James Bray Griffith

Early 1900s had joined the International Accountants' Society, Inc.,[5] a home study school founded in 1903 in Chicago.

[13][14] In 1910 Griffith was Managing Editor of the Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, Business Administration, a general reference work on accounting, auditing, bookkeeping, commercial law, business management, administrative and industrial organization, banking, advertising, selling, office and factory records, cost keeping, systematizing, etc.

A 1907 review explained, that the demand for trained systematizers – men who have learned the science of business organization – is far greater that the supply.

Such men experience no difficulty in securing lucrative positions, while those who engage in the work professionally soon attract as many clients as they can successfully serve.

[18] The result, according to Griffith, is a thoroughly systematized business—a complete machine—in which every department is operated and each detail handled without friction and with the smallest possible expenditure if time labour and expense.

[19] Griffith explained: At the center of the organization is the executive with whom communication is established by those subordinates from whom he received reports and to whom he issues orders.

While the illustration applies to a given class of concerns, this chart will give a very clear idea of how any business can be organized.

The work itself has similarities with the series of system charts, Horace Lucian Arnold had published two years earlier in his 1903 The Factory manager and accountant.

Griffith did develop the concept into a single chart of the Duties, Responsibilities and Authorities of Department Heads (see image), which was first published in Griffith's Administrative and industrial organization (1909), and republished in the 1910 Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, Business Administration,[21] Despite these efforts to introduce these visual aids, they didn't become that popular yet.

The plans which we have shown illustrate examples of good and bad system in the location of one class of stock.

[23] The layout and routing of a typical manufacturing plant are often more complex, see for example figure III, but the principles remain the same.

Griffith commented, that "a study of this chart will enable the student to outline a general plan for a cost system suited to the needs of his particular factory.

This book series was published in seven volumes and was prepared by a corps of auditors, accountants, attorneys, and specialists in business methods and management, and illustrated with over fifteen hundred engravings.

"[28] A significant part of the co-authors and collaborators also participated in the 1910 "Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, Business Administration."

It is only where this segregation has been the result of lack of thought and proper attention, or other like causes, that we find a complex and unsatisfactory condition of affairs.

In fact, there is all about us sufficient evidence that many commercial enterprises are being conducted along lines that, as far as evolutional development is concerned, are several stages behind the times.

In 1910 the American School of Correspondence published the Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, Business Administration, and Griffith had been managing editor.

The volumes start out with a discussion of the theory of accounts, and then proceed to show the methods of keeping the books of various kinds of organizations, from single proprietors to corporations, and of different kinds of businesses, including wholesale and retail establishments, banks, mail-order houses, hotels, insurance companies, and contracting firms.

The review ends with the remark, that from a mechanical point of view the books are excellent; the half-tone illustrations are especially good and are well selected.

More in general he explained: The early 1900s were a Horacio Alger time when self improvement, particularly in business knowledge, was a way of life for aspiring people.

Work on Bookkeeping, Accounting, Auditing, Commercial Law, Business Organization, Business Management, Banking, Advertising, Selling, Office and Factory Records, Cost Keeping, Systematizing, etc.,' offered the complete 'body of knowledge' for the young business person in seven small volumes ...[12]Of the twenty-one authors and collaborators in the field of accounting, listed by Stone (1975), only eight of them were actually accountants.