ABSTRACT
Accountants provided advisory services since the early nineteenth century, consulting as a visible and distinguishable activity originated in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, linked to engineering and in particular to so-called scientific management and its figurehead, Frederick W. Taylor. In the history of the Canadian firm Clarkson Gordon, which goes back to a trustee and receivership business established by Thomas Gordon in Toronto in 1864 and became allied with Arthur Young in 1944. Accounting itself has a long history, going back to ancient times, with double-entry bookkeeping as a major innovation codified in fifteenth-century Italy, from where it gradually spread elsewhere. The establishment of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1880 is of particular interest in this context, since its meetings became the forum for discussions. The US became the birthplace of scientific management mainly due to its leading role in the creation of large-scale organizations in the second industrial revolution.
