The History of Management Accounting in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain

Abstract

Historical research has shown the influence of environmental contexts on the design and functioning of management accounting systems. In contrast to the relatively competitive settings that witnessed the emergence of cost systems in Anglo-American contexts, the focal settings featured inter alia the imposing role of religious and social philosophers' ideas on society as well as distinctive degrees of state intervention in the economy. The findings question traditional contentions that double-entry bookkeeping spread from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries and that cost calculations have been implemented only since the advent of the British Industrial Revolution.

Alberto Ceccherelli (1885–1958): pioneer in the history of accounting practice and leader in international dissemination

“…Thus, cost accounting, tracking raw material costs and wages, played a pivotal role in medieval companies. In this respect, we can note earlier studies that relied on a similar assumption that cost-accounting practices were widespread in Italy in the Middle Ages (Edler 1937;Garner 1947;Solomons 1952;De Roover 1955;Mills 1994 attempted to prove that cost-accounting practices were widespread before the industrial revolution (Edwards and Newell 1991;Fleischman and Parker 1991;Carmona 2007;Zambon and Zan 2007). Accounting historians following the genealogical approach focus on the way in which calculative technologies were connected with cost calculation and how they were developed, linked together and functioned according to routines (Miller and Napier 1993, 639).…”

An examination of nineteenth-century Polish handbooks on factory accounting

“…However, as long ago as 1820, cost accounting systems were introduced in some manufacturing enterprises (see Boyns et al, 1997). For instance, in the years 1820–1880, such a system was introduced and progressively improved upon at Saint-Gobain, a French company established in Paris in 1665 (Carmona, 2007; Nikitin, 1990). As regards to textbooks on industrial accounting in France, during the period 1800–1880, an increasing number of books started to consider the technical issue of costing within the double-entry system (Boyns et al, 1997: 400).…”

The contribution of the Italian literature to the international Accounting History literature

“…Accordingly, some studies have reviewed specific AH research topics within non-Anglo-Saxon countries, such as Italy, Turkey and Portugal (Antonelli and D’Alessio, 2014; Cinquini et al, 2008; Coskun and Gungormus, 2015; De Serra Faria, 2008; Gomes et al, 2015). Moreover, several comparisons have analyzed the patterns of development of AH research (Fowler and Keeper, 2016), by focusing on citations (Bisman, 2011; Carnegie, 2014; Carnegie and Napier, 2012), publishing patterns (Carmona, 2004, 2006; Carnegie et al, 2003; Carnegie and Potter, 2000; Giovannoni and Riccaboni, 2009; Sánchez-Matamoros and Gutierrez-Hidalgo, 2010, 2011; Williams and Wines, 2006), different schools of thought (Gomes, 2008) or different AH communities (Carnegie and Rodrigues, 2007; Richardson, 2008). Another consequence of such opening to non-English-speaking countries is the extension of the Carnegie and Napier (1996) taxonomy of publication themes within AH (Carnegie and Napier, 2012; Carnegie and Potter, 2000; Sánchez-Matamoros and Gutierrez-Hidalgo, 2011; Williams and Wines, 2006), as new themes have entered the field.…”