In the Asia-Pacific region, the conditions and consequences of East Asian success have understandably attracted more attention than the causes and implications of North American failure. In the American case, any failure must be relative when the US remains a bloc-sized market and the only...

The case for stock reduction in manufacturing has been argued by engineers who emphasise the productive benefits. Western management accounting does not provide an adequate indication of the costs of holding stock. This article constructs a framework for identifying and measuring the financial...

This article examines the size and significance of labour costs in modern manufacturing industry. Labour costs are doubly salient because wages are both part of the input costs of production and a way of distributing net output. The evidence on British manufacturing shows that labour accounts...

This article questions the stereotypes of Fordism and mass production. It does so by demonstrating that there is a contradiction between the stereotypes and the reality of Henry Ford's manufacturing practice in production of the Model T at the Highland Park factory between 1909 and 1919....

Explains how and why the household should, and could, be an object of analysis for a new social accounting. It shows that the household has been neglected in national income accounting, which generally tends to represent it as a black box. It also shows how the data from national income...

Using the example of capital charging in UK hospitals, this paper shows how new public policy initiatives are justified through forms of persuasion without numbers and can be challenged with empirics. A reading of official and academic texts shows how the official problem definition focuses on...