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Business budgeting as a tool of scientific management and rationalisation in Poland in the interwar period
Abstract
The purpose of the article is to examine the premises and extent of the dissemination of business budgeting using publications in interwar Poland (1918–1939) and to indicate Polish authors’ sources of knowledge on this issue. The article also seeks to investigate whether budgeting was promoted and introduced in Poland to propel development in a nation that was reawakening as a country after more than 120 years of partitions. The dissemination of budgeting is considered in connection with the idea of rationalisation, which originated in the United States, and the scientific management movement in Europe that it influenced. The article shows Poles promoting business budgeting and their actions following the theory of progress in order to increase the prosperity of a country that was rebuilding a unified economic organism and national identity. The article contributes to the history of scientific management and accounting as it brings new elements by examining the non-Western interwar environment.
... W ostatnich dwóch dekadach rachunkowością w ujęciu historycznym zajmowali się przede wszystkim A. Szychta (np. 2002;2005a;2007;2013;2016a;2020a;2022b;2022c), M. Turzyński (np. 2011; i S. Jędrzejewski (np. ...
... W "Buchalterze Polskim" ukazało się kilka artykułów dotyczących budżetowania, w tym obszerne, pięcioczęściowe opracowanie J. Chodorowskiego (1932) na temat budżetu jako podstawy zarządzania (Szychta, Jędrzejewski, Turzyński, 2018a;Szychta 2022b), a także sporo artykułów opisujących plany (wykazy) kont w różnego rodzaju przedsiębiorstwach, w tym odnoszące się do kont kosztów. ...
... Budżetowanie i kontrola budżetowa przed II wojną światową były tematem pogłębionych badań A. Szychty (Szychta, Jędrzejewski, Turzyński, 2018;Szychta, 2022b), których wyniki zostały przedstawione najobszerniej w artykule opublikowanym w czasopiśmie "Accounting History" w 2022 roku. Celem artykułu było poznanie przesłanek i zakresu upowszechnienia budżetowania za pomocą publikacji oraz wskazanie źródeł wiedzy polskich autorów na ten temat. ...
Publikacja jest dostępna w wersji elektronicznej:
https://www.wydawnictwo-siz.pl/badania-naukowe-w-zakresie-rachunkowosci-zarzadczej-z-prac-lodzkiej-szkoly-rachunkowosci-w-latach-2017-2022/
Celem monografii jest zebranie, usystematyzowanie i opisanie wyników badań w zakresie rachunkowości zarządczej przeprowadzonych w Katedrze Rachunkowości na Wydziale Zarządzania Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego (WZ UŁ) w latach 2017–2022, a także określenie poglądów pracowników Katedry na istotę i cele rachunkowości zarządczej jako działalności praktycznej.
Publikacja stanowi kontynuację prezentacji dorobku z zakresu rachunkowości zarządczej łódzkiej szkoły rachunkowości, powstałej w 1948 roku, zapoczątkowanej przez profesora Edwarda Wojciechowskiego, który kierował Katedrą Rachunkowości w latach 1950–1973, i ukształtowanej przez profesor Alicję Jarugę, kierownika Katedry Rachunkowości w UŁ w latach 1973–1998. Wyniki prac badawczych dotyczących rachunkowości zarządczej w gospodarce rynkowej do 2016 roku zostały zaprezentowane w rozdziale 10 (Szychta, Michalak, 2018) monografii pt. Łódzka szkoła rachunkowości w procesie transformowania systemu rachunkowości w Polsce w latach 1989–2016: wyzwania dla praktyki i nauki pod redakcją Ireny Sobańskiej i Radosława Ignatowskiego (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2018), a dorobek pracowników Katedry w okresie gospodarki centralnie planowanej m.in. w „Zeszycie Teoretycznym Rachunkowości”, nr 42(98), wydanym w 2008 roku (s. 51–53).
Niniejsza praca zawiera cztery rozdziały i zakończenie.
