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Management Accounting Practice and Price Calculation at Boulton and Watt's Soho Foundry: a Late 18Th Century Example Robert Williams

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Management Accounting Practice and Price Calculation at Boulton and Watt's Soho Foundry: a Late 18Th Century Example Robert Williams View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi) Accounting Historians Journal Volume 26 Article 4 Issue 2 December 1999 1999 Management accounting practice and price calculation at Boulton and Watt's Soho Foundry: A late 18th century example Robert Williams Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal Part of the Accounting Commons, and the Taxation Commons Recommended Citation Williams, Robert (1999) "Management accounting practice and price calculation at Boulton and Watt's Soho Foundry: A late 18th century example," Accounting Historians Journal: Vol. 26 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol26/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Archival Digital Accounting Collection at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Accounting Historians Journal by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Williams: Management accounting practice and price calculation at Boulton and Watt's Soho Foundry: A late 18th century example Williams: Boulton & Watt’s Soho Foundry 65 Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 26, No. 2 December 1999 Robert Williams UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING PRACTICE AND PRICE CALCULATION AT BOULTON AND WATT’S SOHO FOUNDRY: A LATE 18TH CENTURY EXAMPLE Abstract: When deciding upon the price to charge for one of their products, the managers of the Soho Foundry in Birmingham placed great reliance upon the data stored in their accounting system. By the last decade of the 18th century, the nature of the steam engine business was changing rapidly and reputation alone was insufficient to attract customers. Also, as more industrialists decided upon steam as a source of power and competition to supply their needs increased, more attention had to be paid to price structures. The increasing standardization of products meant that a price list could be determined. The partners showed some reluctance to come to terms with the pricing issue, insisting that the quality of their prod- uct was of more importance than its price. This paper addresses the processes undertaken at the Soho Foundry to establish price lists for engines and parts. It shows that prices were based on the cost of previous machines, this cost being calculated using predetermined rates as shown in the engine books. The paper concludes with the observation that continual reliance on historical data was one of the factors contributing to the firm’s loss of its competitive edge. INTRODUCTION The 18th century in Britain was a time of transition in managerial practices. In the course of half a century, manufac- turing in a number of industries moved from cottages and small workshops to great factories employing hundreds of people [Pollard, 1965]. Change came about as each manufacturing or- Acknowledgments: The author wishes to thank Richard Fleischman, Warwick Funnell, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful com- ments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. Submitted: August 1996 Revised: September 1997 March 1999 Accepted: April 1999 Published by eGrove, 1999 1 Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 26 [1999], Iss. 2, Art. 4 66 Accounting Historians Journal, December 1999 ganization responded to the challenges and the opportunities offered by new technologies and markets. The entrepreneurs of the time faced administrative as well as technical problems as their businesses evolved. Accounting often assumed new dimen- sions as it assisted entrepreneurs in coping with and adjusting to change. In spite of, or perhaps because of, Pollard’s [1965, p. 248] claim that cost accounting played an insignificant role in mana- gerial decision making during the Industrial Revolution, there has developed a growing body of literature about the manage- ment accounting practices employed by the newly emerging businesses as each developed an accounting that suited its par- ticular needs. Chatfield [1977, p. 101] tended to support Pollard’s limited view of cost accounting when he asserted that a major use for cost data was to assist and moderate price estimates given by engineering firms. Certainly this was an im- portant use of cost information, but it was by no means the only one. It is certainly a view not held by Robert Hamilton, the author of An Introduction to Merchandize, published in 1777 [see Mepham, 1988a,b for a discussion of this text]. According to Mepham, in addition to discussing practical costing tech- niques, Hamilton emphasized the use of cost to assist manage- rial efficiency [Mepham, 1988b, p. 55]. Since Pollard, there have been a number of studies which have lent support for a wider view of the involvement of ac- counting as a managerial tool