A Unified Field Theory For Accounting

Although my career has primarily been involved with enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) methods, including management accounting and books that I have authored on EPM/CPM, I have always had an interest in cosmology, astronomy, and physics. It is breathtaking for me to think of the universe as infinite in length. Where is its external boundary? There is none! How can that be? I think of questions like: What happened before the Big Bang? What are black holes? What is dark matter? Is time travel possible?

In this PACE article I am going to make the case and describe there is a parallel “quest” in the accounting profession as with the physicists. That quest is for “a unified field theory”.

Please be patient. The first 3/4ths of this article is about the physicists’ quest. Then I conclude with the accounting profession’s quest.

The Universe and Physicists

Let me introduce my essay with a discussion about physics. I marvel at the size of the universe. Cornell University’s renown professor Carl Sagan (and I am a 1971 Cornell University BSc alumnus) was known for often saying “billions and billions” of stars in his popular television series Cosmos and with late night television host interviews. Stephen Hawking gave visibility to physics with his theories on black holes.

The universe is on the macro scale. I also like the micro scale of physics, especially subatomic physics that include the building blocks of the universe.

The Quest

A desire with the physics community is to develop a framework that unites all the forces of the cosmos and will choreograph everything from the motion of the expanding universe to the most minute dance of subatomic particles. The challenge is to write an equation whose mathematical elegance encompasses the whole of physics.[1]

This quest is referred to as the “unified field theory”.

For centuries physicists have been discovering and identifying forces like gravity and magnetism and attempting to measure them. Each new discovery adds to the body of knowledge and utility to civilization. For example, Isaac Newton’s discovery of the laws of motion ang gravity laid the groundwork for the machine age and the Industrial Revolution. Physicists Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell’s explanation of electricity and magnetism paved the way for the illumination of our cities and gave us power electric motors and generators as well as instantaneous communication via TV and radio.

More examples. The famous Albert Einstein’s E = mc (squared) explained the power of the stars and helped reveal the behavior and properties of subatomic nuclear forces. Later physicists Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, and others unlocked the secrets to quantum theory which led to high-tech revolutions like super computers, lasers, transistors, the internet, and cell phones (that some of you might now be reading my article on).  

The Greeks

I am 100% Greek-American (both my mother and father) raised in Chicago. Let’s go further back in time to understand what my Greek ancestors theorized. The philosopher Democritus believed that everything could be reduced to tiny, invisible, indestructible particles he called “atoms”. Later Aristotle believed that everything could be reduced to a mixture of four fundamental ingredients: earth, air, fire, and water. The mathematician Pythagoras had insights to apply a mathematical description to music with vibrations.

The Renaissance

In the seventeenth century a batch of scientists introduced new ideas and discoveries.  Johannes Kepler was one of the first to apply mathematics to the motions of the planets. Galileo left a lasting legacy with his telescope. Isaac Newton then began to write about the universal laws of the heavens and apply new mathematics he invented to study the forces. This new math is called calculus. Newton initiated this concept of a unified field theory led by the force of gravity. Next the astronomer Edward Halley, famous for Halley’s comet, recognized that comets fly in ellipses, not in perfect circles.

Modern Physics

The next big breakthrough came from the study of electricity and magnetism. Michael Faraday showed that if you take a magnet and move it inside a hoop of wire, then electricity is generated in the wire. He observed the reverse that a moving electronic field can create a magnetic field. Hence, giant hydroelectric dams where the river pushes against a wheel that spins a magnet that then impacts a wire that sends electricity to the sockets in your home. Moving on, a Cambridge mathematician, James Clerk Maxwell, created equations that involve waves as the underlying phenomenon of magnetism and electricity. He applied this to measuring the speed of light from the sun and demonstrated that light is an electromagnetic wave. The “unification” of forces was expanding.

The next insights came from Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla – the electric age with direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC). Then came Albert Einstein leveraging the math from Newton and Maxwell’s equations. He realized that time slows down the faster something moves. This led to the theory of special relativity. He wondered about the involvement of matter and energy. This led to his famous E = mc (squared) equation. The “unification” now involved space, time, matter, and energy that by adding gravity became the general theory of relativity.

Quantum Theory and Quantum Mechanics

Something was missing with the “unification” described above – the nuclear force with atoms. This advance began with Dmitry Mendeleyev. He mapped how the properties of natural elements could be located in table of columns and rows – Medeleyev’s Table. Marie and Pierre Curie followed by Ernest Rutherford delved into this nuclear world with experiments of radiation. This led to the discovery that an atom is actually a nucleus with tinier subatomic particles: protons (positive charge), neutrons (no charge), and electrons (negative charge). More knowledge came from the physicists Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli.  

