Gloria Vollmers

A Reexamination of the Development of the Accounting Profession-Critical Events from 1912-1940

This study reexamines the accounting professions response to opportunities and incentives given it during three unique periods in its history to foster reliable accounting, reporting and auditing practices. By profession, we mean the auditors of publicly held companies as represented by the American Institute of Accountants and its predecessor, the American Association of Public Accountants (AAPA). We use two models of professionalism, the Functionalist and the Conflict models, to interpret the professions response to these events. We find that both self interest and the public interest may have motivated many of the actions taken. These motivations are not, however, mutually exclusive and both may be used to interpret the same behavior.

SMALL-TIME ACCOUNTING: A 19TH CENTURY MEAT MERCHANT IN MAINE

The journal of Amos K. Hersey, a 19th century meat merchant from Pembroke, Maine is examined in this paper. The accounting system used by Hersey is analyzed and compared with contemporary prescriptions for account keeping. The paper seeks to contribute to the emerging literature on the history of accounting among ordinary people. It shows how the accounts kept by Hersey reflect and illuminate several features of a local economy and society.

A personal account book of Joseph E. Bell: a record of survival in nineteenth century rural America

While many recent accounting histories focus on large companies or institutions and describe the origins, antecedents, or developments of modern practice, few explore the working world of the common man and the activities needed to survive on farms and in rural areas. This paper describes the life of a nondescript early nineteenth century working man primarily through his personal account book. Joseph E. Bell lived in Lincolnton, North Carolina from 1820-1827 and was at various times a minister, a teacher, a seller of books, a renter, a hauler of cotton, a farmer, an extractor of teeth and perhaps a merchant as well. Bells account book illuminates a life rarely examined by todays accounting historians. It reveals the range of skills and flexibility that were needed to survive in an era preceding the advent of the modern job or career. The account book clearly shows the nature of accounting in a rural economy that had relatively little hard currency and relied on multiparty barter transactions.

USING DISTRIBUTION COSTS IN DECISION MAKING AT THE DENNISON MANUFACTURING COMPANY, 1909 TO 1949

Early in the 20th century, predating most academic and practitioner literature, Dennison Manufacturings top management recognized that certain kinds of distribution costs, normally treated as part of general overhead and allocated based on prime costs, were highly relevant for product-costing and pricing decisions. They pulled as many identifiable direct costs of distribution as possible out of the general overhead pool and assigned them to the appropriate product lines as extra information for the managers of those lines. However, these off-book assignments of costs were not fully understood and caused misunderstandings for many years. New archival evidence allows us to see the frustrations of managers who wanted to understand and use this information and how they attempted to solve these problems.

ACCOUNTING FOR IDLE CAPACITY: ITS PLACE IN THE HISTORICAL COST LITERATURE AND CONJECTURE ABOUT ITS DISAPPEARANCE

How best to provide management with useful information about the underutilization of factory and machinery are old cost accounting questions. The literature from the turn of the century up through the 1950s reveals that the topic interested many. This paper resurrects those historical discussions. The objective is twofold, to demonstrate the sophistication and innovation of early writers emphasizing why they thought the topic important, and, to explore some theories about why this interest dissipated within the accounting literature. The possibilities include the effect of the great depression, wartime regulations, the withdrawal of the industrial engineer from costing and the growing importance of income measurement. This research ends in the 1960s, by which time idle capacity as an independent topic has largely disappeared.

Cost Accounting for War: Contracting Procedures and Cost-plus Pricing in WWI Industrial Mobilization in Italy

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the role played by cost accounting in Italys Industrial Mobilization system and in the largest firm manufacturing weaponry, Ansaldo of Genoa, during WWI. While in other countries such as the UK and the USA, efficiency in buying and managing war material was an important part of military strategy, in Italy, various factors impeded it. This paper focuses on contracting procedures adopted by the Ministry of War and Ministry of Munitions and looks at the cost accounting practices in Ansaldo to see how costs were determined and how prices were set. We found a paradox. On the one hand, despite knowledge of costing, the government did not impose cost controls on the producers of war material, nor on their profit rates. On the other hand, examining Ansaldos cost sheets we discover they underestimated their production costs leading the firm to losses despite its favorable political position. This paper contributes to the theoretical debate about the relationships between accounting and war in the Italian context where lobbying, collusion, bribery and private interests dominated the administrative behavior of public and private actors instead of efficiency, accountability and honesty.

Accounting and Control in the Persepolis Fortification Tablets

The bookkeeping records collected and retained by accountants of the Persian Empire centered at Persepolis from 509-494 B.C. are examined in this paper. A powerful bureaucracy exercised control over foodstuffs to supply an immense number of royal and state personnel and workers with their ration needs. A sophisticated accounting system facilitated this control, making visible not only the quantities of food assets distributed but also the locations and individuals responsible for these distributions.

Industrial Home Work of the Dennison Manufacturing Company of Framingham, Massachusetts, 1912–1935

Dennison Manufacturing Company let work out into private homes in surrounding communities and paid piece rates for it for many decades. This work, primarily attaching strings to tags, benefited both the company and the community but contained the potential for abusive child labor. Home work declined when machinery could be substituted for hand labor, but machinery capable of replacing all handwork was never developed. Social and political pressures to reduce or eliminate child labor increased the incentives to end home work; but not until the depression of the 1930s, when national efforts to put men back to work gained momentum, did home manufacture end in the tag and other industries. This article uses internal company documents spanning the period 1912 to 1935 to illuminate the companys policy towards this work. It also relies on the recollections of many of those who performed the work when they were children. This research contributes to a substantial body of literature on home work by providing a case study on one company and enriching it with human testimony.

ACCOUNTING FOR DISTRIBUTION COSTS IN THE DENNISON MANUFACTURING COMPANY DURING THE 1920S AND 1930S

This paper suggests that Activity-Based Costing is not a new cost accounting technique but rather one that has been revived as a consequence of difficult economic times. The Dennison Manufacturing Company of Framingham, Massachusetts used accounting techniques throughout their organization that were clearly activity-based. This companys approach to costing distribution or marketing costs in particular is explored here. These costs tend to be ignored today; yet this company, along with others, made a concerted effort to understand these costs and to account for them.

Using Web-Based Technologies in a Graduate Class to Develop an Entrepreneurship Knowledge Portal

The purpose of this article is to share the experiences and lessons learned from an experimental graduate class using Web-based technologies that resulted in the development of a statewide entrepreneurship knowledge portal. Given the demands for Web-based systems and technologies to facilitate entrepreneurship, this class experience could be used as a model to help other states build or improve upon their entrepreneurial Web-based systems. The research was driven by the results of a comprehensive Kauffman Foundation study of Maine entrepreneurs’ needs. This article also explores issues and challenges associated with teaching a complex course using complex Web-based technologies, distance delivery techniques, and working with entrepreneurs to meet their needs.