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Robert Sprouse, Accounting Leader, Dies at 85
December 2007
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS - Robert T. Sprouse, an l accounting faculty member at the Graduate School of Business from 1962-1973, died on December 23 at Scripps Mercy Hospital in Chula Vista, Calif., from prostate cancer complications. He was 85.
Sprouse wrote two textbooks and more than 40 articles during his long career and was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame. “He was a first-class faculty member in all ways. Students flocked to him,” recalled Robert L. Joss, dean of the Business School.
Born on January 11, 1922, in rural San Diego County, Sprouse served in World War II, rising to the rank of second lieutenant. His service included three years in Germany with the Trial Judge Advocate’s office.
In 1949, he reenrolled in San Diego State College planning a career in law but the introductory accounting course captivated him. He earned a BA at San Diego State and an MBA and PhD in accounting at the University of Minnesota. Sprouse’s first teaching position was at the University of California, Berkeley, where, with faculty mentor Maurice Moonitz, he coauthored the paper, “A Tentative Set of Broad Accounting Principles for Business Enterprises.” The paper argued for the use of replacement costs and net realizable values for the valuation of inventories and fixed assets.
Moving to the Harvard Business School he worked with Robert N. Anthony on a project dealing with accounting for long-lived assets. He joined the Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty in 1962, leaving in 1973 to become a member of the newly created Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Sprouse’s work had an enormous impact on the development of the board’s conceptual framework. His 1966 article, “Accounting for What-You-May-Call-Its,” in the Journal of Accountancy, laid the groundwork for FASB’s asset-liability approach.
Following his 1985 retirement from the FASB, he taught accounting for three years at San Diego State University, provided litigation support in numerous court proceedings, and bred and raced thoroughbred horses.
He is survived by his widow, Fran, and a daughter and a son.