A rejoinder to the commentaries on Professor Chambers' 1999 paper the poverty of accounting discourse

We thank the Editors of this Journal for encouraging this discourse and specifically for asking us to respond on Ray Chambers’ behalf to the four invited commentaries on his thought-provoking article ‘The Poverty of Accounting Discourse’. We are undertaking this task since Ray Chambers had an accident in September 1999 and died several days later of head and internal injuries. We were all colleagues of Chambers and were inspired by his work from the 1960s until his death. Were Chambers alive he would have willingly participated in this exercise, as the Forum provides another opportunity for accounting education and practice to be put under the microscope. The four Commentaries on Ray Chambers’ ‘Poverty’ mix positive and negative assessments. The most negative assessments of ‘Poverty’ appear in Tony Tinker’s commentary. Richard Mattessich’s commentary is negative, albeit tempered with some positives, whilst Joel Amernic’s is mixed and Tom Lee’s is extremely laudatory