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Abstract:
The series of Recommendations on Accounting Principles (RoAPs) issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) between 1942 and 1969 demonstrated the willingness of a professional accounting body to take a degree of responsibility for the form and content of British corporate financial reports. RoAPs 12 and 15 focused on the enduring problem of whether and how to take account of changing prices when constructing published financial reports. This article reveals disagreement between practising and industrial members in general, concerning how to address this issue, and examines the way in which the Council of the ICAEW sought to resolve this internal conflict within the constraints imposed by the need to be seen to behave in the 'public interest'. Major discord between the two main categories of membership emerged within the operation of the Taxation and Financial Relations (T&FR) Committee. What were judged by the ICAEW's leadership to be the extreme views of the industrial members were marginalized and suppressed by bypassing the normal channel for designing RoAPs and, instead, formulating them at the higher level of the Parliamentary and Law (P&L) Committee. The conflict between practising and industrial members continued in the period following the publication of RoAP 15, when further attempts were made to tackle the problem of accounting for inflation.

Abstract:
Steel occupied an important place in British industry throughout the period covered by this paper, supplying raw materials for the production of capital goods such as machinery, ships, building, bridges and motor vehicles. Much of the existing relevant literature on uniform costing is confined to a discussion of its potential for price fixing by companies concerned to drive out 'cutthroat competition' from within a particular trade. This paper, in contrast, studies the tensions surrounding central government's use of uniform costing data as the basis for fixing prices at a level designed to produce a reasonable return on investment, encouraging modernisation and enabling informed decisions to be made concerning the assessment of development plans. The paper demonstrates the problematic role of accounting as a basis for resource application decisions in two separate ways. First, the difficulty of devising and implementing an effective system of uniform costing, given the technical frailty of what was being attempted and the unwillingness of companies to change established accounting procedures. Second, the reluctance and in some cases refusal of companies to supply neutral accounting numbers to reach decisions - pricing and import tariffs - that affect their economic value.

uniform costing, steel industry, accounting change

Abstract:
Evidence of a change in transfer price offers a rare opportunity to examine underlying causes to explain the need for change. Three modern-day frameworks are employed in this longitudinal case study to interrogate the events and actions taken at an iron and coal company during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This approach provides insights to potentially influential factors effecting transfer price determination which may be neglected or overlooked in current theoretical or empirical studies.

Abstract:
There is a widespread view that cost finding developed into cost accounting towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the further step towards what we today call management accounting occurring in the twentieth century. This bold assessment is based on an embarrassingly small amount of empirical evidence, while little is known of a key element in these transitions, namely the use of accounting information for business decision making. This study utilises the primary records of a major industrial company for the middle years of the nineteenth century to explore these issues. The theoretical framework used to inform this study is the process of business development explicated by Alfred Chandler in "Strategy and Structure." We find, not surprisingly, that the process of change was contingent upon a set of unique circumstances which shaped attitudes and actions. We discover an interaction between the accounting system, organisational structure and management decision making process which is of two-fold significance: it adds an important dimension to our knowledge of the potential of accounting numbers at this early stage in the development of the large scale enterprise; it contains conclusions which will help to illuminate the contemporary theory-practice debate concerning the role of management accounting in such organisations.