The complexity of management accounting change: Bifurcation and oscillation in schizophrenic inter-organisational systems

This paper discusses and reconceptualises the role and practice of accounting in dynamic and complex business networks. The paper conceptualises change in complex inter-organisational systems as a process where various perturbations from the environment or installation of management accounting affect the system. This initiates two types of development. Firstly, the system searches the inter-organisational space, and branches out into new inter-organisational configurations—the system bifurcates. Secondly, the systems studied in this paper did not stabilise to the new order and inter-organisational configuration—rather they oscillated between institutional orders. The inter-organisational system is therefore schizophrenic in a sense, since it can shift between fundamentally different behaviours and orders within a short span of time. Management accounting in this complex evolving inter-organisational system is a source of instability rather than stability, a source of emergent, unintended order rather than planned or institutionalised change.     

改革开放30年中国管理会计的发展与创新——许继电气与宝钢的成本管理实践与启示

改革开放以来,中国的管理会计研究有了长足的进步。其中,标准成本管理作业成本法是颇受关注的领域。本文的目的是对标准成本与作业成本管理的两大领域进行回顾分析,并希望借助于本文的研究对两者的结合使用进行探讨,为我国开展成本管理提供借鉴。由于资料所限,我们并不讨论其他成本领域。     

Management accounting in Europe: a view from Canada

On the basis of a reading ofManagement Accounting: European Perspectivesedited by Al Bhimani (1996) there appears to be no historical pan-European perspective on management accounting. However, following the advent of the relevance lost and strategic cost management movements, and especially activity-based costing, there does seem to be emerging a certain homogeneity in European management accounting practices. This commentary questions the intellectual and practical basis for these movements and activity-based costing. It also identifies some of the particular achievements of European management accounting researchers which are not covered in the book.     

Short and long translations: Management accounting calculations and innovation management

Management accounting calculations relate innovation to the firm through translations where both can change. Based on examples of the management of innovation from three firms the study shows how management accounting calculations rather than describe the properties of innovation add perspective to them mediating between innovation concerns and firm-wide concerns. This mediation happens through short and long translations. In short translations, management accounting calculations extend or reduce innovation activities via a single calculation. In long translations innovation activities are problematised via multiple calculations. When calculations challenge each other in long translations they problematise not only what innovation should be, but also where it should be located in time and space. In the three examples, calculations mobilised alternative propositions about the relevance of technical artefacts and linked this to innovation strategy and sourcing strategy in the firm’s inter-organisational relations. Tensions between calculations associated with technological, organisational and environmental entities framed considerations about the value of innovation to the firm strategically differently. All this happens because management accounting calculations are partial rather than total calculations of firms’ affairs and value.     

Accounting,management and organizational change: A comparative study of local government

This is a study of management accounting in local government in the context of significant change (managerial, organizational and environmental). The study is based on four case studies: two in Scotland and two in New Zealand. The paper explores two competing theories of organizational life—the instrumental view as espoused by New Public Management proponents, and the socially constructed, as advocated by new institutional theorists. This study locates management accounting at the centre of these changes in New Zealand with a more limited role in the U.K. where there is evidence of institutional isomorphism.     

'Presenting' the past: perspectives on time for accounting and management history

Concepts of time in accounting and management historiography have only previously been considered as partial subsets of other methodological issues. This paper investigates our concepts of historical time with a view to offering alternative foundations to the unidirectional linear concept of chronological time employed in historical research project design and execution. Its analytical approach is pluralist in that it draws upon the historiographic writings of historians and historical theorists of traditional and post-modern persuasions, both within and beyond the accounting and management history fields. It addresses teleological, historicist and narrativist temporal underpinnings and considers historical practice in relation to assumptions about and interpretations of continuity and discontinuity. Time is extended beyond its conventional accounting and management chronology to include consideration of co-present, cyclical, relativist, structuralist and spatial time. Intrinsic and reflexive relationships between past, present and future are explored. The paper argues for a postmodern pluralisation of our historiographic approaches to time and their informing revisitations of historical accounting and management subjects with a view to better understanding that which we thought we already knew.     

