Manufacturing accountability

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with roles of accounting in management control, especially in large-scale UK manufacturing enterprises. We focus on discussion of ‘the new manufacturing environment’ which many people have identified as emerging in the 1980s and claim constitutes a major reorganisation of production. Some argue this is a transformation as profound as the creation of ‘the factory system’ at the end of the eighteenth century, or the rise of ‘the modern corporation’ at the end of the nineteenth. If so, we would expect this change to have a strong impact on accounting and management control in the 1990s. We explore this through discussion of ‘regimes of accountability’ — sets of theories and practices aimed at ensuring that employees of the enterprise are held accountable for their activities and/or achievements. Accounting, as a distinctive discipline or occupation is not the only body of theory and practice relevant in this. However its contributions to the determination of ends (as objectives, targets or criteria) and the monitoring of means (through measurements, analyses and reports) have led to its gaining a central position in management control.