ABSTRACT
This introduction provides an overview of key concepts present in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents due recognition to the work of a variety of accounting historians who have laboured across the decades of the century to lay the foundations for an historical understanding of the accounting discipline. It offers an extensive exploration, based on archival sources, of the various dimensions of British Industrial Revolution costing history. The book also presents an overview of cost accounting and cost management practices, whilst investigating these methods in the three dominant industries of the period—iron, textiles, and mining. It provides two organisational case studies—the Carron Company and Boulton & Watt. Finally, the book explores two issues central to Industrial Revolution costing—the relationship between technological change and cost management, and the paradigmatic approaches that have predominated in recent costing historiography. It also provides future researchers with a foundation embracing both environmental and methodological dimensions of the subject.
