ABSTRACT
Even though it entered the lexicon of accountants only after the Second World War, use of the term ‘management accounting’ had become commonplace, though not ubiquitous, by 1970. The use of cost information for managerial purposes was not a new phenomenon of course, so what did the adoption of the term ‘management accounting’ signify? This chapter studies the transition from ‘costing’, through ‘cost accounting’ to ‘management accounting’, examining key issues central to this process, namely full costing versus marginal costing, the relationship between the cost and financial accounts, and the rise of forward-looking techniques such as standard costing and budgetary control. First, we set out the economic and business background of the period.
