE Professor of Accounting and Deputy Head of the Business School since mid January of this year. He was born and bred in England, reading Economics at Cambridge, Law at London and obtaining his Accounting PhD from Glasgow. After eight years in professional accounting and commodity broking in the City of London, he started teaching accounting and finance at what is now the University of Greenwich. He taught for many years at the National University of Singapore and  Hong Kong University before becoming Dean of Business and Law first at Victoria University and then at the University of Macau. He is an adjunct professor at UWS and on several editorial boards including the Asian Review of Accounting which he founded in 1992. He has 6 books, 39 refereed articles and 80 other publications produced so far.