Academic disdain? Economists and accounting in Britain, 1850–1950

Abstract

It is well known that no equivalent of the German Betriebswirtschaftslehre (Business Economics) developed in Britain. British economists were relatively uninterested in the internal workings of organisations, and thus did not provide the same theoretical underpinnings to the early development of accounting that were achieved in several continental European Countries. This paper explores the reasons for such a failure.