“Decision usefulness ” has been the organizing criterion for accounting policy and accounting scholarship for over forty years. Its authority however, was not gained over time through explicit theory development or argumentation, but was instead “born full grown ” (Staubus, 1999, p. 163)as a conceptual “takeover in the dead of night ” (p. 338). In essence, the concept of decision usefulness assumed a central place as the rationale for accounting choice by stealth rather than by careful argument or based on empirical evidence. The lack of an extended period of argumentation and debate over the meaning of decision usefulness meant its conceptual weaknesses were allowed to remain remarked upon but never resolved. In this paper we argue that as the central focus defining and guiding accounting policy, decision usefulness has not proven any more useful than earlier, allegedly normative theories of accounting did. The recent debates on IFRS versus GAAP provide vivid testament to the inadequacy of decision usefulness as a criterion for selecting among alternative accounting choices. We briefly examine the history of decision usefulness and its emergence as the chief criterion for selecting policy. We then argue that in light of recent developments in our
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