ЭВЗак. 189* 249

All such advances from governments shall be deductible from their first contributions to the Organization.

6. The seat of the Commission shall be located in London.
The Commission shall hold its first meeting in San Francis­
co immediately after the conclusion of the United Nations
Conference on International Organization. The Executive
Committee shall call the Commission into session again as
soon as possible after the Charter of the Organization
comes into effect and whenever subsequently it considers such
a session desirable.

7. The Commission shall cease to exist upon the election
of the Secretary-General of the Organization, at which time
its property and records shall be transferred to the Organi­
zation.

8. The Government of the United States of America
shall be the temporary depository and shall have custody of
the original document embodying these interim arrangements
in the five languages in which it is signed. Duly certified
copies thereof shall be transmitted to the governments of
the signatory states. The Government of the United States
of America shall transfer the original to the Executive Sec­
retary on his appointment.

9. This document shall be effective as from this date,
and shall remain open for signature by the states entitled
to be the original Members of the United Nations until the
Commission is dissolved in accordance with paragraph 7.

In faith whereof, the undersigned representatives having been duly authorized for that purpose, sign this document in the English, French, Chinese, Russian and Spanish lan­guages, all texts being of equal authenticity.

Done at the city of San Francisco this twenty-sixth day of June, one thousand nine hundred and forty-five.

2) THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE CONTROLLER (Excerpts)

Down from the Ivory Tower

Further worthwhile background on the controller's re­sponsibility can be gained by briefly reviewing its develop­ment in this century from a one-man business to the larger, more typical operations of today.

The perennial sentimental favorite, the small proprietor, conducted essentially a one-man operation — any financial records were kept with an eye to their use by sales as well as by finance and purchasing, for they were all represented by the same person. The controller and the owner were one, with their problems being identical.

As business grew, the growth and complexity forced the creation of a separate book-keeping or accounting function — divorced from the operation of the business. The added com­plexity stemmed from the fact that the book-keeping job has become increasingly involved as a result of more products, diverse territories of operation, more raw materials, more manufacturing processes, bigger investments in equipment. As a result, special cost accounting methods began to appear and multiply. Also, the growing company began to run into substantial government requirements designed to protect or assist stockholders, prospective investors, contracting of­ficers, or tax authorities.

This divorcing of the record-keeping function from the pperating functions, because of the extreme to which it went, caused serious problems. We are still trying to overcome some of them.

One problem was caused by the accountants keeping the records for their own convenience rather than slanting them toward providing the best possible information for the op­erating departments. Complex cost accounting techniques were developed which bore little relation to operating facts, but served only to help close the books or satisfy a false sense of precision.

The ivory-tower approach forced manufacturing and other operating departments to take over the powerful tools of cost accounting to put them to some good use. However, the cost work became narrowed down, thereby, and was identi­fied as useful only in the particulars to which operating execu­tives saw fit to apply it. Many of its best uses remained undeveloped.

The combination of the accountants carrying out their work for their own amazement and the operating people pick­ing up the unfamiliar tools of cost accounting caused an iron curtain to be dropped between the financial and operat­ing functions.

9B· 251

Controller as a Superanalyst

A new stage of controllership has been developing during the past several years. The " auditing-type of controller", if we may characterize him as such, is giving way to another type of controller. By auditing-type of controller, I mean a controller who — as a corporate officer — still operates as if he were an independent accountant expressing a nonparti-san opinion on the financial statements. In some companies, where no separate internal auditing section exists, the con­troller also has the function of objective evaluation and check. But to realize the full potential of his position, to make constructive contribution to controllership, he must go far beyond this.

It is recognized, of course, that some measure of speciali­zation is necessary in the area of accounting and finance. But the separation of book-keeping and store-keeping as highly technical ivory-tower functions is seen for what it is. Busi­ness has become too complicated for such a lack of commu­nication to exist between those who do and those who meas­ure. Management must have balanced evaluation of results; the doers need the perspective, objectivity and techniques of the measurers; measurers must understand the physical prob­lems being met in order to design and maintain measurement as­sistance which will meet the needs of management and the doers. This forces a closer relationship.

Further, a new management technique is coming into wider and wider use, which demands close review of the pro­fit aspect of every transaction. It requires thorough planning of future profits and investment, and careful evaluation of performance against those plans. The administration of this process is a major responsibility.

And so we have the spreading idea of the controller as a superanalyst and as a chief planning and control officer — a profit engineer for over-all company operations. In a real sense there is a return to the older idea of small business, somehow lost sight of as accounting technicalities multi­plied, that the financial contribution means to create a run­ning or fluid evaluation of all aspects of the business from a profit and investment viewpoint. (The Journal of Account­ancy, I960;