This paper will be largely autobiographical and will mainly be centered around

what happened at the LSE fifty or more years ago. In 1937 my article ‘‘The

Nature of the Firm’’ was published, based on ideas I had developed some years

earlier. It has since been reprinted on several occasions and has been much

discussed, particularly in recent years. One year later, in 1938, I wrote a series of

articles for The Accountant entitled ‘‘Business Organization and the Accountant,’’

articles which have also been reprinted and referred to in the literature,1

although not nearly to the same extent as ‘‘The Nature or the Firm.’’ At any

rate, in the 1930s I was working on both accounting and the theory of the firm.

Today I want to discuss the relation between these subjects.