Standard costing: first steps in the USSR (1930-1934)

DOI

10.2991/ies-18.2019.42How to use a DOI?

Keywords

accounting history, standard costing, normative cost accounting, state policy

Abstract

Standard costing is considered as well-known technique of management accounting today. But the story about first steps of standard costing in USSR is not so widely known. In the 1930s, active industrialization of the economy in the USSR was impossible without using modern management techniques and accounting methods. In order to increase the manageability of industrial enterprises, attempts to introduce standard costing were undertaken, but most of them failed. This led to the fact that standard costing was recognized as a calculative technique not corresponding to the goals of the Soviet state. Then the Soviet researchers formulated the principles of the normative cost accounting, which was based on standard costing. The method in the new version was greatly simplified and lost its analytical focus. The paper investigates the influence of state policy on the transformation of standard costing methodology during the construction of the socialist economy. The authors conclude that the transfer of the method developed under some political conditions to another political system should not be carried out mechanically; otherwise, it can lead to transformation of its essence.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Marina Sidorova
AU  - Dmitry Nazarov
AU  - Ekaterina Listopad
PY  - 2019/11
DA  - 2019/11
TI  - Standard costing: first steps in the USSR (1930-1934)
BT  - Proceedings of the Third International Economic Symposium (IES 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 122
EP  - 132
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/ies-18.2019.42
DO  - 10.2991/ies-18.2019.42
ID  - Sidorova2019/11
ER  -