Various estimates, both <italic>ex ante</italic> and <italic>ex post</italic>, have been produced of the accounting rate of return on investments in the late nineteenth-century coal industry, with some <italic>ex post</italic> figures also being calculated for individual firms engaged therein, such as the Consett Iron Co. Ltd. No one, however,...

Using archival evidence relating to Albright & Wilson (A&W), this article challenges the validity of Chandler's view, based mainly on the study of secondary sources, that personal capitalism retarded the development of more advanced forms of managerial organisation in Britain in the late...

Research into the development of costing systems during the last 20 or so years has begun to challenge the previously widely held view that little by way of progress was made before the end of the nineteenth century. Much of this later research, however, did not include consideration of...