From order to organization: The origins of the division of labour in French accounting manuals

Abstract

This article analyses the emergence of a new area of interest in the French accounting literature of the nineteenth century: the definition and redefinition of the division of accounting labour. This approach to organizational issues is examined through accounting works listed in the Union Catalogue of France whose titles contain the terms ‘accounting’ or ‘bookkeeping’ and the first management works of the period. This study focuses on the role of management texts in the establishment of the accountancy division of labour and highlights the importance of cultural factors in the development of a new type of organization for accounting activities.

Keywords

accounting division of labour history

Introduction

Questions relating to the division of labour have been the subject of many works over the past two centuries, from Adam Smith (1776) to Karl Marx (1867), and, more recently, Stephen Marglin (1974), Oliver Williamson (1985) and David Landes (1986). The conceptual challenges were considerable as behind the issue of the division of labour lay other practical questions relating to the creation of large businesses. Two types of explanation have been proposed in response to these conceptual and practical questions: the first (Smith, Williamson, Landes, etc.) suggest that efficiency was the logic behind the rise of divisions of labour. In other words, work has gradually been divided into smaller parts because this organizational method was proven to maximize efficiency or managerial control. In turn, conceptual debates became entangled with techniques believed to increase the efficiency of the division of labour. Marxist theory perceives the division of labour differently, namely as a means- and legitimation-enhanced managerial control. Marglin goes so far as to suggest that the purpose of the division of labour is to make the role of the boss both practical and ideologically unchallengeable. The management sciences have remained unusually silent in this debate. McKinlay is an exception, however, in his invitation to management historians to use the work of Michel Foucault to produce a cultural economy of the division of labour (McKinlay 2006; McKinlay et al. 2010).

The chief field of investigation has been the working class, the historic target of divided labour. However, office workers including accountants have long been affected by similar developments that have resulted in the creation of administrative departments within firms. Most historical research has focused on the mechanization of administration, rather than the conceptual and practical reimagining of organization that was its necessary prelude (see Bonin 2004; Wootton and Kemmerer 2007). The administrative division of labour refers to the separation and distribution of tasks between several individuals. In accounting, this equated to separating the bookkeeping activity from accounting. This separation was then consolidated and distinct accountant’s and bookkeeper’s positions began to appear in firms. This division of labour generally coincided with the bureaucratization of large firms, and the establishment of head offices employing significant staffs. In the case of the division of accounting labour, a threefold movement needs to be considered in order to understand the overall phenomenon of the division of labour: separation of tasks; emergence of accounting positions; and head offices. In France, a number of elements indicate a time scale for these phenomena. The limited number of clerks at the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in France – only the Administration Royale and a very few large firms such as the Compagnie des Indes and Saint-Gobain, for example – separated their functions in this way. Even the leading traders only employed a small number of bookkeepers in the eighteenth century (Butel 1974; Carrière 1973).

With the emergence of defined accounting positions, the division of labour became more widespread so that the positions of accountant, cashier, chief accountant and bookkeeper becoming commonplace from the end of the nineteenth century. Saint-Gobain (Labardin 2007) was one of the few French firms to retain staff registers over a long period in which the employees’ positions are listed from year to year. The development of these positions both within firms and on all industrial sites was noted during the final third of the nineteenth century. The creation of diplomas (bookkeepers, accountants, chief accountants) by the Société Académique de Comptabilité in the 1880s was another sign of the consolidation of these positions (Collectif 1981). The development of head offices more or less coincided with the division of labour becoming an object for management action. From 1866, the number of employees increased in France (Gardey 1995; Zerner 1985). The French categories are too imprecise to permit more detailed investigation (see Edwards and Walker 2007, for the UK). In addition to accountants, a whole range of office workers’ positions appeared within head offices, including account entry workers, secretaries, shippers and, from the beginning of the twentieth century, shorthand typists. It also highlights the conditions under which the accounting departments of large firms were established. Highlighting the conditions surrounding the birth of the development of head offices also means understanding its limits. Although the division of labour in no way weakens the conditions surrounding the creation of the accounting function, it nevertheless constitutes one of the most notable aspects: chief accountants, accountants and bookkeepers are all positions that appeared in firms at the end of the nineteenth century.

