From measurement to management: how accounting evolved to form a new research field

Accounting evolved from a convenient and sketchy measure of reality - a systematic account of economic values of business transactions for bookkeeping purposes - in early days to becoming a tool of managing a company's financial appearance in the capital market in modern times. Accounting research evolved along in seeking to be 'scientific'. While the direction of this academic pursuit is well justified and accounting indeed evolved such that it was ready to be a field of scientific research, this goal was never reached.