Theoretical perspectives on
accounting for labor on slave
plantations of the USA and British
West Indies
Thomas N. Tyson
Department of Accounting, St John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, USA
Richard K. Fleischman
Department of Accountancy, John Carroll University, University Heights,
Ohio, USA, and
David Oldroyd
University of Newcastle Business School, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Keywords Accounting history, Organizational structures, Production management
Abstract The paper focuses on accounting for slave workers during one of the most morally
culpable periods in Western civilization and is concerned with issues central to labor – modes of
production, labor control, and labor productivity. It incorporates secondary sources and
examination of records from over 150 different US and BWI plantations to identify contextual
factors that motivated planters to organize their workforce in a particular way. The paper
specifically describes the ganging and tasking methods of extracting surplus value and indicates
how these methods fit within three common paradigmatic interpretations of accounting history –
labor process, power/knowledge/discipline, and economic rationalism. In summary, ganging
exemplified a pre-modern approach to organizing labor in which planters relied primarily on
physical power to compel work effort and increase output. Tasking incorporated individual work
rates and included more sophisticated practices of surveillance, measurement, normalization, and
socialization. Tasking became economically rational by responding to changing market conditions
and by incorporating procedures and incentives to spur greater productivity. Therefore, tasking
may be perceived as a thematic precursor to accounting-based disciplinary controls like standard
costing and a transitionary element from pre-modern to modern control systems.
Introduction and literature review
Numerous scholars have examined accounting for plantation workers in the US
(Barney and Flesher, 1994; Flesher and Flesher, 1981; Heier, 1988; Razek, 1985), the
British West Indies (BWI) (Cowton and O’Shaughnessy, 1991), and Australia (Burrows
and Morton, 1986). In general, these authors described the specific accounting
procedures associated with buy/sell and other slave-related transactions and
speculated on the information included or omitted from plantation records and
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The authors are grateful for comments received at the 2003 CMS Conference in Lancaster and
research forums at Warwick University and the University of Newcastle Business School. The
authors specifically acknowledge comments received from T. Colwyn Jones as discussant at the
2003 IPA Conference in Madrid and two AAAJ referees. Funding support from the Wasmer
Fellowship program at John Carroll University is likewise acknowledged.
AAAJ
17,5
758
Received 7 August 2003
Revised 5 December 2003
Accepted 11 March 2004
Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal
Vol. 17 No. 5, 2004
pp. 758-778
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3574
DOI 10.1108/09513570410567809