Man Who Saw the Future or Accounting for Growth

Man Who Saw the Future: William Paterson's Vision of Free Trade

Author: Andy Forrester

This is the incredible story of one man's vision of world commerce. William Paterson was a businessman and economic thinker far ahead of his time, whose place in history is assured. He founded the Bank of England, he helped broker the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England and, above all else, he envisaged a world where nations could trade unencumbered by monopolies and restrictive practices, and companies could be funded with international investment. All more than 300 years ago. In an attempt to realise his dream he set off on a daring voyage across half the globe to establish a trading emporium for the world at Darien, Panama. In the tradition of Longitude, The Man Who Saw the Future is the exciting story of buccaneers, political intrigue, economic vision, failed dreams, warring countries and dogged determination in the face of adversity.

Book review: Absolut Sequel with CD ROM or Youngs

Accounting for Growth: Information Systems and the Creation of the Large Corporation

Author: Margaret C Levenstein

Accounting for Growth is a study of information systems in American business during the quarter-century before World War I, a period that saw the birth of the large modern corporation as the dominant form of American enterprise. The book takes as its starting point the way in which the Dow Chemical Company constructed and reconstructed its internal information systems during years of rapid growth and technological change in the chemical industry. The book also discusses how changes in information systems affected Dow's organization and management, as well as the extent of its technological innovation.

During this period, Dow transformed itself from a small, single-product firm, which sold all its output through a national cartel, into a technologically dynamic, vertically integrated firm selling pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial chemicals throughout the world. These organizational and strategic changes required changes in the firm's information systems, which measured and recorded what occurred within the firm, particularly in the areas of monitoring and planning. Most of these changes were incremental and were initiated by Dow's managers, who relied heavily on the expertise of large stockholders associated with other firms.

The book examines the impact of the accounting profession and its new standards in cost accounting on the development of information systems at Dow. It compares Dow's accounting practices to those of other manufacturing firms as well as to the emerging ideas of accountants and engineers about how information systems should be designed. Despite urging from professional accountants, Dow declined to include allocated overhead in itscalculation of product costs, relying instead on measures of average variable cost except when it was making prospective investment decisions. Such innovations changed both the information available to managers and the incentives that followed.

These information changes encouraged Dow's master strategy of product diversification (moving into new markets and out of some large but less profitable ones) and vertical integration, rather than cooperation with cartels, which controlled distribution as well as output decisions.

Table of Contents:

	List of Figures
1	Introduction: Information and Innovation	1
2	The History of Early Manufacturing Accounting	20
3	Strategy and Structure: A History of Dow	40
4	Reports and More Reports: A Reconstruction of the Information System	87
5	Accounting for Capital: Depreciation, Inventory Valuation, and Cost Calculation	140
6	Strategy, Structure, and Information: The Evolution of Accounting at Dow	164
7	Information, Organization, and Competition: The Creation of Monopoly Capitalism	190
App. A	Biographical Information for Key Individuals in the Early History of the Dow Chemical Company	199
App. B	Products of the Midland and Dow Chemical Companies, 1891-1914	204
App. C	Item Identifications: Elements of the Dow Information System	208
App. D	Types of Information Included in Midland and Dow Chemical Company Reports	211
	Notes	215
	Bibliography	265
	Index	273