BRANDEIS,LOUIS,D. AND STANDARD COST ACCOUNTING - A STUDY OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORICAL AGENCY

During a 1910 Interstate Commerce Commission hearing Louis D. Brandeis argued that U.S. railroads could save a million dollars a day if they introduced scientific management (in particular, standard costing) in to their operations. Brandeis' claim received widespread press attenti on and helped set into motion four yeats of public preoccupation with the ideas of efficiency. In this paper we examine the construction of Brandeis' agency and note that Brandeis' extensive publicity campaign on behalf of scientific management provided significant impetus to the spread of standard costing. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.