ABSTRACT

When Johnson and Kaplan’s ( J&K) Relevance Lost appeared in 1987, Ezzamel et al. (1990: 157), though disputing many of the historical interpretations advanced in the book, did concede that it had ‘moved accounting’s history centre-stage’. J&K’s message was that everything significant in US managerial accounting was known by 1925 and, thus, with the passage of six decades, had lost its relevance. America appeared to be in imminent danger of being dispossessed of its global economic hegemony because of its failure to embrace the modern productive technologies of its international competitors.