We have chosen to focus on accounting manuals and have identified the arguments put forward to advocate, explain or justify the division of labour in the accounting field. The choice of manuals as the subject of study is consistent with Foucault’s work. Rather than using these manuals as elements in a history of ideas highlighting the gradual emergence of the contemporary categories of chief accountant, accountant, bookkeeper, etc., Foucault proposed that we study units within the discourse of a given period. This led him to reject the study of texts in themselves in favour of what he called ‘formations discursives’ (Foucault 1969: 56). The unit in these manuals is the division of accounting labour. This methodological choice encourages us to focus on a discursive formation as a whole rather than the nuances of specific texts. Specifically, we refer to accounting manuals published between 1800 and 1950. We have conducted an exhaustive analysis on works containing the terms accountant, accountancy, bookkeeping or bookkeeper in the title, together with Guillaumin’s encyclopaedia of commerce (Collectif 1837) and the accounting and commercial journals from the interwar period. We extracted from these texts comments that relate to the preferred forms of division of accounting labour. By creating a range of different positions, the manuals increasingly encouraged firms to develop functional departments, with positions of chief accountant, cashier, accountant, bookkeeper, etc. gradually becoming established within French firms in the nineteenth century. The second section discusses this emerging accounting discourse. The aim is to understand the status of the discourse put forward in the manuals. Was it simply a reflection of the opinions of managers or did this accounting literature possess a normative dimension? Finally, we consider the practical process of dividing accounting labour inside organizations.

The pedagogy of dividing labour

This section deals with the division of labour in accounting manuals. Several authors explained the need for a division of labour. Two reasons were proposed: first, the division of labour increased efficiency, since accounting tasks were considered as a form of production (Fayol 1918; Lambert 1923). Second, the division of labour was a means of limiting fraud (Guilbault 1865; Lair 1946). These two general arguments are then broken down to justify the plurality of the divisions of labour.

The distinction accountant-cashier

The first form of the division of labour is an ancient one and involves separating the functions of the accountant and the cashier. This division of tasks was characteristic of eighteenth century financial accounting (Lemarchand 1993). In the nineteenth century, however, the public functions were often blurred. The director of the Marmont forge and author of an early accounting manual, confirmed the rarity of this separation (Simon 1830: 9):

[the double-entry method] may be adopted in large commercial companies whose books are kept by trained clerks for whom this is their sole task; however, for the majority of tradesmen who do not have a fixed office, the single-entry method which I practice and shall present fulfils the goal worked towards in the double-entry method.

It combines the usefulness and benefits of the double-entry method with savings in terms of time and work; every tradesman is able to check his position, establish an inventory and report to his partners just as easily as with the double-entry method.

Although most tradesmen did not have an established office, it was likely that they had a bookkeeper, if not a cashier. It was in this context that various written documents emerged in the 1830s, which first of all described, then endorsed and finally advocated the status quo.

In 1834, Bellay referred to the bookkeeper and the cashier simply to highlight the technical difficulties of coordinating their work. One of the first works to explain the difference between the cashier and the accountant is the Dictionnaire du commerce (Collectif 1837: 412), which defines the role of the cashier as follows:

The balance of the accounts is established every evening; if the credit or debit difference does not correspond to the total amount of cash remaining, the cashier does not leave his office until he has checked the calculation errors, if there are any in the day’s payments, or before ascertaining with which company he committed a material error and determining to rectify the situation the next day. In most companies, the cashier works with one or more income agents or clerks who receive the due bills.

The definition of the cashier’s role seems clear. However, although the position was now defined, the full-time employment of a cashier was not always justified (Collectif 1837: 413):

The functions of a cashier in a commercial company are nearly always fulfilled by the head of the company or one of his partners. If this is not the case, dealings with cash are only entrusted to a person who is extremely trustworthy because of his sensible attitude, reasonable conduct, precision, attentiveness and concentration and above all a faultless conscience and impeccable morality. The employee in charge of this important post must therefore pay the most scrupulous attention even to the smallest activities to ensure that the slightest details can in no way affect the honourable confidence which he has inspired.

By contrast, the definition of the commercial accountant was quite vague (Collectif 1837: 628): ‘In the commercial field, the term accountant referred to those who organise the accounts or look after the cash and are answerable for the goods entrusted to them.’

The separation was also hinted at in the works of Helfenbein (1845), self-styled bookkeeper of the Saint-Étienne railway company in Lyon. The corporate structure that Helfenbein described embodies the embryo of separate accounting and auditing departments within the operating division, while the cashier stood outside this division. Hubert (1854) defines the role of the cashier but his writings indicate that the accounting manager may fulfil the function. In the case of large firms, Guilbault (1865: 136) explains:

351. – A tradesman acting without employees may initiate, commit and complete business, pay and receive and enter transactions and the results of his operations in his books. He cannot make mistakes. Can he call upon an employee without supervision to do business for him, to activate assets and enter the results in his books?

The answer to this question is clear.

Regardless of the trust granted to an employee, there is nobody who can advise on the same procedures, even if it simply means preventing the idea of a potential unlawful profit from taking root in the hitherto honest mind of the employee.

