ABSTRACT
What little there was by way of ‘state of the art’ reviews of the historical development of accounting literature on control was not always particularly detailed or reliable. Villers [1969] briefly reviewed the history of control but effectively equated financial control with budgeting in general, so that the specific issue of control was sidestepped in favour of a brief reference to the past popularity of the budget in American companies. A more substantial review of approaches to budgeting and control was undertaken by Drinkwater [1973] who classified budgetary thought into the traditional school (pre-1950), the behavioural school (early 1950s), the quantitative school (1950s) and the structural school (post-1960). 1
