Management Control, Proprietorship and Entity Theories: an Historical International Perspective

The paper intends to focus on the analysis and comparison, based on the historical international perspective, of the “proprietorship theory” (Besta, Hatfield, Hügli, Schär, Sprague) with the “entity theory” (Paton, Schmalenbach, Zappa). The differences between the proprietorship and entity perspectives constitute a central issue in accounting theory and accounting practice as weel. Moreover the paper stresses the contemporary debate about positive empirical accounting research on ERP, demonstrates the weakness, and limitated adherence to the present econonomic setting, of the strict application of the “proprietorship theory”, separeted from the “entity theory”. Instead, even if the implementation of IAS is mainly based on the proprietorship approach, ERP systems demonstrate the need to overcome the rigid separation of the two accounting approaches, fostering an integrated systematic view, which better copes with the complex, dynamic and instable business and economic reality.