Imperial connection? Contrasting accounting practices in the coal mines of north-east England and Nova Scotia, 1825-1900

The archives of the General Mining Association (GMA), a London-based enterprise with substantial holdings in the Nova Scotian coal-mining industry during the 19th century, are investigated in this paper. The historical record was examined with particular reference to the degree to which industrial costing techniques were transplanted via engineers/managers within the British Empire. The findings support the hypothesis that linkages to Newcastle were evident in Canadian coal mining, but that the accounting emphases differed somewhat between the two locales. In Nova Scotia, there was a great attention to day-to-day expense control. A similar concern was apparent also in the North-East of England, but here there appeared the additional sophistications of costing capital improvement projects and estimating the profitabil­ity of new workings. With regard to labor, the managers of the GMA\u27s Canadian operations, like their counterparts in the North-East Coalfield, seemed disinterested in tracking the efficiency and productivity of individual miners. We hypothesize that this inattention typified an environment wherein labor was scarce and employment alternatives existed for the work force

Municipal accounting reform c. 1900: Ohio\u27s progressive accountants

Despite the fact that municipal accounting was a significant and permanent reform of the Progressive era, historians have failed to accord accountants proper credit for their leadership roles. Ohio was an important Progressive state and is particularly suited to an investigation of the contribution made by accountants. Ohio was the first state to require uniform municipal accounting and one of the first to inaugurate budgeting. Municipal research bureaus in major Ohio cities were among the most dynamic in the nation, inspiring important steps forward in cost accounting, budgeting, and the installation of accounting systems. Progressive municipal administrations came to depend increasingly on expert accountants to devise new systems and to audit the results

Impact of World War II on cost accounting at the Sperry Corporation

The impact of World War II on cost accountancy in the U.S. may be viewed as a double-edged sword. Its most positive effect was engendering greater cost awareness, particularly among companies that served as military contractors and, thus, had to make full representation to contracting agencies for reimbursement. On the negative side, the dislocations of war, especially shortages in the factors of production and capacity constraints, meant that such scientific management techniques as existed (standard costing, time-study, specific detailing of task routines) fell by the wayside. This paper utilizes the archive of the Sperry Corporation, a leading governmental contractor, to chart the firm\u27s accounting during World War II. It is concluded that any techniques that had developed from Taylorite principles were suspended, while methods similar to contemporary performance management, such as subcontracting, emphasis on the design phase of products, and substantial expenditure on research and deve­opment, flourished

Archival researchers: An endangered species?

In recent years accounting historiography has been enriched by a considerable volume of debate surrounding the chronology and evolution of accounting theory and practice. By virtue of their attempts to explain the processes of change, accounting historians have become identified with a paradigm or world view that constitutes the theoretical context within which their research findings are couched. Scholars have either self-avowed their paradigmatic affiliations or have had their work so classified in the writings of others. Fleischman et al. [1996a], for example, trichotomized the field of industrial revolution cost accounting into three schools : the Neoclassical (economic rationalist), the Foucauldian, and the Marxist (labor process). A dichotomized schemata might be employed to distinguish critical and traditional historians. Critical historians tend to question the objectivity of much primary source material, particularly accounting documents, which can serve the self-interest of those in positions of power. Traditionalists have more faith that surviving business records provide a less partisan approximation of some sort of objective reality. A distinction can likewise be made between the new accounting history and older approaches, typically with a narrower focus. The new genre casts a wider net, deploying a variety of contexts to coexist with those economic aspects traditionally privileged in much accounting historiography. Many new accounting historians attempt to amplify the voices of suppressed groups (women, the poor, the illiterate) which have not been heard in mainstream literature

Government/business synergy: Early American innovations in budgeting and cost accounting

This paper examines certain interactions between American government and business which resulted in important innovations in the areas of budgeting and cost accounting early in the twentieth century. The evidence suggests that budgeting methods were initially developed by municipal reformers of the Progressive era and were subsequently adapted by business for planning and control purposes. In like fashion, standard costing and variance analysis were significant cost accounting techniques born to an industrial environment which came to contribute markedly to a continuing improvement of governmental budgeting procedures

Roaring nineties: Accounting history comes of age

The paper outlines developments in the accounting history literature during the 1990s. The introduction chronicles the immense broadening of publication opportunities in accounting history that characterized the decade. To a certain extent, this enhancement of outlets resulted from a richer dialogue among accounting historians who became increasingly willing to debate paradigmatic and methodological issues. In this context, the paper identifies and discusses traditional and critical forms of accounting history and reviews work within the paradigms of economic-rationalist, Foucauldian, and Marxist/labor-process studies. The major elements of debate between old and new perspectives on accounting history are discussed and linked to later collaborative efforts and refinements in the work of each genre. Major research projects published during the 1990s are identified, tabulated, and discussed. The paper concludes with a discussion of accounting history as the decade closed, with a particular focus on the opportunities and threats that may lie ahead for the field

Accounting for interned Japanese-American civilians during World War II: Creating incentives and establishing controls for captive workers

On February 19, 1942, following the attack on Pearl Har­bor and the declaration of war against Japan, President Roosevelt is­sued Executive Order 9066 which empowered the Secretary of War to exclude any and all persons from designated areas in the United States. Shortly thereafter, some 120,000 civilians of Japanese descent were prohibited from living, working, or traveling on the West Coast. By October 1942, over 100,000 evacuees were relocated and con­fined to ten remote internment camps for the duration of the war. The War Relocation Authority (WRA) administered these camps and had the responsibility to feed, house, educate, and provide em­ployment for the evacuees. This article describes the WRA\u27s use of ac­counting information and situates the role of accounting within a la­bor-process framework. It initially discusses labor-process theory and provides an overview of the internment episode and cooperative ac­counting in the U.S. It then focuses on particular accounting policies, procedures, and reports that were used by the WRA to manage en­terprises, monitor internment activities, and socialize evacuees with American capitalistic values

British entrepreneurs and industrial revolution cost management: a study of innovation

Traditional accounting histories date the advent of sophisticated cost accounting from the mid-1880\u27s and credit American innovators of Frederick Taylor\u27s scientific management movement with conceiving the new practices. However, it is counterintuitive to think the entrepreneurs of the British Industrial Revolution would not have developed costing techniques, given their significant methodological advances in other economic areas, such as technology, capital accumulation, and marketing structure development. This paper reports the findings from a survey of surviving business records from twenty-five large industrial firms during the 1760-1850 period, concentrated in the dominant textile and iron industries. Substantial evidence of mature cost management has been found in eight major areas of activity