1. Rozumienie rachunkowości zarządczej w łódzkiej szkole rachunkowości
2. Historia rachunku kosztów i rachunkowości zarządczej
3. Rachunkowość zarządcza w procesach operacyjnych i strategicznych
4. Rachunkowość zarządcza w kontekście zrównoważonego rozwoju
Monografia ta, stanowiąca przegląd i syntetyczny opis wyników badań z zakresu rachunkowości zarządczej przeprowadzanych w ostatnich kilku latach w Katedrze Rachunkowości funkcjonującej 75 lat w strukturach organizacyjnych Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, ma nie tylko wymiar historyczny. Autorzy wyrażają bowiem nadzieję, że przedstawione w niej koncepcje, podejścia i obszary badawcze będą kontynuowane w łódzkiej szkole rachunkowości, a także zainspirują badaczy, a zwłaszcza doktorantów, w innych ośrodkach naukowych w Polsce do podejmowania pogłębionych, nowatorskich i interdyscyplinarnych dociekań badawczych w sferze rachunkowości zarządczej, w tym ukierunkowanej na zrównoważony rozwój podmiotów gospodarczych. Niniejsza publikacja jest skierowana również do studentów kierunków i specjalności w ramach dyscyplin naukowych nauki o zarządzaniu i jakości oraz ekonomia i finanse, zainteresowanych problematyką rozwoju i wdrażania systemów rachunkowości zarządczej w praktyce.
Opracowanie stanowi pierwszą część cyklu pt. „Mistrzowie, współpracownicy i uczniowie uniwersyteckiej szkoły zarządzania w Łodzi”, którego celem jest prezentacja dorobku, relacji i perspektyw rozwojowych kluczowych przedstawicieli szkoły zarządzania na Uniwersytecie Łódzkim. W artykule przedstawiono genezę powstania oraz retrospektywny wgląd w historię uniwersyteckiej szkoły zarządzania w Łodzi. Zidentyfikowano 9 kluczowych obszarów badań naukowych, powiązanych bezpośrednio ze strukturą organizacyjną Wydziału Zarządzania. Szczegółowo omówiono relacje pomiędzy mistrzami, współpracownikami i uczniami, a także zidentyfikowano najważniejsze osiągnięcia naukowe szkoły w obszarze teorii oraz metod organizacji i zarządzania, strategii i finansów przedsiębiorstwa, a także rachunkowości.
Listed below are 2022 publications, in English, within the general area of accounting history. The definition of what constitutes an accounting history article is not always a straightforward matter, and the description has been interpreted fairly broadly to include any accounting publication with a significant historical input. Malcolm Anderson’s bibliographies from 2010 and through 2016 form the basis for the search terms used to gather these publications. For business history articles, see Business History. For a review of financial history publications, see Financial History Review.
This study provides a history of the introduction and implementation of standard costing at J&P Coats Ltd, the British-based multinational thread manufacturers, between 1925 and 1961. By 1896, the firm had centralised sales and marketing, strategic and treasury management in its head office in Glasgow. The introduction of standard costing was intended to bring financial discipline within each of its home and overseas mills, to add to the central discipline and control which already existed across the company, as well as to facilitate some aspects of central accounting in Glasgow. The study ends in 1961, the year the company merged with Patons and Baldwins, another UK-based textile firm. As a theoretical lens, our history uses institutional theory, as it affects an understanding of the implementation and operation of new management accounting systems. In particular, we explore the concept that the development and use of new accounting systems may well be conditioned by both external and internal ‘institutions’, or ‘ways of doing things’. The Coats study responds to the call for longitudinal analyses of management accounting innovation from an institutional point of view. It shows how institutional factors affected the implementation and use of standard costing within the firm, operating through human actors and changing organisational structures. In addition, the study adds to what is known about the history and chronology of the development of standard costing in the UK, pointing out similarities and differences between what happened at Coats and other adopters. It underscores that what is known about the installation and usage of costing systems would benefit from an understanding of the institutional factors involved.
This essay aims to introduce readers to the social studies of accounting, atten-ding in particular to the roles and relevance of Foucault’s works for this field. We provide a brief overview of social studies of accounting, discuss recent developments in Foucault orien-ted accounting scholarship, and position the articles that appear in this special issue in the context of these developments. In the concluding section, we argue that accounting is an in-herently territorializing activity. The calculative instruments of accountancy transform not on-ly the possibilities for personhood, they also construct the physical and abstract calculable spaces that individuals inhabit. A focus on territorializing shifts attention to the links between calculating and governing.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the experiences of Vietnamese enterprises with respect to the adoption and benefits of Western management accounting practices (MAPs) during a period when the economy was in transition toward a more market‐oriented system.
