ABSTRACT
A feature of the accounting scene in Britain today is that management accountants are recognised as a separate profession, having their own professional body, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Those engaged in cost calculation have not always enjoyed such elevated status and, during the period of the ‘costing renaissance’, were looked down upon by the already well-established public accountants. During the twentieth century, as the demand for the services of experts in cost calculation methods grew, so too did their status. By the mid-1970s, cost and management accountants secured official recognition that their work was of a professional nature through the granting of a Royal Charter to the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants (ICMA), an organization which had been set up immediately after the First World War as the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants (ICWA) (see Section 4 below). The process by which such recognition was achieved was by no means simple, and involved a number of dimensions including the increasing scientification of cost calculation and a standardisation of terminology surrounding the discipline. This chapter examines each of these developments before focusing on the role of the ICWA in securing professional status for those engaged in cost calculation activities.