352. – It is therefore appropriate and necessary to consider the movements involved in a business in order to organise its operation in such a way that operations are monitored automatically and on a permanent basis. We recommend, for example, separating the cashier’s job from that of the accountant. The accountant must check that the amounts payable and the amounts due correspond to the accounts and he must indicate the manner in which inputs and outputs have to be formulated in the account entries. The cashier’s role is limited to indicating the movement of assets in the books on the basis of the items drawn up by the accounting department.

The tone has changed: previously, the division of labour between the accountant and the cashier was nothing more than a convenience. For large-scale organizations, the separation of functions was now supervisory, a means of controlling potential fraud.

Two decades later, Lefèvre (1882) structured his manual with reference to the number of accountants working in a firm. For organizations with two accountants, he proposed a distinction similar to that between the accountant and the cashier Lefèvre (1882: 89–90):

Accountancy therefore consists essentially of an employee in charge of the assets with which he has been entrusted, who is an accountant according to the accepted term, and an auditor of the operations of the latter.

The cashier alone would simply offer a guarantee against fraud or error. The cashier and the auditor offer a twofold guarantee. This forms the basis of actual accountancy and bookkeeping, referred to as the double-entry method because it naturally stems from the situation of these two employees.

The main reason for this division of labour was to distinguish the auditing function. Contemporary research highlighted the increased importance of monitoring and control. Where Augier (1886: 432) simply described the difference, Léautey and Guilbault (1889: 29–30) were considerably more normative. They were no longer content to explain the advantages of the division of labour in general but also advocated the division of accounting labour, still in terms of moral hazard rather than efficiency:

The combining of the two functions, one of which inevitably involves the supervision of the other, is contrary to the principles governing the logical division of labour. … Not only does this amount to misunderstood economics, it is also an administrative fault whose consequences are often dangerous in terms of removing the supervision of cash and indeed, entrusting this supervision to this cashier himself amounts to its removal. A cashier-accountant or an accountant cashier may, on the basis of trust, introduce major irregularities in their accounts. Court records reveal that firms are often ruined as a result of this combination of duties and that frauds, which are doubtless widespread, remain unknown amongst the accounting confusion created to conceal them.

Jourdain (1919) and Jenny and Niedermeyer (1932) proposed the same analysis. For Reiser (1930: 20), the principle seemed almost too obvious to mention:

Staff attributions must be specified in an extremely precise manner. Each employee must be allocated a particular task: bookkeeping, dealing with cash or supervising a store. Only this particular employee must be authorised to make account entries and complete the transactions involved in this work.

Similarly, Lair (1946) concluded that this supervisory oversight was a division that echoed the division of powers of democratic government.

The distinction accountant bookkeeper

In the eighteenth century, the term bookkeeper referred to the person who kept the daily trading books. The accountant’s function existed but was specific to state administration. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the term ‘accountancy’ was synonymous with ‘bookkeeping’, the same was true for the terms ‘bookkeeper’ and ‘accountant’. The distinction between the accountant and the bookkeeper was made very early on in literature. Rees-Lestienne (1816: vi) stated:

Bookkeeping involves two different jobs: one involves creating a plan and the other implementing it. The first job requires a great deal of knowledge and a broader vision than the second. Once may be likened to an architect and the other to a mason.

The distinction was, at once, between the operational and the strategic, the prosaic and the technical. In the second edition of his manual, Chalier (1818: 2) outlined a fairly imprecise division in his formulation in which the distinction between the two functions could be seen: ‘I attempted to draw up a summary of accountancy which would be useful to accountants, their colleagues in charge of keeping the registers up to date and all those involved in banking and finance.’

The distinction between ‘accountant’ and ‘bookkeeper’ soon became established. A clear distinction was first made in the Dictionnaire du Commerce (Collectif 1837: 627):

The accountant is not simply the person who is required to draw up the accounts and deal with the assets entrusted to him; he must also draw up a plan for these accounts and guarantee their smooth running and harmony; in short the accountant designs whilst the bookkeeper implements. With his beautiful handwriting, mastery of his language, arithmetic and the bookkeeping system, he will do his very best if he has a love for precision and order in work.

The distinction later became more common. Hubert (1854: 101–16) highlighted the difference between the tasks of the chief accountant and the bookkeeper. The distinction was no longer one simply of function but also of status and authority (Hubert 1854: 101): ‘The accountant designs the plan and the running of operations and the bookkeeper helps to implement the theories of accountancy and determines the result.’

