The Development of Industrial Cost and Management Accounting Before 1850: A Survey of the Evidence

This article surveys the specialist accounting history literature and utilises primary sources relating to the development and application of cost and management accounting in British industry before 1850. After explaining the purpose of cost and management accounting and outlining their principal features, the findings of various studies of individual firms and industries are described and analysed. It is shown that the findings of accounting historians adds to the business historian's understanding of the development of managerial practices, and that there is sufficient evidence that businessmen were cost-conscious and utilised costing data for planning, control and decision-making purposes from the sixteenth century to challenge the established view of lack of progress in these forms of accounting before the late nineteenth century.