Design/methodology/approach
Questionnaire responses were obtained from the head or vice‐head of the accounting department in 181 enterprises, and follow‐up interviews conducted with 20 of the respondents. The responses were analysed with simple statistical tests and ANOVA.
Findings
Two of the key findings are in line with results reported previously for other countries: adoption rates for “traditional” Western MAPs are higher than for “contemporary” ones; and state‐owned enterprises tend to exhibit lower adoption rates than other enterprises. A third key finding represents new insight, but it may be applicable to only Vietnam (and possibly a limited number of other transition economies). This third finding arises from our identification of a group of Western MAPs which closely resemble the type of accounting and planning activities routinely undertaken under the former central planning (CP) system. These CP‐compatible MAPs are adopted far more widely (even at present) than are other MAPs. Overall, the findings are broadly consistent with the diffusion of innovation theory.
Originality/value
This study examines the Western MAP adoption experiences of a developing economy in transition, one which has received relatively little attention in the MA literature to date.
In the 1930s, active industrialization of the economy in the USSR was impossible without using modern management techniques and accounting methods. To increase the manageability of industrial enterprises, attempts to introduce standard costing, imported from the United States, were undertaken. Previously called progressive and useful, after the policy of the Communist Party changed, standard costing was identified as a calculative technique that did not correspond to the goals of the socialist state. Soviet researchers formulated the principles of normative cost accounting, based on standard costing. This new version was greatly simplified and lost its analytical focus. The paper investigates the influence of state policy on the transformation of standard costing methodology during the construction of the Socialist economy. The authors contribute to previous literature by focusing on the periodic press, professional societies, and educational institutions being used as tools of political power to put pressure on accounting theory and practice.
This study analyses factory accounting textbooks written by Polish authors in the 19th century. Although at that time Poland was divided and annexed by three countries (Russia, Prussia, and Austria) and the development of industry took place under foreign rule, commercial education continued, and accounting textbooks were published in Polish despite the restrictions imposed by the partitioning powers. Based on an overview of the content of 13 handbooks, the paper answers several research questions. They relate to, among others, the authors and where these works were published, and to the methods of record-keeping and cost calculation recommended by these authors for 19th-century manufacturing enterprises. The paper presents the handbooks as a manifestation of the “organic work” of their authors in the socio-economic context of a country without its own state. It contributes to the current literature on resistance to an empire through accounting.
W tym artykule zaprezentowano komentarze do wybranych aspektów prawa bilansowego obowiązujące-
go w Polsce w okresie gospodarki centralnie planowanej. Zostały one poczynione na podstawie wywiadu przeprowadzonego ze Zdzisławem Fedakiem, uczestnikiem prac nad rozwiązaniami systemowymi ra-
chunkowości w Polskiej Rzeczpospolitej Ludowej (PRL), a obecnie animatorem doskonalenia polskiej praktyki rachunkowości w warunkach gospodarki rynkowej. Bezpośrednią przesłanką tej publikacji jest chęć przyczynienia się do wypełnienia luki w zakresie wiedzy o uwarunkowaniach i specyfice rachun-
kowości w Polsce z okresu gospodarki nierynkowej, z odwołaniem się do wiedzy i doświadczeń osób dobrze znających realia owych czasów. Tekst wpisuje się w nurt dokumentowania historii rachunkowości
przy zastosowania metody badawczej znanej jako historia mówiona (oral history).
When the author was working on the history of cost accounting at the beginning of the 1950s, he entered into correspondence with some of the pioneers who were developing the subject at the beginning of this century, or with men who had been personally associated with those pioneers. This paper places on record the more important biographical information that that correspondence gleaned about (in alphabetical order) Alexander Hamilton Church, Harrington Emerson, Emile Garcke and J. M. Fells, G. Charter Harrison, J. Slater Lewis, Sir John Mann and George P. Norton. It also comments briefly on their significance for the development of costing.
Historical research in accounting and management, hitherto largely neglected as a field of inquiry by many management and accounting researchers, has experienced a resurgence of interest and activity in research conferences and journals over the past decade. The potential lessons of the past for contemporary issues have been rediscovered, but the way forward is littered with antiquarian narratives, methodologically naive analyses, ideologically driven interpretation and ignorance of the traditions, schools and philosophy of the craft by accounting and management researchers as well as traditional and critical historians themselves. This paper offers an introduction to contributions made to the philosophies and methods of history by significant historians in the past, a review of some of the influential schools of historical thought, insights into philosophies of historical knowledge and explanation and a brief introduction to oral and business history. On this basis the case is made for the philosophically and methodologically informed approach to the investigation of our past heritage in accounting and management.