A few years later, Guilbault (1865) similarly distinguished between accountancy and bookkeeping and between the accountant and the bookkeeper. From the 1880s onwards, this distinction became more widespread (Andoyer 1898; Léautey and Guilbault 1889; Marchal 1897; Quintard 1913). It is not surprising that this distinction corresponds to those presented in the diplomas of the Société Académique de Comptabilité. This distinction eventually became established (Collectif 1930; Delaporte 1936; Faure 1930). Among this wide range of definitions, the most notable element is a lack of justification. The distinction seems almost natural. It refers implicitly to the organization of workers whereby design activities are separated from production activities. Irrespective of the gradual clarification of this distinction, a further point stands out in these different definitions: as with the cashier, different skills gradually emerge to culminate in an ideal portrait of the accountant and the bookkeeper. This is an important element in the discourse as it firmly established the concept of a fixed, functional hierarchy. This was the basis for the Taylorization of accounting, enabling later authors to liken the office to a workshop (Ponthière 1935).

The distinction commercial and production accountant

The third distinction was specific to industrial organization. It was based in particular on the existence of the storekeeper who processes incoming and outgoing goods in order to monitor stocks. This distinction occurred in the early nineteenth century: Payen (1817) distinguished between the ‘cash accountant’ (akin to the commercial accountant) and ‘accountants in kind’ and ‘in matter’ (roughly equivalent to production accountants). Mathieu Dombasle (1824: 124–5) was the first to clarify the storekeeper’s accounting role:

In my firm, accountancy tasks are carried out by an individual who is also responsible for distributing, receiving and delivering grain and feed and dealing with the grain in the granary. This person is also the store keeper dealing with both the iron and wood used for agricultural machinery and other operating purposes and with brandy obtained from the distillery.

The opposition was clarified by Hubert (1854) who described the structure of accountancy in the railway sector and workshops where an accountant was employed alongside the checkers. There is no accountant in the general store, but a chief storekeeper, the principal employee and the material posting employee carry out a range of accountancy tasks. These accountants who worked in close proximity with production were backed up by an accounting system similar to those of today, namely the general accounting department. Heudicourt (1862: 8–10) defined the accounting role of the store clerk:

From the point of view of accountancy and order, we have established a workshop order book for every machine and item to be constructed; this has enabled us to determine the exact nomenclature of every item making up the machine and, since the store clerk has to deduct from the books every item making up a machine arriving in the workshop, these particular books provide a reference for the status of the parts.

The origins of the chief accountant

A hierarchy of accounting practices and personnel within firms became common between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The authors of important accounting manuals all wrote from the summit of this new functional heriarchy: Helfenbein (1845) described himself as the chief bookkeeper of the Saint-Etienne railway company in Lyon; Heudicourt (1862) as the chief accountant of Cail et Cie; Nagel (1896) was a former chief accountant; and Gillet (1899) the ex-chief accountant of the commercial agency of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. What was novel was that the chief accountant had to coordinate the work of the various accountants under his responsibility (Hubert 1854: 101): ‘The chief accountant is responsible for all the entries of the division.’

In practice, as Augier (1886) observed, the functions of accountants and chief accountants overlapped. Neither Guilbault (1865), Lefèvre (1882), nor Léautey and Guilbault (1889), all of whom wrote extensively about the division of labour with regard to other tasks, were silent on this issue. By the interwar period, however, the functional hierarchy was so well established that it was described almost as a natural order (Anon. 1927: 4): ‘The accountant should be educated professionally and move up the natural hierarchy from bookkeeper to qualified accountant to chief accountant or chartered accountant or inspector / auditor.’

The image of Delaporte (1936: 28) makes it easier to understand the exact functions of the chief accountant:

The chief accountant must be able to organise a master plan of accounts. This involves the complete organisation of the accounts and offices. He must be able to extract figures from the accounts together with specific reasoning and all the information required by the management. He must possess an intelligence and psychology which extend beyond the scope of his technical accounting knowledge as his job is to manage, advise and instruct.

Comte (1930: 5783) explained at great length the distinction between the accountant and the chief accountant:

In important matters, the role of a chief accountant is not to be confused with actual accountancy: irrespective of the administrative matters and the responsibilities which fall to him as head of the administrative staff (attributions which he shares with the management of which he is a direct employee) the activity of the chief accountant relates to the general supervision of the accounts and social affairs since accountancy is a reflection of the firm’s activity.

The accountant draws up the accounts and the chief accountant supervises them; in a sense he is the chartered accountant of the company with the specific feature being that, because he is involved in the running of the company’s business, his verification activities will be more connected, more monitored and more in-depth than the activities stemming from the duties entrusted to an expert from outside the company. His main activity should therefore not be limited to checking the centralising journal with the ledger and the entries in the different account books but should also and more specifically involve general supervision.

