Cost engineering and costing in Hawthorn Leslie Shipbuilders, 1886–1915

McLean, T.

doi:10.1016/j.bar.2013.06.010

Cost engineering and costing in Hawthorn Leslie Shipbuilders, 1886–1915

McLean, T.

Authors

T. McLean

Abstract

This research examines cost engineering and costing in a British shipbuilding firm in the late nineteenth – early twentieth century. The firm maintained separate systems of contract accounting, costing and reporting for directors and employed internal data from these systems in performance measurement, the development of managerial incentives and the enforcement of managerial accountability. An apparent gap in the information required to manage the firm in a cyclical and highly competitive industry during a period of rapid organisational and technological change was filled by an informal and personal cost engineering system developed by the shipbuilding manager. The shipbuilding manager's cost engineering system employed a wide range of both internal and external data for use in cost management and in cost estimation, pricing and tendering. Thus cost engineering and costing developed to serve different purposes and developed in different spheres and along different trajectories.

Citation

McLean, T. (2013). Cost engineering and costing in Hawthorn Leslie Shipbuilders, 1886–1915. The British Accounting Review, 45(4), 284-296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2013.06.010

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Dec 1, 2013
Deposit Date	Oct 13, 2014
Publicly Available Date	Oct 22, 2014
Journal	British Accounting Review
Print ISSN	0890-8389
Publisher	Elsevier
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	45
Issue	4
Pages	284-296
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2013.06.010
Keywords	Contract accounting, Cost accounting, Cost engineering, Costing.
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1452514

Files

Accepted Journal Article (446 Kb)
PDF

Copyright Statement
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in The British Accounting Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in The British Accounting Review, 45, 4, 2013, 10.1016/j.bar.2013.06.010.