Memorial: Robert T. Sprouse and Fundamental Concepts of Financial Accounting

This chapter reviews the life and contributions of the late Robert T. Sprouse to the conceptual development of financial accounting. The late Robert Thomas Sprouse was an influential accounting academic and standard setter who devoted his professional life to fashioning the objectives of financial reporting and the fundamental concepts that are used to analyze and resolve financial accounting and reporting issues. His legacy: he trained many of people to think in terms of fundamental concepts of financial accounting and changed the way we think about financial accounting and reporting issues. Significant developments in financial reporting unfolded during Sprouse’s formative years in California and in the US Army. A project for “broad qualitative standards for financial reporting” was one of the seven projects formally placed on the financial accounting standards board’s (FASB) initial technical agenda in April 1973. Sprouse actively participated in the development of the first 88 FASB accounting standards.