The division of accounting labour in 1950

At the end of the interwar period, plans to standardize accounting functions became more specific and the specialist press published several articles that proposed distinctions containing various similarities. These included Jounot (1938) in Le chef de comptabilité, Vannson (1938) in France-comptable and the resolution adopted in 1939 by the congress of chief accountants published in Le chef de comptabilité (Jounot 1938). The differences were slight and there was broad agreement about the chief accountant/accountant/bookkeeper triptych. Jounot (1938: 114) had introduced an intermediate level between the bookkeeper (who he referred to as the ‘account entry employee’) and the assistant accountant. A year later, the congress of chief accountants abandoned this intermediate level. Using different terms, the typology of Vannson (1938) was similar to that of Jounot (1938): account entry employees and tabulating machine employees were at the lowest level followed by bookkeepers and assistant accountants – terms used interchangeably – and, on a more consensual basis, accountants and chief accountants (Brunet 1953; Caussin 1944; Lair 1946).

There are numerous examples of the grouping together of accounting functions in management works during the interwar period. This is the case, for example, of bank accounting services without an actual accountant but with accountants specializing in a clearly defined task (discounts, securities, etc.). The consequence of the emergence of these different distinctions was a clarification of the accountant’s function. All the discourse followed a similar trend focusing on the division of accounting activities. By separating tasks in order to be more productive, by defining posts to prevent fraud, accounting functions increased in number. This trend that began in the middle of the nineteenth century developed further in the early twentieth century with a growing specificity and narrowness in each employee’s role.

Discourse and the accounting division of labour

Little emphasis was placed in accounting manuals on maximizing efficiency. Following Smith (1776), the classical theories considered the division of labour as the route to productivity improvements. Landes (1986) proposed a similar theory inspired by Babbage. It differs slightly, however notably, by referring to more economical labour (women and children), with the division of labour among the working classes leading to a reduction in production costs at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although the explanations are slightly different, they share a common logic: the division of labour is the most effective means of organizing work. Marxism was no different in this regard. Since it is in the interest of managers to establish the division of labour, the role of this literature may seem secondary. In more precise terms, it may be divided into two main roles: it may first of all simply be a reflection of the practices of the time. The authors appear to be content to assume the practices that were popular at the time of writing. Without this contradicting with the first function, this literature may also comprise an educational element. Accounting literature attempts to explain the effectiveness of the division of labour to future managers. The role of this literature seems to be limited to a simple reflection of practices. Accounting reflects the gains derived from rationalizing the labour process. Accounting texts were, then, never simply descriptive, nor even prefigurative, but performative texts (Carter, Clegg and Kornberger 2010; Kornberger and Carter 2010). As early as the eighteenth century, a small number of accountants existed (referred to at the time as bookkeepers) alongside cashiers in firms but the division of labour was not yet firmly established. But the distribution of tasks remained uncertain and the limited number of documents that explained the primitive division of accounting labour highlighted its originality. In Marseille, bookkeepers specialized only in accounting matters (Carrière 1973); in Bordeaux, clerks tended to deal with bookkeeping in addition to other tasks such as correspondence (Butel 1974). These diverse practices were only gradually displaced; it was not until the last third of the nineteenth century that the division of accounting labour was firmly established.

The documents dating from the first two thirds of the nineteenth century are therefore not so much a reflection of contemporary practice but more a form of education. The authors were certainly precursors. They expressed their desires for themselves and for the general organization of work. These works were generally written by practitioners: Bellay, Helfenbein and Hubert were bookkeepers, Chalier a civil servant, Simon a forge manager and Guilbault an industrialist. Only Rees-Lestienne was a teacher. Equally, these authors remained cautious and emphasized that they were expressing a personal point of view. The number of manuals referring to the division of accounting labour increased after 1865. In addition, the discourse concerning the division of labour also changed. Its advocates became more assertive about the organizational benefits of dividing accounting labour. We see this with the division of accountant and cashier; between accountant and bookkeeper; or office and store accountant. The first was primarily a means of controlling actions and limiting risk. The other two, directly inspired by the production world, aimed to reduce the production cost of accounting information.

The division of accounting labour did not necessarily become established because it was more efficient but rather because it appeared to be so. A good example of the relative inefficiency of the division of labour at the end of the nineteenth century can be seen in the difficulty experienced by several large French firms in controlling their overheads. Whether the matter concerns a large bank such as the Société Générale in spite of the drastic control of staff costs (Bonin 2006) or Saint-Gobain (Daviet 1983; Labardin 2007), the difficulties are similar, as confirmed by the boards of directors. One of the reasons for the increase in these overheads is the establishment of large head offices where increases in staff numbers largely explain the increase in overheads. It is no coincidence that in the 1930s the mechanization of operations within the Société Générale was eventually used to reduce the overheads that the division of accounting labour had produced.

