Knowing more as knowing less? Alternative histories of cost and management accounting in the U.S. and the U.K.

              Hoskin and Macve: Knowing More As Knowing Less 91
Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 27, No. 1
June 2000
Keith W. Hoskin
WARWICK BUSINESS SCHOOL
and
Richard H. Macve
LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
KNOWING MORE AS KNOWING LESS?
ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES OF COST
AND MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING IN
THE U.S. AND THE U.K.
Abstract: In attempting to understand the genesis and scope of mod-ern
cost and management accounting systems, accounting histori-ans
adopting what has been labeled a “Foucauldian” approach have
been rewriting the history of key 18th and 19th century develop-ments
in the U.K. and U.S. through new evidence, new interpreta-tion,
and a refocusing of attention on familiar events. This is a
“disciplinary” history which sees modern cost and management ac-counting
as articulating a new kind of “expert disciplinary knowl-edge,”
as well as exercising a “disciplinary power,” in the construc-tion
of a new human accountability. However, this “disciplinary”
view has been challenged by more “economic rationalist” historians,
e.g., Boyns and Edwards [1996] for the British Industrial Revolution
and Tyson [1998] for the U.S., as being too narrowly concerned with
labor control.
This paper takes up the gauntlet. It addresses the theo-retical
issues and seeks to clarify the import of the “disciplinary
view” and its contribution to understanding how 19th century ac-counting
practices shaped emerging managerial discourses, initially
in the U.S. It argues that, until businesses adopted this new
disciplinarity, there remained an absence of practices focused on
calculating human performance, and accounting was not fully de-ployed
to construct that system of “administrative coordination”
[Chandler, 1977] which distinguishes modern management action
and control.
Acknowledgments: The authors express gratitude to the ESRC (grant no.
0023 2405) and the Centre for Business Performance of the ICAEW, without
whose funding support much of the archival research underlying this paper
could not have been undertaken. They are also grateful to the participants in
the 11th Accounting, Business and Financial History Conference, Cardiff, Sep-tember
15-16, 1999, for their constructive comments on an earlier version of
this paper.