ACCOUNTING

Plantations Practiced ModernManagementby Caitlin RosenthalFROM THE SEPTEMBER 2013 ISSUE

The nding: Slaveholding plantations of the 19th century used scientic managementtechniquesand some applied them more extensively than the factories thought to betheir originators.The research: Caitlin Rosenthal pored over hundreds of account books from U.S. and West Indianplantations that operated from 1750 to 1860. She found that their owners employed advancedaccounting and management tools, including depreciation and standardized eciency metrics,to manage their land and their slaves. After comparing their practices with those described in theaccount books of northern factories, Rosenthal concluded that many plantations took a morescientic approach to management than the factories did.

The challenge: Did historians get the genesis of management wrong? Professor Rosenthal, defendyour research.

Rosenthal: I was surprised by what we uncovered in these account books. The mythology is thaton plantations, management was crude and just amounted to driving enslaved people harder andharder. These documents show that plantations used highly sophisticated accounting practicesmore consistently than many contemporary northern factories, which are often considered thebirthplace of modern management. In some ways the conditions of slavery permitted a morescientic approach than the factories did.

Advanced AccountingDetailed account books from the 1840s through 1860s show that plantation owners, though partof an abhorrent system, were among the rst to use modern management science.

Plantations Practiced Modern Management - HBR 14-06-2015 14:24

https://hbr.org/2013/09/plantations-practiced-modern-management