The Methodology of Positive Accounting.
批评罗切斯特学派对传统会计理论的指责，指出其实证概念基于19世纪实证主义的误解，并论证实证理论实为否定性理论，对预测、解释和规范推理至关重要。
Abstract ABSTRACT: Jensen, Watts and Zimmerman (referred to hereafter, following Jensen [1976], as "the Rochester School of Accounting") have charged that most accounting theories are "unscientific" because they are "normative." They advocate the development of "positive" theories to explain actual accounting practice. The program of the Rochester School raises a number of methodological issues that are addressed in this article. First, it is argued that the Rochester School's criticism of traditional accounting theory is off the mark because of a failure to distinguish between two different levels of phenomena. Second, it is argued that the concept of "positive" theory is based on the misconception (derived from nineteenth-century positivism) that empirical science is concerned solely with the actual, with "what is." Empirical theories, it is shown, are negative in their import; they state what is to be taken as empirically impossible. Third, it is shown that "negative" theories of the sort described in this article are exactly what is needed in predictive, explanatory, and normative reasoning. Finally, it is argued that the standards advocated by the Rochester School for the appraisal of their own theories are so weak that those theories fail to satisfy Popper's [1959] proposal for demarking science from metaphysics.