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The 1770s, a lively decade for quality control: the case of the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville

Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla, fguthid{at}upo.es

Domi Romero

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, domi.romero{at}uam.es

It is generally agreed that management and accounting can only be understood in their organizational and social contexts (Miller, 1994). In this sense, several studies have addressed management techniques in specific eighteenth-century organizations with regards to the improvement of quality in the factory (Cox, 1990; Gutiérrez & Romero, 2001; Álvarez et al., 2002). This study shows several examples of quality decisions taken on an ad hoc basis in the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville during the 1770s. The main contribution of this work is to show that quality was not only "a wish of the managers", expressed as a set of instructions. Rather, we also show that these decisions can only be understood within the Spanish Enlightenment context; that is, they can be rationalized in terms of the search for the efficiency of the production process in the royal factories, and in the Crown's desire to raise the royal incomes.

Key Words: accounting history • factory • management • quality history

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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Gutierrez, F. Articles by Romero, D. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?