Adolph Matz

Adolph Matz (April 25, 1905 - Oct. 1, 1986) was a German/American organizational theorist, and Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, known for his work on cost accounting.^[1]

Life and work

Matz was born in Karlsruhe^[2] or Heidelberg,^[3] Germany and started his studies in Weimar Republic. In the early 1930s he came to the United States, and obtained the American citizenship in 1933. He obtained his BA in 1932 at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also obtained his MA in 1933 and his PhD in 1937. He started his academic career at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and became Professor of Accounting.^[4]

Matz is noted for his 1946 prediction, that "completion of the first all-electronic general-purpose computing machine [would open] the future to the development of business machines heretofore undreamed of... and may well also revolutionize methods and systems of dealing with everyday business transactions." These ideas were however dismissed as "too ephemeral," and his article initially rejected.^[5]

Matz died October 1, 1986 in Blue Bell, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Selected publications

• Matz, Adolph, Othel J. Curry, and George W. Frank. Cost Accounting: Management's Operational Tool for Planning, Control, and Analysis. South-Western, 1962.
• Matz, Adolph, and M. F. Usry. Cost Accounting, Planning and Control South. western Publishing Co (1984).

Articles, a selection:

• Matz, Adolph. "Accounting as a tool for economy in German business." Accounting Review (1940): 177-185.
• Matz, Adolph. "Electronics in Accounting." Accounting Review (1946): 371-379.
• Adolph Matz. "A Bibliography of Cost Accounting: Its Origins and Development to 1914, 2 Vols. by M. C. Wells," The Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Fall 1981), pp. 129–133.

References

1. Pong, Chris, and Falconer Mitchell. "Full costing versus variable costing: Does the choice still matter? An empirical exploration of UK manufacturing companies 1988–2002." The British Accounting Review 38.2 (2006): 131-148.
2. Michael-Jörg Oesterle et al. Internationalisierung und Institution Springer-Verlag, 2005. p. 454
3. Klaus Brockhoff (2012) Betriebswirtschaftslehre in Wissenschaft und Geschichte: Eine Skizze. p. 157
4. Peter Mantel (2009). Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Nationalsozialismus. p. 773
5. Dilys Winegrad. "Crackpot notions the story of ENIAC." Penn Printout. March 1996. Vol 12.4.

External links

• Adolph Matz (1905-1986) portrait photograph

Found LCCN,