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Primer On Oral History, Marilynn Collins, Robert Bloom

Accounting Historians Notebook

The purpose of this paper is to present "oral history" as a means of doing research on accounting history. As a research tool, oral history can be used to supplement and clarify the written record. It has scarcely been used in accounting history despite its great potential for illuminating past events and circumstances. We take the position that interviews of the principal participants in professional accounting standard-setting and practice by academic accountants can serve a valuable objective, for example, in terms of explaining how a particular accounting standard was developed. Additionally, such interviews can have the effect of alleviating the …