ABSTRACT
Trevor Ellison Gambling has the reputation of being an unorthodox accounting writer. The publication of his latest book, Beyond the Conventions of Accounting is likely to reinforce this belief. This chapter examines the main ideas contained in that recent publication. After examining traditional macro and micro-accounting systems, his answer was to develop a theory of societal accounting (SA) which could then be extended to a generalized theory of accounting. Modern accounting (MA) was written prior to SA. Gambling's solution in SA is to require more information to be disclosed. The human environment, to which data relates, however, also imposes severe constraints so that Gambling has felt the need to extend his theory of societal accounting. If Accounting theory and culture are interrelated then by determining the catholicity and the conservativeness of a society it will be easy to know the accounting theory that will be acceptable.
