|  HOUSTON,
November 13, 2001. For his work on a biography commended by accounting history
scholars throughout the world, Prof. Stephen Zeff, Herbert S. Autrey Professor
of Accounting, receives his second Hourglass Award from the Academy of
Accounting Historians.
Honored for his critically acclaimed
biography Henry Rand Hatfield: Humanist, Scholar, and Accounting
Educator (2000, JAI Press), Zeff becomes one of the few persons to receive
the prestigious award twice.
He was the first recipient of the
Hourglass Award at its inception in 1973.
The Academy of Accounting Historians
seeks to encourage research, publication, teaching and personal interchanges in
all phases of accounting history and its interrelation with business and
economic history. Presented annually at the academy's November research
conference, the Hourglass Award recognizes an individual who has made a
demonstrable and significant contribution to knowledge through research and
publication in accounting history.
"The quality of the biography
and the scholarship Zeff presents in this book are impeccable," says Prof.
O. Finley Graves, Rice MA '70, President of the Academy of Accounting
Historians, and Professor of Accounting at Kansas State University.
"Through this book, he shows how
values and other historical forces have influenced accounting thought. He has
also brought Henry Rand Hatfield to life." Through meticulous research
that spanned more than 30 years, Zeff published the acclaimed biography
revealing the life and scholarship of Henry Rand Hatfield (1866-1945), long
regarded as the "dean of accounting teachers everywhere."
Zeff began his research on Hatfield's
life in the 1960s, when at the encouragement of Maurice Moonitz, a former
student of Hatfield's and professor of accounting at the University of
California, Berkeley - he began poring over Hatfield's extensive files of
correspondence, notes and papers stored in the university. Zeff then proceeded
to interview, or correspond with, many of Hatfield's former colleagues and
students.
"Even though I knew Hatfield
personally, I had been unaware of his earlier life," wrote Moonitz in the
book's preview. "Zeff… [gives] us a detailed account of a member of a
scarce breed: a person of high intelligence, broad education, and high moral
values."
"The book is characteristic of
the body of work Zeff has delivered throughout his entire career," Graves
says. "His work reflects how accounting is more than just adding,
subtracting, multiplying, and dividing - that it is socially motivated and
imbued with values."
The volume already has received rave
reviews from accounting scholars:
- "It's a delightful book. It is
what we have come to expect from Zeff: painstakingly researched, elegantly
written, and vastly informative," —Philip Bougen, University of New
Mexico, The British Accounting Review.
- "Zeff has succeeded in
producing an exemplary biography - a daunting task that took 35 years of
intermittent effort to complete and stands as a reflection of his growth into a
notable accounting biographer." —Richard Vangersmeesch, University of
Rhode Island, Business History Review
- "[The book] is a very full
autobiographical study continuing numerous matters: comparative dimensions to
his work; his poetry and fables; his attributes as a teacher; his sanguine
assessment of events in Nazi Germany following his visit to that country in
1933; and his personal life."—John Richard Edwards, Cardiff Business
School, Accounting, Business and Financial History
- "A wonderful book... a delight
to read. The book gives a valuable account of an interesting period in the
development of accounting thought and the early history of business education,
but, more importantly Zeff's biography is a fascinating study of a highly
intelligent, complex individual." —Richard Brief, New York
University, The Accounting Review
Zeff, who has taught at Rice
University since 1978, was editor of The Accounting Review in
1977–82 and was president of the American Accounting Association in
1985–86. In 1988, he received the AAA's Outstanding Accounting Educator
Award, and in 1999 the AAA's International Accounting Section named him the
recipient of its International Accounting Educator Award.
Zeff holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from
the University of Colorado, M.B.A. and a Ph.D. degree from the University of
Michigan, and an honorary doctorate in economics from the Turku School of
Economics and Business Administration, in Finland.
About the Jones School
The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management is one of seven academic units
of Rice University. Named in honor of the late Jesse Holman Jones, a prominent
Houston business and civic leader, the school received its initial funding in
1974 through a major gift from the Houston Endowment Inc., a philanthropic
foundation established by Jones and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones. The school
offers the MBA degree as well as the following joint degrees: joint MBA/ME with
the George R. Brown School of Engineering and MD/MBA with Baylor College of
Medicine. Rice University Executive Education offers a full schedule of
non-credit executive education and customized courses for business and
industry.
2001 rankings published by the
Financial Times puts the Jones School in the top 10 in four categories: value
for the money, employment rate, finance programs, and entrepreneurship
programs. The Jones School also has been recognized in the Wall Street Journal
as one of the nation's best up-and-coming business schools.
About Rice
Rice University is consistently ranked one of America's best teaching and
research universities. It is distinguished by its:
- Size: 2,700 undergraduates and 1,500
graduate students;
- Selectivity: 10 applicants for each
place in the freshman class;
- Resources: an undergraduate
student-to-faculty ratio of 5-to-1, and the third largest endowment per student
among American universities;
- Residential college system, which
builds communities that are both close-knit and diverse; and
- Collaborative culture: which crosses
disciplines, integrates teaching and research, and intermingles undergraduate
and graduate work.
Rice's wooded campus is located in
Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, second only to New York in Fortune
500 headquarters.
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