ABACUS, Vol. 44, No. 4, 2008 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6281.2008.00267.x 341 © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Accounting Foundation, The University of Sydney Blackwell Publishing Asia Melbourne, Australia ABAC Abacus 0001-3072 1467-6281 © 2008 Accounting Foundation, Unviersity of Sydney XXX ORIGINAL ARTICLE STANDARD COSTING IN THE U.S. AND BRITAIN ABACUS RICHARD K. FLEISCHMAN, TREVOR BOYNS AND THOMAS N. TYSON The Search for Standard Costing in the United States and Britain This article describes the relationship between the understanding and practice of standard costing in both the U.S. and the U.K. and discusses the development of specific practices in the immediate post-World War II period. Based on a detailed review of the post-war literature, the authors conclude that the quantity and quality of standard costing and related scientific management practices (time study, variance analysis, etc.) reached a level in practice that many accounting historians have felt should have been achieved at an earlier point in time. Another principal finding is that standard costing, initially promulgated in the late 1910s, continued to develop in both the U.S. and the U.K. in evolutionary fashion into the late 1940s and 1950s, a finding which demonstrates that Britain was not as far behind America in terms of its standard costing practices as has been commonly believed. The article also explicates the relatively minor impact of the Anglo-American Council on Productivity, sponsor of sixty-six post-war visitations over a four-year period by British groups of employers, trade unionists and professionals, to study American industrial methods, including standard costing. Key words: Anglo-American Council on Productivity; Comparative accounting history; Post-World War II era; Scientific management; Standard costing. Traditionally, accounting historians have dated the genesis of purposeful cost/ managerial accounting from the age of scientific management, what Solomons (1952) called ‘the costing renaissance’. This verdict was subsequently seconded by Garner (1954), Wells (1978), and Parker (1986), amongst others. However, Fleischman (2000) has written about the ‘schism’ he perceives between cost accounting theory and practice, at least in the U.S. In particular, he attempted to show that despite the rich outpouring of scientific management theory by such notables as Taylor, Church, Emerson and others, the practical application of these theories was not in evidence at the time when these gurus were doing their consulting. Archival research has failed in its search for standard costing as a surrogate for scientific management in American managerial practice during World War I (Fleischman Richard K. Fleischman (Fleischman@jcu.edu) is Professor Emeritus, John Carroll University; Trevor Boyns is Professor of Accounting and Business History, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University; and Thomas N. Tyson is Professor of Accounting, St John Fisher College.