Management Accounting And Control Practices: An Overview

Themes in Management Accounting Research

Discuss about the Management Accounting and Control Practices.

In management accounting, also known as managerial accounting is used by managers with provisions of accounting information so as to inform themselves regarding cost and accounting matter simultaneously to make better decisions. This aids the management in better assessing better information and performance of control functions (Yang, Yu & Wang, 2016). Established knowledge on management accounting topic would mean anything in this topic that is widely accepted and known. This will happen when results of any research survive subsequent criticism. Mostly published Management Accounting topics are briefly described as below:

Management controls like information or practice, formal / informal / mechanistic / organic controls are examined as few out of many than as a whole. The studies have been performed to see influence on design, importance or use by contextual factors. Also studies evaluate performance based on the imbalance between the management controls and contextual factors (Sheilds, 2015). Mostly researched topics which are critical in planning and control are budgets and budgeting measures, performance-contingent incentive systems and measurement of performance.

These researches provide us with evidences on causes and effects of these topics. Some causes being uncertainty of environmental and task and asymmetrical form of information like size of organization, decentralization, and diversi?cation (Bebbington, Unerman & O’Dwyer, 2014). The effects that are widely researched are performance of individual or organization and its variance with least provided attention.

Two types of enquiries are pursued in this topic, one is accuracy of estimates of cost provided by various methods and other is environmental and organizational factors affecting organizational success or satisfaction based on different adoptions and implementations. Both these enquiries generate common results like the significance of support from key organizational players, performance measurement and system of compensation, and uniformity of competitive strategy (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016).

The first theme is the investigation of the decision that influence role of management accounting. This investigative research helps identification of the influence on action of employees based on the way their behavior and performance are monitored, measured, evaluated and rewarded. This research majorly stresses upon how problems that arise from adverse selection process and moral hazard can be mitigated through budgets, performance measures, performance-contingent incentives and responsibility accounting (Van der Stede, 2016). A new research of this theme is prejudiced on matters of subjective performance evaluation caused by leniency, favoritism, asymmetric adjustments for risk, performance-rating compression and anchoring on prior performance, and the effects of such a bias on the effort.

How does competitive strategies influence MCS

Management accounting in an inter-organisational context means in course of alliance, joint ventures or supply chains, etc. The second theme studies the contrasting features of such an inter-organisational context with that of the intra-organisational one (Sheilds, 2015). The investigation made in this research is as to how management accounting is used in order to make selection of any design contracts, partner, cost activities, control behavior and products, and further to support any make-buy decisions. Tools of management accounting which are used to make such a selection are ABC model, open-book accounting, total cost of ownership, target costing, value chain analysis, etc.

This third theme helps us to get whole explanations about the causes and effects relationship of management accounting by integrating the two theoretical perspectives namely, the neoclassical economic and the psychology rather than placing reliance on either of these two perspectives. Theory-consistent evidences are provided by this research on how management accounting affects tradeoffs of an individual between the utility of monetary and nonmonetary payoffs (Hopper & Bui, 2016). These nonmonetary payoffs can arise as a result o certain social psychological preferences such as fairness, reciprocity, honesty and trust; cognitive psychological limitations that might arises from bounded rationality like limited cognitive ability,  memory and effort; and affect, that may include moods and emotions.

Fourth theme of management accounting research investigates as to how the competitive strategies can have an in?uence on management control systems, which mostly and primarily are the balanced scorecard and levers of control (Myers, 2013). The management accounting research on the control system named balanced scorecard principally investigates the effects of common as well as unique measures of performance on managerial performance appraisal and measures and methods as to how can more reliance be placed on these unique measures like when an evaluator is provided with a strategy map (Ax & Greve, 2017). On the other hand, research done on levers of control examines how and when organizations use the specified number of four levers of control, in particular interactive and diagnostic controls, and their effects on performance.

Last but the newer theme of research is how to investigate relationship between management accounting with that of creativity and risk. Established research has provided evidence of there has been affect of management accounting on effort and performance, which is sensitive to effort. Research on creativity has examined affect of budget targets and performance- contingent compensation on the individual as well as on team creativity (Fullerton, Kennedy & Widener, 2013). There are certain different research studies to investigate how management accounting is related to risk. Like investigation to know how budget goal dif?culty can in?uence risk-taking behavior and also provide evidence as to how controls are used to take the edge off risk in strategic alliances.

