For the induction of Joel S. Demski there were: Remarks by Professor Charles T. Horngren, Standford University, Hall of Fame member; Citation prepared by Daniel L. Jensen, The Ohio State University, read by Charles T. Horngren; Response by Joel S. Demski, University of Florida

Demski, Joel S.

Horngren, Charles T.

Jensen, Daniel L.

English

eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi)

Accounting Historians Journal Volume 28 Issue 1 June 2001 Article 9 2001 Accounting Hall of Fame 2000 induction: Joel S. Demski Charles T. Horngren Daniel L. Jensen Joel S. Demski Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal  Part of the Accounting Commons, and the Taxation Commons Recommended Citation Horngren, Charles T.; Jensen, Daniel L.; and Demski, Joel S. (2001) "Accounting Hall of Fame 2000 induction: Joel S. Demski," Accounting Historians Journal: Vol. 28 : Iss. 1 , Article 9. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol28/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Archival Digital Accounting Collection at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Accounting Historians Journal by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact egrove@olemiss.edu. 1312000 Accounting Hall of Fame InductionAccounting Historians JournalVol. 28, No. 1June 2001ACCOUNTING HALL OF FAME2000 INDUCTIONAugust 14, 2000Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaRemarks, Citation,and ResponseJOEL S. DEMSKIREMARKSbyProfessor Charles T. HorngrenStanford UniversityHall of Fame MemberThis occasion is a special honor and treat for me. I haveknow Joel Demski since 1963, when he was a superlative doc-toral student at the University of Chicago. The middle 1960swere heady years for the doctoral program there. Among itsstudents in accounting and finance were many individuals whohave made noteworthy contributions to the scholarly literatureand practice. Examples are such names as Demski, Beaver,Ball, Brown, Watts, Fama, Mike Jensen, Roll, and Scholes.I have watched Joel grow from a bright, leading doctoralstudent to become the leading researcher in the entire worldregarding applications of information economics and agencytheory to accounting. Along the way, Joel and I and our wiveshave become close friends. Millie has been a fabulous supporterand partner. Joel is a superb role model for academicians. Forover 33 years, he has been a refreshing trailblazer in accountingresearch. His amazing productivity and sophistication continueto flourish.1Horngren et al.: Accounting Hall of Fame 2000 induction: Joel S. DemskiPublished by eGrove, 2001Accounting Historians Journal, June 2001132Joel is not merely a splendid researcher. He is an educatorin the broadest sense. He is a treasure for any university. Inparticular, he has a set of collegial skills that raises the level ofscholarship throughout a doctoral program and especiallythroughout the younger faculty.Joel and I were Stanford colleagues for eighteen years. In1985, to my dismay, he departed for Yale. I said to him, “Joel, Ilooked forward to our growing old together here.” He replied,“We have.”Now I shall read the citation, which was prepared by DanJensen.CITATIONprepared byDaniel L. JensenThe Ohio State Universityread byCharles T. HorngrenKnown for the originality and rigor of his research, thisdistinguished and consummate scholar has played a leadingrole in accounting research for over three decades. He was bornin 1940 in Sturgis, Michigan, the second of five children born toGeorge and Athalia Demski. Both his mother, who was a highschool graduate, and his father, who did not complete grammarschool, stressed the importance of education. In the early1940s, the family moved to Pinconning, Michigan, where hespent his early years and where his father founded a smallmanufacturing company.His own interests and his parent’s business led him tostudy engineering at the University of Michigan, where he ar-rived just after the launching of Sputnik and the resultant revi-talization of engineering education. “After engineering school,”he recalls, “I was not sufficiently intrigued by family business,the auto industry in general, or consulting to leave what I haddiscovered to be the joys of university life.” Thus he remainedat Michigan after his BSE in industrial engineering (1962) andenrolled in its MBA program where he encountered William A.Paton and took courses from Stephen A. Zeff and Samuel R.Hepworth, who kindled his interest in accounting and encour-aged him to pursue a Ph.D.He received his MBA degree with high distinction in 1963and, after reviewing business Ph.D. program catalogs in theUniversity of Michigan library, he selected the University of2Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 28 [2001], Iss. 1, Art. 9https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol28/iss1/91332000 Accounting Hall of Fame InductionChicago because it appeared open to an emphasis on math-ematics. He was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship andmoved to Chicago. There he worked with Sidney Davidson,Nicholas Dopuch, Charles Horngren and a host of other facultyas well as fellow