The History of Management Accounting in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain

Historical research has shown the influence of environmental contexts on the design and functioning of management accounting systems. In contrast to the relatively competitive settings that witnessed the emergence of cost systems in Anglo-American contexts, the focal settings featured inter alia the imposing role of religious and social philosophers´ ideas on society as well as distinctive degrees of state intervention in the economy. The findings question traditional contentions that double-entry bookkeeping spread from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries and that cost calculations have been implemented only since the advent of the British Industrial Revolution.