Berliet, the obstructed manager: too clever, too soon?

Marius Berliet, a pioneer of the car industry, was one of the first to introduce Taylorism in France. He wanted to implement standard costing techniques in his company at the very same time they were conceived in the USA, around the time of the First World War. Given that this technique was to become popular in France only during the 1950s, this article seeks to understand the reasons which prevented it from being applied at Berliet's company forty years earlier. One obvious explanation is the burden of the cost accounting methods which prevailed in France until 1950. The paper also considers the hypothesis of a lack of interest, and skill by those who could have promoted this new technique, especially managers and engineers.