A view of accounting as a practical activity - a service function whose value depends on its adaptation to the environment in which it serves - is a good place to start this book, originally published in 1996. While arts such as music and drama can be said to serve human needs, their development presumably cannot be explained primarily by reference to the economic features of their environments. By contrast, an economic service function such as accounting develops in response to economic features of its environment. The objective of this book is to stimulate interest in explaining the development of specific features of accounting as we know it in the firms that are so important to the economies of Western industrialized countries by reference to the economic features of those firms. The emphasis in this work is on the influence of economic features of the firm in the development of accounting.