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THE ACCOUNTlNG REVlEW Vol. LIX,No. 3 July 1984
The Evolution of Management Accounting
Robert S. Kaplan
ABSTRACT: This paper surveys the development of cost accounting and managerial control practices and assesses their relevance to the changing nature of industrial competition in the 1980s. The paper starts with a review of cost accounting developments from 1850 through 1915, including the demands imposed by the origin of the railroad and steel enterprises and the subsequent activity from the scientific management movement. The DuPont Corporation (1903) and the reorganization of General Motors (1920) provided the opportunity for major innovations in the management control of decentralized