Through a detailed examination, using business archives, of the impact of the First World War on cost calculation practices in British firms, this paper examines, and finds wanting, the claim of Loft (1986, 1990) that cost accounting came into the light in Britain during the First World War.

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...

The intellectual content and intentions of scientific management theories, aimed at industrial performance and harmony, were largely absent from British management practice for a great part of the last century. The limited interpretation of scientific management in Britain was characterised by a...