stewardship accounting

records kept by business entities of all their transactions, outstanding debts, and the way in which their capital employed has been invested. For example, in a public limited company the directors have a stewardship role, and manage the company on behalf of the shareholders. Hence the need to keep proper books of account.

References in periodicals archive ?

Decision-usefulness, for its part, has existed as an adjunct to stewardship accounting for most of its history.

In defense of stewardship

In ancient times, stewardship accounting developed to handle the accounts of temples and sovereigns, as well as merchants or landed gentry who employed stewards to handle their estates.

With the development of labor markets, especially managerial labor markets, hierarchical organizations became an efficient form and stewardship accounting evolved to serve them.

The development of markets for financial capital has led to differentiation of publicly held corporations and financial-reporting model of accounting from simple bookkeeping and stewardship accounting for privately held firms.