Utilizing archival materials, this paper examines the case of the Genoa-based firm, Ansaldo, which, by the early decades of the 20th century, had emerged as a major force in the inter-related fields of engineering, shipbuilding, and metal and steel manufacture in Italy. Following financial problems immediately after World War I and during the 1920s, the company was subsequently taken under the umbrella of the Italian State’s financial holding unit, the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), in the 1930s. Utilizing Lewin’s theory of change as a framework for investigating change in management accounting, the paper examines the internal and external factors influencing the development of cost/management accounting at the company. These are also examined against the background of the development of scientific management, both in Italy and elsewhere.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, managerial accounting development in Germany was based on micro-economic theory. In the twentieth century, the emphasis shifted to techniques and later to determination of "true cost", resulting in a highly developed system that had a major impact on other European countries. The major difference between the German developments and those in the USA is the separation of cost (consumption/utilization of physical resources) from expenses. After WWII, interest centered on cost theory based on limitational rather than substitutional production functions. Gutenberg demonstrated various cost adaptation pat-terns as managements responded to output changes and created a sophisticated theory using indirect rather than direct output/cost relationships. This theory is little know in the USA and might stimulate theory research, particularly in the area of activity costing.
Points out that traditional conceptions of accounting history and its achievements are being challenged by new accounting historians who are informed by radical philosophies and approaches to history. Suggests that this is a belated reflection of movements within the wider discipline of history which can be traced to the annalists in the 1930s and more recently to the influence of postmodernism. Observes that at issue between the traditional and new history are the importance of facts and the pursuit of truth by traditional historians, noting that new accounting historians have decried the reactionary effects of traditional history, which they propose to overcome by substituting accounting as an interested discourse for accounting as a neutral, socially sterile technique. Explains that, as the conventional form of historical writing, the narrative form also has been disparaged. Concludes by arguing that accounting historians should be tolerant of different approaches to accounting history.
This paper proposes some new ways of analysing the exercise of political power in advanced liberal democratic societies. These are developed from Michel Foucault's conception of ‘governmentality’ and addresses political power in terms of ‘political rationalities’ and ‘technologies of government’. It draws attention to the diversity of regulatory mechanisms which seek to give effect to government, and to the particular importance of indirect mechanisms that link the conduct of individuals and organizations to political objectives through ‘action at a distance’. The paper argues for the importance of an analysis of language in understanding the constitution of the objects of politics, not simply in terms of meaning or rhetoric, but as ‘intellectual technologies’ that render aspects of existence amenable to inscription and calculation. It suggests that governmentality has a characteristically ‘programmatic’ form, and that it is inextricably bound to the invention and evaluation of technologies that seek to give it effect. It draws attention to the complex processes of negotiation and persuasion involved in the assemblage of loose and mobile networks that can bring persons, organizations and objectives into alignment. The argument is exemplified through considering various aspects of the regulation of economic life: attempts at national economic planning in post-war France and England; the role ascribed to changing accounting practices in the UK in the 1960s; techniques of managing the internal world of the workplace that have come to lay special emphasis upon the psychological features of the producing subjects. The paper contends that ‘governmentality’ has come to depend in crucial respects upon the intellectual technologies, practical activities and social authority associated with expertise. It argues that the self-regulating capacities of subjects, shaped and normalized through expertise, are key resources for governing in a liberal-democratic way.
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.
During a 1910 Interstate Commerce Commission hearing Louis D. Brandeis argued that U.S. railroads could save a million dollars a day if they introduced scientific management (in particular, standard costing) into their operations. Brandeis' claim received widespread press attention and helped set into motion four years of public preoccupation with the ideas of efficiency. In this paper we examine the construction of Brandeis' agency and note that Brandeis' extensive publicity campaign on behalf of scientific management provided significant impetus to the spread of standard costing.
