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Theory of Accounting and Control

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The Theory of Accounting and Control is a book by  Shyam Sunder ; James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics, and Finance at Yale University. (This book is available on Amazon.com ) The following is a description of this book provided by the author. * * * Organizations are sets of contracts among individuals or groups who are motivated by self-interest to pool the resources and share information to achieve control in the organization. This book explores the role of accounting in implementing these contracts by controlling the resource flows among the contracting parties, and by reporting and distributing information to the current and potential participants. Epilogue All seven wonders of the world are physical objects we could see or touch. Humanity has always measured the accomplishments of its civilizations by “hardware,” from the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, and the Taj Mahal to Apollo 13. Yet, the world is not ruled by brilliant engineers. The greatest accomplish...
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Knowledge Organization System

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Knowledge  is the most precious kind of information. Knowledge is awareness of facts, having learned skills, or having gained experience and familiarity with using the things and the state of affairs within some specific domain of knowledge. Knowledge is accumulated, trusted, shared, interpreted information which is understood within some specific context giving the information meaning . Meaning is not something inherent. Meaning is consciously and deliberately produced through shared human systems, shaped by context, and sustained by communities of stakeholders. A knowledge organization system (KOS) is a broad but neutral umbrella term that seems to be evolving and spans traditional library tools and modern information science and semantic web structures. Knowledge organization systems include a variety of approaches that are fundamentally used to organize, manage, and support retrieval and to make use of information. A knowledge organization system is a tool for organi...
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Atomic Design Methodology

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The Atomic Design Methodology is a mental model that Brad Frost created and is promoting for the design of web pages. But I think that conceptualization applies beyond web pages. In fact, Brad Frost the creator of the Atomic Design Methodology of web pages, also promotes Atomic Design more generally. I have mentioned this model before, see the two posts under additional information, tuning the model each time.  This is my third iteration of tuning this model or theory . This version considers the notion of the holon  and considers my explanation of epistemic risk and competency questions  and the triangle of meaning . Here is my current explanation of my understanding of the discrete stable units referred to as "atoms", "molecules", "organisms", and "species". Atoms are basic fundamental building blocks and make up all “ things ”. If you are building a house, atoms are like the bricks, 2 by 4s, cement, rebar and other fundamental things you m...
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Industrial Process

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As pointed out , accounting is a closed deterministic system.  Its logic is reproducible, auditable, and mathematically coherent. This determinism, combined with its capacity for both precision and structured adaptability make accounting truly unique. These deliberately provided characteristics can be leveraged when putting together an industrial process. The work of accountants, auditors, and analysts can be described as "arranging abstract symbols". Algorithms can be used to describe this work. Poka yoke is a Lean Six Sigma technique that can be used to "mistake proof" work processes. ValueFlows is a model for coordinating economic activity. ValueFlows and others use the Resources, Events, Agents ( REA ) model to describe the accounting process.  The ISO/IEC Accounting and Economic Ontology includes REA. Data Centric Accounting ( DCA ) describes the facets of a business event. * * * Service as Software ( SaS ) will be a new way to deliver professional service...
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Implementation

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The implementation approaches to representing something like digital accounting artifacts such as accounting working papers, audit working papers, financial statements, and financial analysis models and the base taxonomy metadata to support those artifacts  can be grouped into three technology architectures or stacks.  Those technology architecture stacks are: Semantic Web Stack (a.k.a. Semantic Web Layer Cake ): These are the standards published by the W3C. Labeled Property Graph (LPG) : Graph databases that use the ISO standard graph query language ( GQL ). Logic Programming : Includes ISO standard PROLOG , SQL, XBRL . Multiple technology architecture stacks is a fact of life.  Different enterprises have different preferences and therefore make different choices as to their desired technical implementation approaches.  That said, it is possible to transform between different implementation approaches.  The global open industry standard logical conceptualizat...
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Triangle of Meaning

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The triangle of meaning (a.k.a. triangle of reference ) was first introduced in  the book The Meaning of Meaning by Charles Kay Ogden and I. A. Richards which was published in 1923. The purpose of the triangle of meaning is to understand how to make communication reliable, repeatable, and interoperable. Basically the triangle of meaning is about precision of communication. There are many different versions of the triangle of meaning. Several other versions are mentioned under additional information below. Mainly these triangle of meaning representations are for domains such as linguistics, philosophy, and knowledge engineering and use specialized jargon to explain what they are trying to explain.  I find all of these too hard for the typical business professional to understand. And so, what I did was to take the best aspects of these other triangles of meaning and synthesize the information into something that I can understand and perhaps other business professionals can als...
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Provenance

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Accounting is one of the strongest, oldest, most mature, and most rigorously enforced provenance preserving systems humans have ever build.  Every accounting system is a provenance machine for economic activity of an economic entity. Part of that provenance machine is the double-entry bookkeeping (a.k.a. double entry accounting) mathematical model. The first documented use of double-entry bookkeeping was in 1211 by a bank in Florence. This meant that for the first time, a trusted family member did not have to keep the books.   Around 1300 double-entry bookkeeping came of age. In 1494 during the Renaissance, Venetian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli   published a book, Summa de arithmetica, geometria. Proportioni et proportionalita (Sum of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality) which formally documented and standardized double-entry bookkeeping. Accounting records where economic events came from, documents who performed them, pres...
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