during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. For example, McKendrick [1970] discussed Josiah Wedgwood’s use of cost information by highlighting an incident where the calculation of costs by Wedgwood served as a check on the profits reported by the firm’s bookkeeper. Wedgwood also used cost data to moderate prices during periods when trade was slack. Edwards [1989] reviewed cost accounting developments in Britain to 1830 and concluded that a wide range of managerial decisions were supported by accounting data, a conclusion also reached by Fleischman and Parker [1990, 1991, 1992, 1997] in their investigations of the use of cost data for managerial pur- poses over a number of firms. Their 1991 article reported a survey of costing practices in 25 firms active during this period in which they found significant use of cost techniques as an aid to management. On the level of an individual firm, Fleischman et al. [1995] examined in some detail the cost investigations of James Watt jnr in the negotiation of a piece rate for the moulders at Boulton and Watt’s (B&W hereafter) Soho Foundry https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol26/iss2/4 2 Williams: Management accounting practice and price calculation at Boulton and Watt's Soho Foundry: A late 18th century example Williams: Boulton & Watt’s Soho Foundry 67 in 1802. This incident was also referred to by Williams [1994] in a discussion of the character of James Watt jnr. Further evidence of the wider use of management account- ing can be found in Walsh and Stewart’s [1992] examination of the management accounting used by Robert Owen at his New Lanark (Scotland) cotton mill during the first part of the 19th century. They concluded that Owen had given accounting a role in the transformation of his workers from contractors to em- ployees. Other examples of this expanding literature are to be found in Edwards and Baber [1979] with their discussion of cost ac- counting at the Dowlais Iron Company, Stone’s [1973] descrip- tion of the Chorlton Mills of Manchester, Beckett’s [1977] case study of a factory in the 1740s, and Jones’ [1985] extensive discussion of the use of cost accounting in Wales in the 18th century. A number of other articles explored different facets of the active use of management accounting during this period, adding to the weight of evidence refuting Pollard’s view [see, for example, Edwards and Newell, 1991; Edwards and Boyns, 1992; Fleischman and Tyson, 1993; Williams, 1997; Fleischman and Tyson, 1998]. This paper is concerned with the accounting activities of the B&W organization at Birmingham, a firm which is well known for its efficient operation [see, for example, Roll, 1930; Pollard, 1965; Fleischman and Parker, 1991; Fleischman, 1993; Williams, 1994, 1997; Fleischman et al., 1995]. This paper aims to add to the literature by exploring in depth one aspect of B&W’s use of cost data, specifically its use of past costs in the development of a pricing policy for steam engines in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It will also demonstrate the firm’s reliance on this information in order to remain competi- tive in the face of an expanding market. The paper also adds to the work of Roll [1930] by providing detail of the material used by B&W in the development of its price list. This paper adopts a microhistorical approach to the study of the development of B&W’s prices because it is concerned with the actions and the thoughts of the individual actors. The term “microhistory” encompasses the study of an incident or individual in-depth rather than a group of people or an aggrega- tion of events [for a further discussion of the term see Ginzburg, 1980, 1993]. It is not suggested that the process of price development used by B&W was typical of manufacturers in general. The study of the practice of accounting in a particu- lar situation, however, does lead to a greater understanding of Published by eGrove, 1999 3 Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 26 [1999], Iss. 2, Art. 4 68 Accounting Historians Journal, December 1999 accounting in its wider context. There is a danger when concen- trating at a microlevel of obscuring the wider issues. A microhistory approach to the study of business practices in 18th century Britain, when there appeared to have been no standard management accounting practices, can do much to broaden our understanding, as each firm devised its own ac- counting information system in accordance with the precepts and views of its proprietor(s). Sharpe [1990, p. 35] points out how: . once a grasp of the society in question has been established, the isolated social event or individual . can be used to provide a pathway to a deeper under- standing of that society. Microhistory allows us to explore the reaction of individu- als to the discipline imposed by the practice of accounting. The comprehensiveness of the cost data accumulated at the Soho Foundry has been mentioned by Roll [1930], Pollard [1965], and others as being well in advance of other firms.
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