Autocritique I

Once upon a time life for the management accounting academic was simple. Static versus flexible budgets; controllable versus uncontrollable costs; significant versus insignificant variances. Prescriptions about accounting control systems could be confidently founded on a consensus of textbook authorities. It is easy to choose a straw man from amongst such authorities to illustrate the degree to which ‘problems’ in control were, in the relatively recent past, primarily identified as technical accounting issues (like the choices in the second sentence above). But such a selection is perhaps unfair — just as economists insist ‘it’s all in Keynes’, future researchers in accounting history will no doubt be able to uncover the roots of current wisdom in temptingly vulnerable texts such as Anthony and Dearden (paceLowe and Puxty).