Business Commons^™

Accounting History And The Emperor's New Clothes: A Response To Knowing More As Knowing Less?..., Thomas N. Tyson

Accounting Historians Journal

Hoskin and Macve (H&M) continue to accredit certain events in the early 1840s as enabling the creation of norm-based accounting and its use to control labor and improve productivity at the Springfield Armory (SA). Although critics have refuted H&M's interpretation of these events and reproached their use of inflated language, H&M maintain their unique perspective with undiminished fervor. This rejoinder further questions the validity of H&M's perspective of U.S. accounting history. It identifies the many conventional business historians who refute it and emphasizes that no other evidence has been presented to indicate that norm-based accounting was ever employed in the …