Stability and change in management accounting over time—A century or so of evidence from Guinness

In recent years, much has been written on the nature of management accounting change, and indeed stability. Many researchers have used concepts such as rules and routines to interpret this change and/or stability. Recent research has provided an increasingly clear picture of what rules and routines are, as well as contributing to our understanding of the processes of change and stability in management accounting.Management accounting research has mainly presented rules and routines as related phenomena, but some conceptual work has suggested they are separable and can (and possibly should) be considered independently when studying processes of change/stability within management accounting. However, empirical support for such work has been scarce to date. This paper uses data from the archival records of the Guinness company in an effort to establish whether rules and routines, at least in management accounting research, are best considered separable concepts or not. The archival records are artefacts of rules and routines and thus can be used to trace the interactions of rules and routines over time. Support for the notion that rules and routines should be considered separately is presented. The findings also portray the stable, but changing, nature of management accounting routines over time; a point worthy of further research.     

Management accounting as normal social science

The publication of “Management accounting change: Approaches and perspectives” (Wickramasinghe, D., & Alawattage, C. (2007). Management accounting change: Approaches and perspectives. London, New York: Routledge) provides an occasion for considering the extent to which management accounting has become a normal social science. This review essay argues that management accounting is a social science defined by a pluralism of approaches, and it identifies the generalization of social perspectives on management accounting, and particularly their ability to transcend technical and economic aspects of accounting practice, as crucial components in reproducing this specific form of expertise. Contrary to Kuhnian expectations, this social science hosts a multiplicity of paradigms, and its scientists are not exclusively concerned with the subtlest and most esoteric aspects of the phenomena under study. Instead, as social scientists management accountants are generalists as much as they are specialists.     

高校教育成本核算方法比较研究

高校教育成本核算是高校教育成本管理的核心,但目前高校教育成本核算在实践中举步维艰。本文通过将高校教育成本核算方法进行比较研究,提出了将战略成本管理思想初步应用于高校教育成本核算中的新思路。     

Management accounting and action

Management accounting information is intended to facilitate and enhace decision-making, but this information also may influence action. This paper explores some preliminary ideas about how and why a management accounting approach such as return on investment may initiate and sustain forceful action.     

Management Accounting: Issues in interpreting its nature and change

Studies in the area of management accounting change have proliferated in the past few years. It seems then time for systematizing the analysis of management accounting change along some key dimensions which can prompt some further reflection. This paper proposes to organize such reflection along these dimensions: the agents and object of change; the forms and ratio of change; the space and time of change; and the interplay between change and stability. This systematization, the paper argues, will help us to relate a reflection on the process of change with the nature of management accounting itself. Studying change entails a reflection on what changes and studying what changes implies a reflection on the nature of management accounting and its ability to become what is not, i.e. its change.     

A Mathematical Programming Approach for Procurement Using Activity Based Costing

Activity Based Costing and Management are important topics in today's management accounting literature. While there has been much attention paid in the Activity Based Costing literature to customer profitability analysis, process improvement and product design, there has been far less notice taken of purchasing. In this paper we develop an Activity Based Costing approach for the determination of procurement strategies. Vendor selection using an Activity Based Costing approach is choosing the combination of suppliers for a given product group that minimizes the total costs associated with the purchasing strategy. To this end we develop a mathematical programming model where decisions involve the selection of vendors and the determination of order quantities. The system computes the total cost of ownership, thereby increasing the objectivity in the selection process and giving the opportunity for various kinds of sensitivity analysis.     