students such as William Beaver and PhilipBrown. Charles Horngren became his advisor and led himthrough the experience of a dissertation and into a distin-guished academic career.When he completed his Ph.D. in 1967, he took his firstprofessorial position at Columbia University, where he workedwith Carl L. Nelson. He recalls, “Chuck Horngren and the Chi-cago experience taught me how to think, and Carl taught mewhat it means to be a professor.” In 1968, he joined the ac-counting faculty at Stanford University where he held the PaulHolden Professorship and later the Joan E. Horngren Professor-ship in Accounting. In 1985, he moved to Yale University tobecome the Milton Steinbach Professor of Information and Ac-counting Systems and in 1994, to the University of Florida tobecome the Frederick E. Fisher Eminent Scholar in Account-ing.His pathbreaking work on applications of information eco-nomics and agency theory to accounting is presented in 60 pub-lished journal articles, 5 books, and over 25 other publishedpapers. His work and that of the countless students he inspiredhas created a new domain for accounting theory. He is one ofthe most widely cited authors in the accounting literature andmany of his papers have been awarded national prizes for theirimportance and influence. One of his first papers, “An Account-ing System Structured on a Linear Programming Model,” wonthe 1967 AICPA Award for Outstanding Contributions to theAccounting Literature and 3 years later, another paper, “TheUse of Models in Information Evaluation” (written with hisformer colleague Gerald Feltham), captured the same award.Another early paper, “Decision Implementation Interface . . .”won the 1969 American Accounting Association CompetitiveManuscript Award. His articles have been required reading fordoctoral students for over three decades, and his doctoral semi-nars, which he has delivered to many universities, are nation-ally know for their insights and their capacity to inspire andprepare students for research. His most recent book, ManagerialUses of Accounting Information, brings this important work andhis insightful thinking about fundamental accounting problemsto interested students at all levels.For many years, he has played an active role in the Ameri-3Horngren et al.: Accounting Hall of Fame 2000 induction: Joel S. DemskiPublished by eGrove, 2001Accounting Historians Journal, June 2001134can Accounting Association. He has served on many of its com-mittees and editorial boards. Next year he will serve as its presi-dent-elect. He has also been a member of the editorial boards ofthe Journal of Accounting Research and many other journals. Heis known as a true scholar for his probing mind and uncompro-mising pursuit of excellence. He is also well-known as a mentorand as a superb example for others because of his willingness toinvest himself in the work of his colleagues and students.His many honors include an honorary doctorate fromOdense University in Denmark, the American AccountingAssociation’s Outstanding Educator Award (1986), multipleawards of the AICPA-AAA Outstanding Contribution to Ac-counting Literature Award (1967 and 1970), and the Universityof Florida Foundation Research Professorship.In 1964, he married Millie Sobieray. They have three chil-dren, Jay, Rachel and Sybil. His hobbies center on beach activi-ties, twentieth century history, and sporting clays. He is the 64thmember of the Accounting Hall of Fame, Joel Stanley Demski.RESPONSEbyJoel S. DemskiUniversity of FloridaI have long regarded the Accounting Hall of Fame as BillPaton’s Club, a club of legends of the likes of Hatfield, Littleton,Chambers, Horngren and Ijiri, and, of course, Paton himself.To be invited into this Club is an honor beyond description, aswell as profoundly humbling.In broader terms, I see today’s event as a celebration ofaccounting scholarship: its growth, its accomplishments and itsprospects. Accounting has become serious scholarly work in thesocial sciences. Its roles within an organization’s fabric, in glo-balized financial markets, and in and across public, private andnot-for-profit sectors have become major scholarship activities.In turn, these activities have deepened our understandingof accounting institutions, painted in vibrant colors the limitsof our understanding, engendered intellectual excitement, andraised our relevance and stature within the academy.We have learned the importance of studying accounting inits environment, with explicitly active users, and with comple-mentary measurement and reporting services. And we havelearned that, with sufficient abstraction, accounting in all itsforms, from the sole proprietor to national income reporting,4Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 28 [2001], Iss. 1, Art. 9https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol28/iss1/91352000 Accounting Hall of Fame Inductionand in all its locations, whether North America, Europe, Asia orwherever, is cut from the same theory.1These are exciting developments. And this is why I viewtoday as a celebration, a celebration of what our communityhas accomplished, and the opportunities