In his work on the cultural origins of the French Revolution, Chartier (1990: 4) wrote:

by affirming that it was the Enlightenment period which led to the Revolution, does the classical interpretation not reverse the order of reasons and should we not rather consider that it was the Revolution which invented the Enlightenment by striving to establish its legitimacy in a body of texts and founding authors reconciled beyond their obvious differences and united in the preparation of the break with the old world?

Chartier’s logic may be transposed in two ways: he first posed the question of the unity of a body and the meaning that can unite discourse with practice. The first question clearly examines the links between the different texts. It is clear that they do not make reference to one another. The unity of the discourse in favour of the division of labour nevertheless reflects a certain continuity. It highlights two aspects: it is likely that the authors implicitly use the theories of their predecessors to legitimate a discourse that is increasingly categorical; it is also probable that this discourse is merely a trace of the ideas commonly expressed at the time. The discourse gains a retrospective and justificatory unity. Chartier’s second question highlights the links between the practice of the division of labour and discourse. It is clear that these documents help to establish in the players’ minds the idea that the division of labour is an effective/efficient process. However, company practices also help to legitimate the discourse presented in manuals. The documents published during the interwar period can only be as normative as they are because of the development of practices within companies. In more general terms, this makes it easier to understand the corpus presented in the first part: it is specifically because the practices of the division of labour have developed that the study of manuals is so significant.

The establishment of the division of labour within accounting departments involved several transformations. Until the mid-nineteenth century, accountancy was considered an important task entrusted to trustworthy individuals. There was a special connection between the individual responsible for keeping the accounts and the individual for whom the accounts were kept (Blondel 1804: preface):

If the complexity of a business did not allow the manager to spend as much time as necessary on the accounts, the latter were looked after and managed by a mature man who was known for being cautious and educated who became a friend and often an advisor of the tradesman whose trust he deservedly obtained.

Similarly, Rodriguès (1810: iii), a Bordeaux accountant, observed:

I have looked after the accounts of the company of Mr André Acquart, a former tradesman in Bordeaux, for fifteen years. The trust which he has always demonstrated and above all the advantages which he has offered me have made him worthy in my eyes of the public expression of my gratitude.

The role of the bookkeeper remained limited to a relationship of trust between individuals. Accountancy was not yet considered as a form of production. From the end of the nineteenth century, the establishment of the division of labour in administrative departments highlighted by contrast the assimilation of accountancy in a production process. The title of the work by Maurice Ponthière, Le bureau moteur, published in 1935 epitomized this attitude towards accountancy: the accounting function was likened to an organ based on the model of biology. If the organization was a body then accountancy was the brain (Ponthière 1935: 56): ‘The office, like the brain, produces ideas.’ From this point onwards, bookkeeping became an ordinary production process that obeyed the same laws as industrial or intellectual production.

This affected the aim of accountancy: previously accountancy had been seen as the delegation of a task to a third party (the bookkeeper) who was considered to be competent and trustworthy. From now on, accountancy was considered to be an ordinary production process responsible for generating standardized information as quickly as possible. In turn, the conception of accounting organization was altered. However, the assimilation of accountancy with a production operation was only possible because of the division of labour that led to the hierarchical organization of tasks and the assimilation of accountancy with a process in the division of labour (accountant/bookkeeper opposition, for example). In this context, the development of a discourse on the division of labour made it easier to understand why large firms at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century considered large accounting departments essential.

Foucault’s vision of knowledge/ability may be considered to be the most relevant as regards understanding this link between knowledge and practice. Following the pioneering work of Hopwood (1987), Hoskin and Macve (1986, 1988), and Miller and O’Leary (1987), an important research programme developed in the history of accountancy, which compared knowledge and power. The idea was that the development of knowledge was not determined simply by the implications of power but also, and above all in our case, that all power leads to the creation of a field of knowledge. The emergence of the division of labour in the accounting field in the nineteenth century therefore corresponded to the development of a new field of knowledge. This led to a different interpretation of the transformation of the accounting function: rather than focusing on a more effective type of work organization (neoclassical vision) or one that would create added value (Marxist vision), Foucault’s vision emphasized a more cultural dimension of economic organization. This point is important: in this interpretation, management knowledge cannot be seen as the simple reflection of company practice. It provides impetus for change in its own right and in this respect provides a basis for understanding the organizational transformation methods applied within firms, the technologies that produced the calculable individual (Miller and O’Leary, 1987).