The use of accounting to help apply the principles of scientific management to business affairs is associated with the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control. This first British industry-based study of the implementation of these calculative techniques makes use of the case study research tool to interrogate archival data relating to leading iron and steel companies. We demonstrate the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control early on (during the inter-war period) by a single economic unit, United Steel Companies Ltd, where innovation is attributed to the engineering and scientific background and US experiences of key personnel. Elsewhere, significant management accounting change occurred only with the collapse in iron and steel corporate profitability that began to become apparent in the late 1950s. The process of accounting change is addressed and the significance for our study of the notions of evolution and historical discontinuity is examined. The paper is contextualised through an assessment of initiatives from industry-based regulatory bodies and consideration of the economic circumstances and business conditions within which management accounting practices were the subject of radical revision.
During the first sixty years or so of the twentieth century, a number of accounting techniques were developed for use in the management of business. One of those new techniques was budgetary control. This paper examines the dissemination and diffusion of budgetary control in France and Britain between the 1920s and the 1960s, outlining the similarities and differences in the experiences of the two countries, and examining some of those factors that influenced them. The paper concludes with some proposals for a programme for future research in (international) accounting change.
The 1930s and 1940s witnessed a burgeoning in the development of the management and accounting textbook literature on budgeting in corporations. This study examines this period's text writers' efforts to define the dimensions and purposes of budgeting, and their expositions of its advantages, limitations and implementation approaches. Comparison of the style and scope of their articulations with those of text writers in the final decade of the century, reveal both unique and recurring features of their discourse. A Habermasian-based reflection on these historical observations identifies the text as a mutable but potentially active budgetary system steering medium that has exhibited both rebuttal and colonizing tendencies.
Many generalizations have been made regarding the introduction within British businesses of the costing/accounting techniques associated with the scientific management movement during the early decades of the twentieth century, but little detail is known of the process and extent of their adoption. This paper presents the findings from a survey of primary and (mainly) secondary sources regarding the use of budgets and budgetary control in Britain and raises questions as to the validity of the hypothesis that British firms failed to adopt them as rapidly as they should have done. The paper calls for detailed research into business archives in order that we can more fully understand not only the extent of their use, but also the nature of the dissemination process by which budgetary control came to be implemented in British businesses.
The possibility of measuring and comparing sustainability performance is generally taken for granted in management studies and practices based on the evaluation, selection and ranking of the supposedly best companies in the field. The purpose of this article is to question this basic assumption by analyzing the comparability of sustainability performance through a systematic review of 12 mining company reports using Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. The analysis of information based on 92 GRI indicators raises serious questions concerning the hypothesis of measurability and comparability of sustainability performance, drawing attention to the main reasons that make it very difficult if not impossible to establish a credible and justifiable classification among organizations.
La possibilité de mesurer et de comparer les performances de développement durable est généralement prise pour acquise tant dans les recherches en gestion que dans les pratiques de classement ou de sélection des meilleures entreprises dans ce domaine. L’objectif de cet article est d’examiner cette hypothèse de mesurabilité et de comparabilité des performances de développement durable à partir de l’étude systématique de 12 rapports d’entreprises minières utilisant le même guideline du Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). L’analyse des informations relatives aux 92 indicateurs du GRI utilisés remet en cause l’hypothèse de comparabilité des performances de développement durable en mettant en lumière les principales raisons qui rendent pratiquement impossible l’établissement d’un classement crédible et justifiable entre les entreprises.
A quoi sert un indicateur de satisfaction des usagers dans la gouvernance d’une collectivité territoriale ? Telle est la question à laquelle cet article tente d’apporter des éléments de réponse. S’appuyant sur les travaux analysant le contrôle de gestion comme un outil de gouvernance disciplinaire, l’étude proposée de huit indicateurs montre que les dimensions apprentissage et discipline de l’évaluation, loin d’être exclusives l’une de l’autre, sont imbriquées et adaptées à chaque contexte de gouvernance. La logique de discipline apparaît ainsi liée à la fonction cognitive d’apprentissage des services publics avec son environnement en étant source de visibilité, comparabilité et surveillance. Afin de prendre en compte les réticences des acteurs-partenaires et d’éviter l’échec des démarches, des activités de traduction sont mises en œuvre.
Inwentarz zespołu akt Zjednoczone Zakłady Włókiennicze K. Scheiblera i L. Gromahna Spółka akcyjna z lat 1844-1944, tom I. Syg. 2273 - Sprawozdania z realizacji budżetów
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