推动管理会计建设、加快中小商业银行管理转型的思考

在利率市场化不断推进和同业或跨业竞争加剧的背景下,商业银行必须由规模导向向价值导向的管理模式转型,管理会计是提升中小商业银行内部管理的精细化必备手段,也是推动业务转型的利器。中小商业银行在推广管理会计理念、开发和建设管理会计系统方面有自身的独特性,本文从管理会计的内容和范围出发,结合中小银行的管理现状和特点,提出渐进式开发和推广管理会计,推动管理转型的思路。     

Purposes and paradigms of management accounting: beyond economic reductionism

Neo-classical economics does not of itself provide an adequate explanation of current management accounting practice and research. Ideas from several other disciplines have been used in an attempt to facilitate a more complete understanding of management accounting. There now exists a multiplicity of ‘ways of seeing’ management accounting which adds richness to the literature. This paper first describes a number of the current theoretical-paradigmatic approaches, and then offers a typology for understanding them. It is suggested that each of these schools has different insights to offer the study of management accounting and that attempts to privilege one school over another should be avoided. Management accounting is seen as fulfilling a multiplicity of purposes which can only be understood by analysing the actions of the management accounting actors involved.     

医药连锁企业成本管理与会计核算模式创新研究

本文依据当前医药连锁经营企业的实际情况，按照企业会计准则和企业会计制度等有关规定，较系统地对医药连锁企业成本管理、会计核算模式提出一些新见解。     

Getting management accounting off the ground: post-colonial neoliberalism in healthcare budgets

Taking Modell's [(2014) The societal relevance of management accounting: an introduction to the special issue. Accounting and Business Research, 44 (2), 83–103] ‘societal relevance of management accounting’ agenda forward, and based on a cost accounting initiative in a Sri Lankan hospital, this paper examines how management accounting is implicated in societal relevance. It reports on a post-colonial neoliberal state's use of cost-saving experiments and the resultant emancipation of the individuals involved. It conducts a bottom-up analysis, from micro events in the hospital to policymaking at the level of the Provincial Council. This analysis suggests that cost accounting acts as a mediating instrument: it begins to loosen the old Keynesian post-colonial bureaucratic budget confinements, creates a social space for individuals to consider cost-saving experiments, and addresses wider policy concerns about hospital resource management. The story is illuminated by Gilles Deleuze's and Zigmund Bauman's ideas on post-panoptic societies: old confinements are being problematised and new flexible, ‘liquid’ spaces created, in which individuals are emancipated in terms of their ability to influence resource management within and beyond the organisational constituency.     

Utilising a typology of management accounting change: An empirical analysis

Management accounting change, currently an increasingly popular focus for research, is not a uniform phenomenon. Its nature and form may vary across multiple dimensions and this variation has been neglected by researchers who have tended to study change per se rather than distinguishing it though a categorisation by type. This paper explores the forms which management accounting change has taken in a sample of manufacturing companies by utilising a simple typology of management accounting system change, derived from the existing research literature, consisting of addition, replacement, output modification, operational modification and reduction. This classification is combined with information on the incidence, location, importance and success of management accounting changes to provide some analytical insights into the variety and patterns of change within these companies and to derive some guidance for future research on the topic.     

管理会计实践发展现状与展望——先进管理会计方法在中国应用状况调查

本文通过问卷调查了解战略成本管理、作业成本管理和平衡计分卡等先进管理会计方法在中国企业的应用状况及发展趋势,调查发现先进管理会计方法的理念正在不断被中国企业所接受,中国企业的管理会计实践正在不断发展,但是先进管理会计方法的应用还相当有限。随着中国企业管理会计实践的发展,企业界产生了应用先进管理会计方法的需求,但如何将先进管理会计方法与中国企业的实践相结合,目前仍缺乏足够的理论指导。     

Hedge fund incentives,management commitment and survivorship

Management ownership in hedge funds sends conflicting signals—signals which reduce investors’ perception of survivorship risk. We document that decisions on management ownership are purposely self-selected. Such decisions are most likely motivated by unique incentive mechanisms imbedded in hedge funds. We examine the impact of managerial ownership decisions on fund survivorship risk by accounting for unobserved fund manager motivations that affect both ownership decisions and survivorship risk. Our findings suggest that the conventional argument that having management commitment can reduce survival risk (and therefore align the interests between managers and investors) is significantly overstated. These results are robust to using alternative ownership measures and controlling for different samples.