Conclusion

The making of the division of accounting labour only indirectly stems from economic factors, through the intervention of cultural institutions. Instead it tends to reflect the transcription to the office environment of the work organization stemming from the industrial revolution. The conception is clearly separate from execution, the hierarchy confirmed, tasks are defined more specifically, and so on. The division of labour in the accounting sector therefore seems to stem from the assimilation of the organization of accountancy with an ordinary production process. The other characteristic of the division of labour is its uniform nature: the division of labour advocated in the manuals is fairly consistent. The same functions (cashier, bookkeeper, accountant, chief accountant, etc.) are proposed by the authors and help to create modern management. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, tradesmen and other industrialists organized their accounts in their own particular way. Tradesmen in Marseille chose to recruit bookkeepers, while those in Bordeaux favoured clerks with a range of different skills, and within Saint-Gobain the accounting tasks were divided between different production managers before being centralized by the cashier. From the late nineteenth century, these different types of organization were replaced by a new division of labour. Its unitary nature prefigured and made practicable Taylor’s (1911: 44) ‘one best way’. This process also reflected a change that we have attempted to summarize by moving from the division of labour as an order to the division of labour as an organization. The first division of labour, which was passed on from the Old Regime, was still associated with a concept of order. Order is above all the morality expected of a bookkeeper but it is also a hierarchical position. The example of Saint-Gobain is a reflection of how the 1761 summary defines the obligations of each individual in addition to their hierarchical position via the classification of individuals. The division of labour that led to the publication of the nineteenth and twentieth century manuals constituted on the contrary the organization of a productive process. The hierarchy still existed but stemmed from the position filled rather than the individual. This organization involved pursuing a concept of the production of accounting figures, which we still follow to this day.

References

Andoyer

1898. Cours de comptabilité commerciale, industrielle et agricole. Paris: Librairie classique Eugène Belin.

Anon . 1927. ‘Les comptables et l’U.N.G.C.’ France-comptable 9(janvier): 4–6.

Augier

C.-M.

1886. Traité de comptabilité commerciale et industrielle. Paris: Librairie Marescq Aîné.

Bellay

1834. Science de l’administration commerciale. Lyon: Author.

Blondel. 1804. La tenue des livres de commerce à parties simples et à parties doubles. Lyon: Savy.

Bonin

2004. ‘The Development of Accounting Machines in French Banks from the 1920s to the 1960s.’ Accounting Business and Financial History 14(3): 257–76.

Bonin

2006. Histoire de la Société Générale (1864–1890): Naissance d’une banque. Geneva: Droz.

Brunet

1953. Conseils pratiques pour l’organisation du travail comptable. Bordeaux: Delmas.

Butel

1974. Les négociants bordelais l’Europe et les îles au XVIII^e siècle. Paris: Aubier.

10.

Carrière

1973. Négociants marseillais au XVIII^e siècle. Marseille: Institut historique de Provence.

11.

Carter

Clegg

Kornberger

2010. ‘Re-framing Strategy: Power, Politics and Accounting.’ Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 23(5): 573–93.

12.

Caussin

1944. Principes d’organisation des entreprises. Brussels: Comité National Belge de l’Organisation Scientifique.

13.

Chalier

1818. Précis élémentaire de la comptabilité, 2nd edn. Paris: Libraires Emery, Delaunay, Baudoin Frères et Goeury.

14.

Chartier

1990. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution. Duke, NC: Duke University Press.

15.

Collectif. 1837. Dictionnaire du commerce et des marchandises. Paris: Guillaumin.

16.

Collectif. 1930. Larousse commercial illustré. Paris: Larousse.

17.

Collectif. 1981. Centenaire de la Société de Comptabilité de France 1881–1981. Paris: Author.

18.

Comte

1930. ‘Etudes sur la comptabilité des charbonnages.’ Revue des sciences commerciales juillet août: 5781–8.

19.

Daviet

J.-P.

1983. ‘La Compagnie de Saint-Gobain de 1830 à 1939.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris IV, France.

20.

Delaporte

1936. Méthode rationnelle de la tenue des comptes. Paris: Société Française d’éditions littéraires et techniques.

21.

Dombasle

C. J. A.

Matthieu de

1824. Annales agricoles de Roville, 1^ère livraison. Paris: Madame Huzard.

22.

Edwards

J. R.

Walker

2007. ‘Accountants in Late 19th Century Britain: A Spatial, Demographic and Occupational Profile.’ Accounting and Business Research 37(1): 63–89.

23.

Faure

1930. Cours de comptabilité, 9th edn. Paris: Editions Masson.

24.

Fayol

1918. Administration industrielle et générale. Paris: Dunod.

25.

Foucault

1969. L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.

26.

Gardey

1995. ‘Un monde en mutation: Les employés de bureau en France 1890–1930.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris VII, France.

27.

