Purpose This study aims to explain how the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) used its power over rail rates as part of an effort to promote the growth of economically underdeveloped regions of the USA. This was accomplished by subsidizing shipments of food and fuel staples to major domestic and world markets and by offsetting the burden of high protective tariffs through low transportation rates on imported goods, from its inception in 1887 until the disruption of ocean transport with the outbreak of First World War in 1914. Design/methodology/approach Through examination of contemporary ICC studies and cases, this study shows how the ICC condoned rate practices that promoted the socioeconomic welfare of sparsely populated regions primarily in the Southern and Western USA. Findings The study illustrates that the ICC facilitated exports by authorizing rates that subsidized the transport of overseas food and fuel staples from the interior while at the same time allowing preferential rail–sea contracts on imports that partially offset the burden of protective tariffs on these regions. The focus on regional social welfare within the ICC largely ended by 1914, with the end of protective tariffs and the start of First World War. Originality/value This new interpretation explains how international trade patterns in the USA were influenced in significant ways by the ICC to achieve regional social welfare objectives and to promote greater national economic integration.

Drawing principally on archival resources, this study examines the standardization of graphical representations of managerial accounting information at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) during the 1920s. This innovation in management practice promoted operational efficiency by reducing the uncertainty associated with internal informational asymmetries that frequently arise in enterprises of great scale, scope and complexity. This change also invigorated management accounting and reduced risk perceptions by providing clearer delineation of important trends and relationships in a dynamic business environment. The innovative practices extended the vision of top management and, thus, strengthened their ability to coordinate and control the enterprise's business activities. This new form of organizational learning was also adaptive, drawing on well established approaches followed in the firm's extensive range of scientific and engineering endeavors. It shaped corporate culture in important ways by establishing norms for the accumulation, analysis and application of firm-specific economic information.

This article examines the evolution of practice strategy and organizational structure at the US accounting firm Lybrand, Ross Bros. & Montgomery from its inception in 1898 through to its merger with Price Waterhouse in 1998. We focus on the interaction between the firm and its broader economic, social and political contexts as we analyze key drivers of organizational change. The accounting enterprise developed a dual strategy involving both horizontal integration and service diversification for adapting successfully to changes in markets, professional knowledge, technology and regulation. Organizational learning was fundamental to its successful evolution in scale and scope as it enabled the firm to develop strategies and structures that responded effectively to changing external challenges and opportunities.

Managerial accounting innovations often follow new technologies, products or services because new businesses operate in environments that lack established guidelines for the collection and analysis of essential accounting information. The current paper examines the influence of the social and political context on the development, presentation and reception of an accounting innovation by the Bell System, group depreciation. Following the mildly confrontational Progressive years, the 1920s generally provided a pro-business and pro-specialist environment that allowed the firm to develop its innovative methodologies uncontested. During this time, group depreciation, a statistically based methodology, transitioned from accounting innovation to accepted practice. However, during the Depression the relationship between government and industry altered and regulators intervened in ways that acted to the detriment of the firm.

Enlightenment ideals relating to individual and group autonomy versus state power have long shaped socioeconomic ordering in the Western world. This article explores how competing Enlightenment ideologies influenced the development of two different accounting-based regulatory models in the United States, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Both commissions experimented with both models with different outcomes. The ICC, formed in 1887, ultimately followed a Hamiltonian approach involving direct intervention of the federal government to regulate the monopoly power of railroads. Almost half of a century later, after the 1929 Crash, the SEC was formed to re-establish public confidence in the nation’s financial markets. That resulted in reducing investors’ risk perceptions by assuring greater transactional transparency and probity. The SEC settled upon a Jeffersonian approach, which supported the delegation of responsibility for the application of accounting knowledge in regulation to professional groups rather than government officials. This approach characterized the emergent bureaucracy of the United States’ fast-expanding national executive state.