Business budgeting as a tool of scientific management and rationalisation in Poland in the interwar period

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to examine the premises and extent of the dissemination of business budgeting using publications in interwar Poland (1918–1939) and to indicate Polish authors’ sources of knowledge on this issue. The article also seeks to investigate whether budgeting was promoted and introduced in Poland to propel development in a nation that was reawakening as a country after more than 120 years of partitions. The dissemination of budgeting is considered in connection with the idea of rationalisation, which originated in the United States, and the scientific management movement in Europe that it influenced. The article shows Poles promoting business budgeting and their actions following the theory of progress in order to increase the prosperity of a country that was rebuilding a unified economic organism and national identity. The article contributes to the history of scientific management and accounting as it brings new elements by examining the non-Western interwar environment.