Richard K. Fleischman

Bio: Richard K. Fleischman is an academic researcher from John Carroll University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cost accounting & Activity-based costing. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 7 publications receiving 497 citations.

British entrepreneurs and pre-Industrial Revolution evidence of cost management

Abstract: ccounting histories have dated the advent of sophisticated cost management from the mid-1880s (Solomons 1952). The scientific management movement is credited with instituting and popularizing cost management techniques. However, it might be suspected that British en- trepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution would have developed sophisti- cated costing techniques earlier, given their significant methodological ad- vances in other economic areas. This article reports the findings from surviving business records of 25 sizeable British industrial firms (mostly in the iron and textile industries) from 1760 to 1850. Substantial evidence of a relatively mature cost man- agement has been found in four major areas of activity: cost control tech- niques, accounting for overhead, costing for routine and special decision making, and standard costing. Speculations about the motivations for cost management and about specific factors influencing the iron and textile industries are considered. Because the accounting practices of these firms predated the genesis of "the costing renaissance" a century later, our un- derstanding of cost management practices in the Industrial Revolution is augmented by the survey.

A theoretical primer for evaluating and conducting historical research in accounting

Abstract: Historical research in accounting is flourishing as prestigious journals worldwide encourage authors to incorporate history into their submissions. Although a number of accounting academics are awa...

The Boulton & Watt Case: The Crux of Alternative Approaches to Accounting History?

Abstract: In accounting history, authors who have adopted a ‘Foucauldian’ approach have recently debated with those representing the ‘Neoclassical’ school of thought the relative sophistication and significance of cost accounting developments in the UK and US respectively during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This paper argues that the differences between the two schools' understandings are important for comprehending the genesis and scope of modern cost and management accounting systems. It re-examines the historical case of Boulton & Watt, an engineering firm believed to have been in the vanguard of British Industrial Revolution accounting practice (Roll, 1930; Pollard, 1965 and 1990; Fleischman and Parker, 1991), in an attempt to clarify some of the key points of difference in the debate. It proposes that the historical crux for deciding where a modern managerial approach to accounting began lies in distinguishing between the development of engineering standards for materials and machine effici...

Managerial accounting early in the British Industrial Revolution: The Carron Company, a case study

Abstract: Traditional accounting histories date the advent of sophisticated cost accounting to the mid-1880s. Research in recent years, however, has provided evidence of purposeful cost management during the British Industrial Revolution. Given the advances in capital accumulation techniques, market structure development, and technology, it might have been expected that British entrepreneurs would have appreciated the advantages that effective costing could provide. This article is a case study of the Carron Company, the huge Scottish ironworks, whose cost accounting methods were notably innovative during the period for which plentiful archival records exist: 1759–1786. Carron's utilisation and practice of cost management is examined in the areas of expenditure control; responsibility and departmental cost management; overhead allocation; cost comparisons and transfers; costs for decision-making; budgets, forecasts, and standards; and inventory control. The positive findings in all these activity areas con...

What is Past is Prologue: Cost Accounting in the British Industrial Revolution, 1760-1850

Abstract: This volume, originally published in 1997, reports the findings of extensive archival and contextual research into the surviving accounting and business records of some 200 British Industrial Revolution enterprises. This study presents an overview of cost accounting and cost management practices, whilst investigating these methods in the three dominant industries of the period – iron, textiles, and mining. In addition, it provides two organisational case studies – the Carron Company and Boulton & Watt. Finally, it explores two issues central to Industrial Revolution costing – the relationship between technological change and cost management, and the paradigmatic approaches that have predominated in costing historiography.

Time and Narrative

Abstract: In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.

Critical and interpretive histories: insights into accounting’s present and future through its past

Abstract: Accounting history has a long tradition, but in recent years it has expanded its interests and approaches. Early literature of accounting history that sought to glorify the practice of accounting and the status of accountants has been supplemented first by a more utilitarian approach viewing the past as a “database” for enhancing understanding of contemporary practice and for identifying past accounting solutions that might be relevant to current problems, and then by a more critical approach, which seeks to understand accounting’s past through the perspective of a range of social and political theories. A tension has developed between those historians whose first loyalty is to the archive and those who look primarily to theory to inform their historical investigations. As accounting history matures, open debate between practitioners of different modes of history making can only be beneficial, not only to the development of the discipline, but also towards our own self‐understandings as accountants, including the impact we have on organizational and social functioning. Suggests that accounting history without a firm archival base is likely to lose direction, but that our notion of what constitutes the archive, and our ways of communicating, explicating and interpreting the archive, should not be taken as fixed. To illustrate this, examines a number of approaches to the writing of accounting history where recent research has begun to demonstrate a critical and interpretive tendency, and suggests directions in which this research might develop as accounting and its history enters the twenty‐first century.

Genealogies of calculation

Abstract: This paper calls firstly for genealogies of calculation, in contrast to traditional accounting history. The term genealogy conveys a focus on the outcomes of the past, rather than a quest for the origins of the present. It is intended to avoid an a priori limiting of the field of study to accounting as it currently exists, or to a particular accounting technique such as double-entry bookkeeping. And it entails an emphasis on the historical contingency of contemporary practices, a concern with the multiple and dispersed surfaces of emergence of disparate practices of economic calculation. Secondly, the paper emphasizes the discursive nature of calculation, the language and vocabularies in which a particular practice is articulated, the ideals attached to certain calculative technologies. Thirdly, the paper stresses the importance of attending to ensembles of practices and rationales that are assembled at various collective levels, rather than with isolated instances of this or that way of accounting. The delineation of the domain of traditional accounting history is illustrated by reference to three sets of issues: the links between double-entry bookkeeping and capitalism in the writings of Weber and Sombart; the links between bookkeeping practice and decision making in the writings of Yamey; and the quest for examples of “early management accounting” in the writings of those such as Edwards and Fleischman & Parker. In contrast to such concerns of accounting history, four genealogies are presented: the promotion of discounted cash-flow techniques for investment decisions in the U.K. in the 1960s; the emergence of costs in the late eighteenth century; the accounting for value added event in Britain in the late 1970s; and the construction of standard costing in the early decades of the twentieth century.