Presenter: Amanda Gonzales
Mentors: Michael Peixoto, Honors College History; Monique Balbuena, Honors College Literature
Oral Presentation
Major: Business
Common accounting practices have evolved greatly over time, beginning with simple inventory records and progressing to complex forms of standardized accounting methods. The practice of managerial accounting, which entails analyzing financial data to assist internal decision-making, became standardized during the industrial revolution. As new corporate-style businesses expanded, owners began to maximize profits and increase their wealth by using new methods that allowed them to standardize costs and quantify human capital. Human labor became a cost that needed to be cut in order to maximize profits, which in turn exacerbated the stratification of wealth in society. The origins of this dehumanization of the working class and increase in wealth disparity between owners and workers are identifiable in pre-modern history. My research analyzes medieval methods of administering the production of peasant labor. I examine sources including the Domesday Book, notarial registers, and landed charters, to provide insight into the management techniques used by landowners from the perspective of managerial accounting methods. Although such methods were not standardized during the Middle Ages, the techniques that landowners used in the management of peasant labor show that the evolution of managerial accounting began long before the industrial revolution. The economy in the Middle Ages is often viewed as a compilation of rural agricultural work, however the studied management techniques utilized by lords over peasant labor reveals characteristics of a capitalistic society in a time that capitalism is not believed to have existed.