that are on our door-step.My own role here is surely modest, and heavily influencedby a host of individuals and good fortune. I had the good for-tune to attend Michigan’s Engineering School and to then betaught by Sidney Davidson, Nick Dopuch and Chuck Horngren,not to mention a cast of extraordinary students, at Chicago. Ialso had the good fortune to be tutored at Carl Nelson’s finish-ing school. At Stanford I discovered Bob Wilson, the very em-bodiment of all that Carl was trying to portray. And it was therethat I hooked up with colleagues, co-authors and life timefriends, Bill Beaver, Jerry Feltham and Bob Swieringa, and re-connected with my advisor and mentor and friend, ChuckHorngren. These were magic times.This circle of simply extraordinary friends and colleaguesgradually expanded to include, among others, John Fellingham,Hadley Schaefer, Katherine Schipper, and Doug Snowball. Andas I look around and ruminate over inter-generation passage Iam privileged to know and be reassured by young scholars likeJon Glover, Karl Hackenbrack, and Russ Lundholm. Each oneof these individuals has touched me in important ways; andeach is a genuinely good person.Add to this the opportunity to work with a steady supply ofremarkable students, such as Gary Sundem, Stan Baiman,Froystein Gjesdal, John Christensen, Rick Antle, Rick Lambert,Srikant Datar, Steve Huddart, Bente Villadsen and Pierre Liang.It just doesn’t get any better.Well it does. My deepest debt, by orders of magnitude, is tomy wife, Millie. We have been married for over 36 years, amarriage of joy, of love and of friendship. Millie is my confi-dante, my source of encouragement, my moral compass, my1 This work is found throughout the scholarly literature of the past fourdecades. Examples, with an eye toward, but not exclusive focus on, theoreticalwork, are provided by Butterworth [1972], Feltham [1972], Ijiri [1975], Demskiand Feltham [1976; 1978], Gjesdal [1981], Libby [1981], Watts andZimmerman [1986], Ohlson [1987], Dye [1988], Demski [1994], Demski andFeltham [1994], Feltham and Ohlson [1995], Scott [1996], Sunder [1997], Bea-ver [1998], Christensen and Demski [2000] and Christensen and Feltham[2000].5Horngren et al.: Accounting Hall of Fame 2000 induction: Joel S. DemskiPublished by eGrove, 2001Accounting Historians Journal, June 2001136source of wisdom. She keeps me balanced, but focused, andoptimistic. This journey would never have taken place were itnot for Millie.I have been blessed to be one of the workers in our commu-nity of scholars. And I am deeply, deeply honored by this induc-tion into the Accounting Hall of Fame. But let’s not forget thisis a community endeavor. So let’s all celebrate our collectiveaccomplishments and, more important, our prospects.Thank you, thank you all, for the privilege of being a partof this celebration. And, Millie, there simply is no way to ad-equately express my feelings, my admiration and my gratitude.Thank you.SELECTED REFERENCESBeaver, W., Financial Reporting: An Accounting Revolution (Prentice-Hall,1998).Butterworth, J., “The Accounting System As An Information Function,” Journalof Accounting Research (Spring, 1972).Christensen, J., and J. Demski, Accounting Theory: An Information ContentPerspective (University of Florida, 2000).Christensen, P., and G. Feltham, Fundamentals of the Economic Analysis ofAccounting Information in Markets and Organizations (University of BritishColumbia, 2000).Demski, J., Managerial Uses of Accounting Information (Kluwer, 1994).Demski, J., and G. Feltham, Cost Determination: A Conceptual Approach (IowaState University Press, 1976).Demski, J., and G. Feltham, “Economic Incentives in Budgetary Control Sys-tems,” Accounting Review (April, 1978).Demski, J. and G. Feltham. “Market Response To Financial Reports,” Journalof Accounting & Economics (January, 1994).Dye, R. “Earnings Management In An Overlapping Generations Model,” Jour-nal of Accounting Research (Autumn, 1988).Feltham, G., Information Evaluation (American Accounting Association, 1972).Feltham, G., and J. Ohlson, “Valuation and Clean Surplus Accounting for Op-erating and Financial Activities,” Contemporary Accounting Research(Spring, 1995).Gjesdal, F., “Accounting for Stewardship,” Journal of Accounting Research(Spring, 1981).Ijiri, Y., Theory of Accounting Measurement (American Accounting Association,1975).Libby, R., Accounting and Human Information Processing: Theory and Applica-tions (Prentice Hall, 1981).Ohlson, J., The Theory of Financial Markets and Information (Elsevier, 1987).Scott, W., Financial Accounting Theory (Prentice-Hall, 1996).Sunder, S., Theory of Accounting and Control (South-Western, 1997).Watts, R., and J. Zimmerman, Positive Accounting Theory (Prentice-Hall, 1986).6Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 28 [2001], Iss. 1, Art. 9https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol28/iss1/9

Accounting Hall of Fame 2000 induction: Joel S. Demski

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1587&context=aah_journal

Accounting Hall of Fame 2000 induction: Joel S. Demski

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi)