Seattle, Washington -- Three accounting professors at Seattle University want the world to know that their discipline is not boring.
To argue their case, they have produced a videotaped documentary to show that accounting’s heritage is not Ebenezer Scrooge’s faithful clerk, Bob Cratchit, under his green eyeshade. Rather, the discipline’s intellectual and cultural roots lie in the Renaissance and, in particular, with the man known as the Father of Accounting, Luca Bartolomes Pacioli.
The Seattle professors -- David E. Tinius, head of the accounting department; William L. Weis, a professor of business; and Chauncey Burke, an assistant professor of business -- have called their documentary Luca Pacioli, Unsung Hero of the Renaissance. Mr. Weis serves as narrator.
The three say they hope the documentary will encourage colleges and universities to teach accounting’s place in intellectual and cultural history. In several studies in recent years, accounting educators have acknowledged that their students too often graduate with a poor grounding in the liberal arts, with a narrow focus on their role in the work force, and with poor communication skills.
Mr. Burke says accounting firms, which invest large sums of money in recruiting top students, were eager to assist a project that might attract more broadly educated students to the field. The documentary was produced with financial support from 11 accounting firms and professional associations -- including four of the “Big 6" firms -- and from South-Western Publishing, a textbook company in Cincinnati.
South-Western is in the process of distributing some 3,000 copies of the videotape to colleges and accounting firms as part of a promotional campaign -- the company publishes many textbooks used in accounting courses. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants is also distributing copies to its member firms.
Beginning with three broadcasts on February 1, the 27-minute film will be shown on the Learning Channel some two dozen times over the next two years. The PBS affiliate in Seattle plans to show the documentary in March.
Pacioli was born in Italy in 1445, in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, and lived until 1517. Described as an erudite scholar, he drew crowds to lectures on mathematics, geometry, chess, and military strategy.
His acknowledged major work was a 1494 treatise, Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita. In the work, which aimed to present the collected knowledge of mathematics, geometry, and proportionality, Pacioli devoted one chapter to the method of accounting used at the time by Venetian merchants.
The method, derived from Arabic algebra, came to be known as the Venetian, or double-entry method. Accounting historians agree that Pacioli’s codification, which was soon translated into many European languages, secured double-entry accounting as the preeminent method among many then in use. It remains the public accountant’s standard practice today.
In their documentary, the three Seattle professors explain that the method also facilitated European economic development and encouraged wealthy merchants to invest in voyages of exploration.
Pacioli was associated with several leading artists and scholars of the Renaissance. After reading his Summa, Leonardo da Vinci became Pacioli’s student in mathematics and proportionality and perspective. Da Vinci illustrated Pacioli’s second major treatise on mathematics.
The three professors say they hope their videotape will help improve accounting’s image. “Many accountants at the pinnacle of their profession,” says Mr. Weis, “still are embarrassed to say what they do.” When accountants reveal their profession at parties, says Mr. Tinius, the conversation stops.
“That’s pretty hard to change,” he says, “but this film is a nudge in the right direction.”
Mr. Weis and Mr. Tinius also have formed the Pacioli Society, whose major task will be to organize a year-long series of symposia, to be held in Pacioli’s birthplace, on the many fields of study with which Pacioli was associated. That will take place in 1994, the quincentennial of the publication of Pacioli’s treatise.
Response to those plans has been so swift and enthusiastic that the professors have scheduled a preliminary symposium on Pacioli in Sansepolcro next September. Meanwhile, they are busy promoting their film, billing it as a story of the cross-fertilization of ideas during the Renaissance, suitable for use in many courses, including surveys of Western civilization.
“In part,” says Mr. Weis, “we hope that more young people will be drawn to accounting by this film, but we also hope that people who’ll never be drawn to accounting will feel some kinship with it.”