Replication of results of the study’s’ with higher consistency in results

More researches in management accounting will result into more knowledge in this provided we get more consistency in results of comparable studies. Since the comparable studies on different and all management accounting topics is lower, the consistency of results becomes limited (Otley & Emmanuel, 2013). When there arise such inconsistency between the results of the study and results of comparable studies, the curiosity to ascertain the reason behind the occurrence of such inconsistency arises and one likes to know how this could limit the established management accounting knowledge production. Very importantly it is required to investigate the consistency of research results so as to ensure that the established knowledge of management accounting reproducible research requiring replications.

Evidences are provided by the replications as to whether results of studies reproduce, this aspect is essential and important, since there are various possibility of existence of reasons stating why there is no replications of studies which appear to be valid and reliable (Smith, 2017). For example study of analysis of accounting and auditing by authors Basu and Park’s which was published in the Journal of Accounting & Economics, The Accounting Review and Journal of Accounting Research, has indicated that the results are unlikely to replicate. The authors hereby draws the implication from their analysis made in the studys’ that reliance is not required and should not be placed on the outcomes of any single study. Such studies would even include those published in the accounting journals with the highest-quality (Sheilds, 2015). Contrasting to this thought, it is suggested that reliance should be placed instead on the combination consisting of both original as well as replication studies that produced consistent results. This irreproducibility of studies of accounting nature is also present in various other researches. The non-replication of studies of non-accounting studies happens for various reasons, like cautiously seeking best or falsi?ed or fabricated results.

Management accounting studies with the replications of higher validity and reliability levels are valuable since the results of such studies may be inconsistent with those of others results which are original or replication. Very common reason behind this might be that the researchers most likely chose to or design such task and settings which occur favorable to their chosen hypotheses rather than reporting explicitly all favoring factors. Therefore in such a case replication might fail reproduction of original study’s results which will includes all conditions reported but not all unreported favoring conditions (Sheilds, 2015). There are two purposes of replication, one is to distinguish good from bad and other is more refined and improvised researches.

Replications can form the base for extensions which might stretch to identify limiting conditions. Features like reasons of non-replication of the results of any study would likely contribute to establishing management accounting knowledge (Otley, 2016). A replication study is likely required to identify as well as test reasons possible for inconsistency. It is likely to result in good outcome to identify certain theory- based reasons providing more credibility to replication as well as evidence on the causes and effects.

Conclusion

There will be higher production of established management accounting knowledge when the replication studies are published, since they help in identifying non-replicable results of studies. Higher motivation to improve the validity and reliability of the researches will eventually only facilitates established MA knowledge production. The benefits of replication will be identification of comparable studies with consistent results and reasons for inconsistency in results; possibility of increased established management accounting knowledge and good opportunities for students pursuing doctoral programs and improved proficiency for researchers.

References

Ax, C., & Greve, J. (2017). Adoption of management accounting innovations: Organizational culture compatibility and perceived outcomes. Management Accounting Research, 34, 59-74.

Bebbington, J., Unerman, J., & O’Dwyer, B. (Eds.). (2014). Sustainability accounting and accountability. Routledge.

Fullerton, R. R., Kennedy, F. A., & Widener, S. K. (2013). Management accounting and control practices in a lean manufacturing environment. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 38(1), 50-71.

Hopper, T., & Bui, B. (2016). Has management accounting research been critical?. Management Accounting Research, 31, 10-30.

Myers, M. D. (2013). Qualitative research in business and management. Sage.

Otley, D. (2016). The contingency theory of management accounting and control: 1980–2014. Management accounting research, 31, 45-62.

Otley, D., & Emmanuel, K. M. C. (2013). Readings in accounting for management control. Springer.

Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Sheilds, D. M., (2015). Established management accounting knowledge. Journal of management accounting research. 27(1). 123-132.

Smith, M. (2017). Research methods in accounting. Sage.

Van der Stede, W. A. (2016). Management accounting in context: Industry, regulation and informatics. Management Accounting Research, 31, 100-102.

Yang, S., Yu, J., & Wang, X. (2016, January). Discussing on Management Accounting. In International Conference on Accounting and Finance (AT). Proceedings (p. 5). Global Science and Technology Forum.