Moreover, an important question is how we account for the fact that all are not capable of
executing a transaction that maximizes their utility function all the time, e.g., bad purchases
that we ourselves regret later on. Is the managers’ incompetence or ignorance also be a factor
in the model? Thus, as noted by Sterling, the criticism is not that PAT is sociology rather than
accounting, the criticism is that PAT is neither sociology nor accounting. Instead it is a search
for evidence to confirm the non-nullifiable assumption that people maximize their utility
when selecting accounting practices. Worse, it tries to demolish studies of other phenomena,
thus depriving us of the knowledge of those phenomena, on the basis of the grotesquely
misguided view that science restricts knowledge instead of expanding it
(Sterling, 1990).