Change agents and the dissemination of accounting technology: Wales' basic industries, C.1750 - C.1870

Abstract

The growth of industrial activity in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created a demandfor a new type of accounting, viz. "industrial accounting ", to satisfy the changing internal information requirements of business owners/managers. Recent research into the accounting records of a number of iron companies covering this period has suggested that, despite the paucity of the contemporary British literature on industrial accounting, new accounting techniques and new ideas concerning the potentialities of accounting were developed. Building on these advances, this paper employs the notion of "change agents" to explore the mechanism through which new techniques and ideas were disseminated within the basic metal mining and smelting industries of Wales. Within this context, particular attention is given to the type of person responsible for carrying out the internal accounting function.