The German physicist Max Planck advances the quest. He theorized that instead of energy being continuous and smooth that it came in discrete packets that he called quanta. He was able to measure the size these packets of light energy. The measures complied with Maxwell’s equations. So, we have now arrived at understanding a beautiful relationship between particles and the fields that surround them. The Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrodinger, expanded on this knowledge by focusing on the electrons that provide explanations for Mendeleyev’s Table with columns and rows patterns of the chemical elements. This knowledge helped James D. Watson and Francis Crick discover DNA. They used X-ray crystallography to examine the wave lengths of molecules. So, the unification of the laws of quantum physics not only revealed the secrets of the universe, it also unified the tree of life.

The final steps involved Ernest Livermore, the inventor of the cyclotron to split atoms and see their remnants. Then Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Hawking, and Robert Oppenheimer (did you see the Oscar winning movie about him?) advanced our understandings.

Thanks for being patient. Now we move on the accounting profession’s quest.

A Parallel Quest for the Accounting Profession

Some in the accounting profession are also seeking a similar unified field theory of accounting. They know there are lots of moving parts. How do they all fit together? Many of the “moving parts” include:

·       Product, service line, channel, and customer profitability (using activity-based costing [ABC] );

·       Strategy management using strategy maps, balanced scorecards (with strategic KPIs) and dashboards (for operational OPIs);

·       Process improvement using lean management with lean accounting;

·       Process improvement using quality management with the cost of quality (COQ);

·       Capacity-sensitive driver-based budgeting and rolling financial forecasts;

·       What-if scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis with alternative input variables (e.g., forecast sales volume and mix)

·       Enterprise risk management (ERM); and

·       Data science and analytics.

Once this is solved, will it be an evolution of thought or a revolution like the Renaissance?

A challenge to achieve the quest is that many CFOs, accountants, and even university accounting faculty are still in the 1970s. And many do not have the holistic and all-inclusive wide breadth of thinking to embrace this unification theory. This disturbs me. It presents a cautionary tale. Most accountants once learned about some, or even all, in the bulleted list above, but they have sent what they learned, including at their university or some earning a CPA, down the memory hole. It is like amnesia.

When all of us, including the accountants, were young we thought we would grow up to be wise. But have we?

Accounting 101

Imagine if I was a university professor teaching Management Accounting 101. My lecture would describe how to resolve the “overhead cost allocation” problem. It involves activity-based costing (ABC).

But first as background, there has been a slow adoption by CFOs and accountants to apply ABC as a replacement for the flawed and misleading traditional “cost allocation” methods for indirect expenses (commonly referred to as “overhead”) from standard cost accounting systems. They allocate indirect expenses like spreading butter across bread using non-causal and broadly averaged cost allocation factors. Examples are the number or amount of direct labor input hours or currency, units produced, sales volume, headcount, or square feet/meters. None of those reflect the true consumption of expenses that unique and diverse products and service lines consume of the end-to-end processes and the work activities that belong to the processes.

After ABC decomposes the single and typically large indirect cost pool into multiple cost pools – the work activities – and traces and assigns them based on a cause-and-effect relationship there is no surprise to those managers who have always been suspicious. What is discovered, compared to the traditional costing, is that some of the products and service lines are being over-costed and the others must be under-costed because cost allocations have zero-sum error. It is true that traditional costing does exactly reconcile the indirect expenses in total into the product and service line costs. That satisfies the auditors for external financial regulatory and statutory reporting, but the costs are wrong in the parts. This means that CFOs and accountants are providing their managers and executives those flawed and misleading costs I mentioned which means the profit margins are also wrong.  

The benefits from applying ABC in comparison to traditional cost allocation methods that violate “costing’s causality principle” are numerous. Key benefits are: (1) extremely more accurate profit and cost reporting of outputs, products, services, channels, and customers; (2) transparency and visibility of the “drivers” for work activities and their magnitude; and (3) past period calibrated cost consumption rates that are essential to multiply against future forecasted demand volume and mix that determine resource capacity requirements – workforce headcounts and spending amounts. These rates are needed for what-if scenario analysis, make-versus-buy decisions, and capacity-sensitive driver-based rolling financial forecasts and budgets.

The causality principle is at the heart of ABC as well as with the other bulleted items above. They involve modeling the “digital twins” – physical flows and their digital twin in software. Executives and line managers deserve better from their CFO and accountant to support their decisions.

Unified Theory for Accounting

Like the quest by physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists there must be a way that a unified theory of accounting can be created. I previously wrote above “There are lots of moving parts. How do they fit together?”

There is a way! To understand the way learn about the PACE Analytics Framework (PAF). Also, consider researching articles and blogs (and books) that I have authored on enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) methods. All of those “moving parts” can be seamlessly integrated just like the gears in a well-tuned machine.

(Some of the text in this article came directly from the book The God Equation by Michio Kaku published by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House, 2021.)

[1][1] The God Equation; by Michio Kaku; Doubleday; 2021; page 1.