Towards constructing the governable worker in nineteenth-century Britain

Abstract

The governable worker, in Britain, is defined by the existing literature as a creation of the scientific management movement of the early twentieth century and, within the accounting domain, through standard costing as a disciplinary practice. This paper studies actions taken by the administrators and managers of Britain’s government military manufacturing establishments (GMMEs), from the 1850s onwards, to create a more governable workforce. This objective was achieved through the imposition of disciplinary practices, most importantly the use of time records to ensure attendance at the workplace and expert knowledge-based piece rates to monitor and control labour intensity. The absence of scientifically-established labour standards at GMMEs is acknowledged but, in other important respects, accounting is shown to have played a key role in the formulation of disciplinary practices designed to construct a governable labour force some decades before standard costing became the mechanism for rendering visible efficiency within the workplace.