The development of industrial cost and management accounting before 1850: A survey of the evidence

Business History

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 1991, Pages 35-57

  Edwards, John Richard ^a   Newell, Edmund ^a  

^a CARDIFF UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84950153536     PISSN: 00076791     EISSN: 17437938     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00076799100000003     Document Type: Article

References (94)

1. The authors wish to thank Charles Feinstein and an anonymous referee for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. For further discussion of certain aspects covered here see J.R. Edwards, ‘Industrial Cost Accounting Developments in Britain to 1830: A Review Article’, Accounting and Business Research, Vol.19 (1989).
2. E. Garcke and J.M. Fells, Factory Accounts: Their Principles and Practice (1887).
3. Most recently, E. Jones, Accountancy and the British Economy, 1840-1980: The Evolution of Ernst and Whinney (1981), pp. 111-16;
4. R.S. Kaplan, ‘The Evolution of Management Accounting’, Accounting Review, Vol. LIX (1984).
5. S. Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain (1965).
6. Ibid., p.248.
7. D. Solomons, ‘The Historical Development of Costing’, in D. Solomons (ed.), Studies in Cost Analysis (2nd ed. 1968).
8. S.P. Garner, Evolution of Cost Accounting (Alabama, 1954), Ch.2.
9. Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management, p.245
10. W.E. Stone, ‘An Early English Cost Accounting System: Charlton Mills, 1810—1889’, Accounting and Business Research, Vol.4 (1973);
11. H.T. Johnson, ‘Early Cost Accounting for Internal Management Control: Lyman Mills in the 1850s’, Business History Review, Vol.XLVI (1972).
12. H.T. Johnson, ‘Towards a New Understanding of Nineteenth-Century Cost Accounting’, Accounting Review, Vol.LVI (1981), pp.510-18.
13. H.T. Johnson, The Role of Accounting History in the Education of Prospective Accountants (Glasgow, 1984), pp.5-7. See also H.T. Johnson and R.S. Kaplan, Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting (Boston, MA, 1987), Ch.2.
14. M.J. Mepham, ‘The Eighteenth-Century Origins of Cost Accounting’, Abacus, Vol.25 (1988), p.57.
15. For instance, C.K. Harley, ‘British Industrialization before 1841: Evidence of Slower Growth during the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Economic History, Vol.XLII (1982), pp.268-9;
16. N.F.R. Crafts, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985), p.23.
17. For instance, A.E. Musson, ‘The British Industrial Revolution’, History, Vol.67 (1982), pp.252-3;
18. M. Berg, The Age of Manufactures: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain, 1700–1820 (1985), p.42.
19. E. Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation: Being a History of the Firm of Boulton and Watt, 1775–1805 (1930), pp.244-52.
20. N. McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood and Cost Accounting in the Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, Vol.XXIII (1970).
21. H. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation: Welsh Industry, 1700–1830 (Cardiff, 1984).
22. G. Hammersley (ed.), Daniel Hechstetter the Younger: Memorabilia and Letters, 1600–1639 (Stuttgart, 1988). The use of cost accounting at Keswick is noted in M.B. Donald, Elizabethan Copper: The History of the Company of Mines Royal (1955), pp.221-30.
23. See, for instance, C. Drury, Management and Cost Accounting (2nd ed. 1985), pp.19–20.
24. Ibid., pp.30-1.
25. E. Straker, Wealden Iron, (Newton Abbot, 1969), pp.196 and 199.
26. D.A.R. Forrester, ‘The Records of an Incorporated Baker's Guild, with Reference to Prices, Costs and Audits’, Accounting History, Vol.3 (1978), pp.10-11;
27. Garner, Cost Accounting, pp.31-3.
28. Hammersley (ed.), Daniel Hechstetter, pp.82-5.
29. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, pp.22-23.
30. Ibid., pp.13-14.
31. Ibid., pp.15 and 18.
32. K.H. Burley, ‘Some Accounting Records of an Eighteenth-Century Clothier’, Accounting Research, Vol.IX (1958).
33. R. de Roover, ‘A Florentine Firm of Cloth Manufacturers’ Speculum, Vol.XVI (1941).
34. McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood’, p.48.
35. R.H. Parker, Management Accounting: An Historical Perspective (1969), pp.22-26.
36. Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management, pp.219-20.
37. Hammersley (ed.), Daniel Hechstetter, pp. 117–18.
38. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.222.
39. Ibid.; p.30.
40. C. Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832), p.174.
41. See Parker, Management Accounting, pp.59-60.
42. Jones, A ccounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.105.
43. McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood’, p.55.
44. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, pp.187–9.
45. Ibid., p.190.
46. University College of North Wales, Bangor (hereafter UCNW), Mona Mine MSS., 1599.
47. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, pp.231-6.
48. J.R. Edwards and C. Baber, ‘Dowlais Iron Company: Accounting Policies and Procedures for Profit Measurement and Reporting Purposes’, Accounting and Business Research, Vol.9 (1979), p.147.
49. E. Newell, ‘Interpreting the Cornish Copper Standard’, Journal of the Trevithick Society, Vol.13 (1986), pp.41-2.
50. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.205.
51. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.204.
52. NLW, Vivian Papers, E18, p.141.
53. Ibid., pp.162, 173, 245 and 255.
54. Anonymous Husbandry, in E. Lamond, Walter of Henley's Husbandry (1890), p.71ff.
55. R.K. Fleischman and L.D. Parker, ‘Managerial Accounting Early in the British Industrial Revolution: The Carron Company, a Case Study’, Accounting and Business Research Vol. 20 (1990), p.218.
56. M. J. Epstein, The Effect of Scientific Management on the Development of the Standard Cost System (New York, 1978), pp.51-6;
57. M.L. Inman, ‘The Relevance of the Historical Background to Standard Costing’, Association of Certified Accountants, Students’ Newsletter (August 1989), pp.32-4.
58. NLW, Vivian Papers, E18, p.208.
59. NLW, NLW MSS. 15113B, p.25ff.
60. Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management, pp.220-1.
61. Ibid., p.248.
62. Fleischman and Parker, ‘Managerial Accounting’, p.215.
63. Johnson and Kaplan, Relevance Lost, pp.141–4.
64. Johnson, ‘Nineteenth-Century Cost Accounting’, p.511.
65. Fleischman and Parker, ‘Managerial Accounting’, p.214.
66. R.H. Campbell, Carron Company (Edinburgh, 1961), pp.136–8.
67. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.132
68. Ibid., p.136n.
69. Ibid., p.104.
70. Ibid., p.106.
71. Solomons, ‘Historial Development of Costing’, pp.22-3.
72. Johnson, Role of Accounting History, pp.11.
73. Mepham, op. cit., p.63.
74. Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management, p.235.
75. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.20.
76. Ibid., p.216.
77. Garner, Evolution of Cost Accounting, p.143.
78. Mepham, ‘Origins of Cost Accounting’, p.63.
79. S. Pollard, ‘Capital Accounting in the Industrial Revolution’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, Vol.15 (1963), p.80.
80. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.169.
81. Mepham, ‘Origins of Cost Accounting’, p.67.
82. Stone, ‘An Early English Cost Accounting System’, p.77.
83. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.171.
84. R.H. Parker, ‘History of Accounting for Decisions’, in J. Arnold, B. Carsberg and R. Scapens (eds.), Topics in Management Accounting (Oxford, 1980), p.262.
85. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, Ch.2.
86. P. Mason, ‘Illustrations of the Early Treatment of Depreciation’, Accounting Review, Vol.VIII (1933), p.210.
87. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, p.159.
88. Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management, p.244.
89. J.R. Edwards, A History of Financial Accounting (1989), pp.84-5.
90. J.R. Edwards, ‘Depreciation and Fixed Asset Valuation in British Railway Company Accounts to 1911’, Accounting and Business Research, Vol.16 (1986–87), pp.251-5.
91. M. Huish, H. Woodhouse and E. Watkin, ‘(Private) Report to the Permanent Way Committee of the London and North Western Railway on the Renewal Fund, 1853’, in J.R. Edwards (ed.), Reporting Fixed Assets in Nineteenth Century Company Accounts, (1986), p.273.
92. Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, pp.237-41.
93. Hudsons identification of a range of possible variables affecting accounting developments in the West Riding textile industry is an important exception to this approach. P. Hudson, ‘Some Aspects of 19th Century Accounting Development in the West Riding Textile Industry’, Accounting History, Vol.2 (1977).
94. Fleischman and Parker, ‘Managerial Accounting’, p.213.