Gillet

1899. Comptabilité révélatrice des vols et détournements de marchandises. Paris: Plange.

28.

Guilbault

C.-A.

1865. Traité de comptabilité et d’administration industrielles, 1st edn. Paris: Librairie Guillaumin et Cie.

29.

Helfenbein

P. L.

1845. De la comptabilité des compagnies de chemin de fer. Lyon: Léon Boitel.

30.

Heudicourt

F.-S.

1862. Etudes sur la comptabilité industrielle. Paris: Imprimerie De Cosse et J. Dumaine.

31.

Hopwood

1987. ‘The Archaeology of Accounting Systems.’ Accounting, Organizations and Society 12(3): 207–34.

32.

Hoskin

Macve

R. H.

1986. ‘Accounting and the Examination: A Genealogy of Disciplinary Power.’ Accounting, Organizations and Society 11(2): 105–36.

33.

Hoskin

Macve

R. H.

1988. ‘The Genesis of Accounting: The West Point Connection.’ Accounting, Organizations and Society 13(1): 37–73.

34.

Hubert

1854. Traité de comptabilité du matériel des chemins de fer. Paris: Napoléon Chaix et Cie.

35.

Jenny

E. G.

Niedermeyer

1932. Les fraudes en comptabilité, 1st edn. Paris: Dunod.

36.

Jounot

1938. ‘Délimitation et organisation des professions comptables.’ Le chef de comptabilite août-septembre, 154: 114–16.

37.

Jourdain

1919. Comment nous organiserons le travail au bureau, 1st edn. Liège: Nierstraz.

38.

Kornberger

Carter

2010. ‘Manufacturing Competition: How Accounting Practices Shape Strategy Making in Cities.’ Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 23(3): 325–49.

39.

Labardin

2007. ‘La surveillance des comptables: le passé d’une nécessité illusoire.’ Gérer et comprendre 88: 36–46.

40.

Lair

1946. Organisation des services comptables. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

41.

Lambert

1923. Comptabilité et organisation administrative dans l’industrie. Bruxelles: La vie au bureau.

42.

Landes

1986. ‘What do bosses really do?’ The Journal of Economic History 46(3): 585–623

43.

Léautey

Guilbault

1889. La science des comptes mise à la portée de tous. Paris: Librairie comptable et administrative.

44.

Lefèvre

1882. La comptabilité. Paris: Author.

45.

Lemarchand

1993. Du dépérissement à l’amortissement, enquête sur l’histoire d’un concept et sa traduction comptable. Nantes: Ouest Editions.

46.

McKinlay

2006. ‘Managing Foucault: Genealogies of Management.’ Management & Organizational History 1(1): 87–100.

47.

McKinlay

Carter

Pezet

Clegg

2010. ‘Using Foucault to Make Strategy.’ Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 23(8): 1012–31.

48.

Marchal

1897. Comptabilité standard. Lyon: Author.

49.

Marglin

1974. ‘What Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalism Production.’ Review of Radical Political Economics 6(2): 60–112.

50.

Marx

1867. Le capital. Paris: Garnier Flammarion.

51.

Miller

O’Leary

1987. ‘Accounting and the Construction of the Governable Person.’ Accounting, Organizations and Society 12(3): 235–65.

52.

Nagel

1896. Monographie de comptabilité sucrière. Paris: Trouvé.

53.

Payen

1817. Essai sur la tenue des livres d’un manufacturier. Paris: Author.

54.

Ponthiere

1935. Le bureau moteur. Bordeaux: Delmas.

55.

Quintard

1913. Comptabilité et tenue des livres, 13th edn. Paris: Armand Colin.

56.

Rees-Lestienne

C.-F.

1816. Cours de tenue des livres en parties simples et doubles. Lille: Author.

57.

Reiser

1930. L’organisation du contrôle. Paris: Dunod.

58.

Rodriguès

1810. La tenue des livres ou nouvelles méthodes d’enseignement. Bordeaux: André Racle.

59.

Simon

F.-N.

1830. Méthode complète de la tenue des livres en partie simple et en partie double. Chatillon-sur-Seine: Cornillac.

60.

Smith

1776. Inquiry into the natures and causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: Straham & Cadell.

61.

Taylor

1911. The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Brothers.

62.

Vannson

1938. ‘Classification des Comptables des Entreprises.’ France-comptable août: 129–32.

63.

Williamson

1985. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: Free Press.

64.

Wootton

Kemmerer

2007. ‘The Emergence of Mechanical Accounting in the U.S., 1880–1930.’ Accounting Historians Journal 34(1): 91–124.

65.

Zerner

1985. ‘Travail domestique et force de travail: ouvrières et employées entre la Première Grande Guerre et la Grande Crise.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris X, France.