The idea of a “living profit”

I recently published a paper in Accounting History Review about a company called Bennett’s and their accounting in the early 1900s. This company provided malt, mainly to Guinness in Dublin. In the research for the article, it became apparent that producers of malt did not do very much management accounting. Bennett’s, for example, seemed not to cost their production process very often and seemed to accept the market price offered by breweries like Guinness.

One would thus think Guinness may have been in a strong position to dictate the price of malt, but this seemed not to be so. In an official corporate history of Guinness, a note is made of the fact that the malt providers should make a “living profit”. What this means is not defined, but when I read this I could only think of the contemporary idea of a “living wage”. This latter concept is to pay staff more than the minimum legal rates of pay (if there is one) and give them enough income to live – but not too much. I did a Google search for the term “living profit” and surprisingly – at least to me – there are no explanations or mentions. I cannot help but think that today the idea of a living profit could be applied in many supply chains, and indeed companies (and their shareholders) could ask themselves do they really need to make so much profit – think Apple, for example. I firmly believe history can teach us a lot, and this is one good example where some altered thinking might benefit society as a whole.