Tony Lowe, possibly the most important academic the field of accounting has ever produced, died this March 2014. Although never concerned directly with ‘social accounting’ as such, his importance as a foundational scholar and as a mentor to so many influential academics suggest that his passing should not go unrecognised by CSEAR.
Briefly Tony was a qualified chartered accountant and later graduated from the LSE. He held appointments at, inter alia, Leeds, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Bradford and MBS. But he is best known for his time at Sheffield where he was that university's first chair in accounting. He was absolutely crucial in the development of wider perspectives on accounting drawing equally from economic, sociology, decision theory, systems science and operations research to set in motion the accounting we know these days as interpretative and critical. His influence on modern management accounting is incalculable. More generally, I have always been in awe of his creation of the ‘Sheffield School’ and his critical influence on its principal members such as Wai Fong Chua, David Cooper, Richard Laughlin, Tony Puxty, Tony Tinker, Prem Sikka, Dick Wilson as well as his undoubted influence on that other sadly departed luminary, Anthony Hopwood. Social accounting as I understand it could never have emerged without the influence of these important colleagues.
Tony, though, was always an organic intellectual, driven by a clear view of what was right and undaunted by conflict. He was not only key to the development of (what is now) the British Accounting and Finance Association and the (what is now) Management Control Association but was key to drawing the (then) Polytechnics into the academic community and, to my undying admiration, attempting to mobilise academics in the UK to oppose participation in both the professional accreditation of university degrees and the early research assessment exercises.
Tony was always generous with his time, thoughtfulness and advice and always dedicated to teaching. Indeed it is as an external examiner at UCNW Bangor that I will most fondly remember his robust demands to us as educators: he is almost the only person I have met in academe willing and determined to make personal values explicit and honest when examining what we really mean by our attempts to help our students in their education. In this, as in a lot else, he was a fabulous role model.
My final thought is that Tony, like my other two favourite accounting academics (Trevor Gambling and Ruth Hines), would be utterly un-appointable in today's ‘academic’ climate even as a lecturer. He simply didn't publish enough in the right journals! If anything illustrates the idiocy of our world it is that. You will be very badly missed Tony.