Ebook Comparative Analysis Of Strategic Management Accounting In German- And English-Language General Management Accounting Textbooks
Over the last decades, the dynamic evolution of management accounting has led to some controversy as to its scope. It is not always apparent which concepts, tools, and institutions constitute the domain of management accounting. Its role has expanded significantly from merely supplying cost information to creatively interpreting data related to the strategic environment. Thus, management accounting now participates in the strategic management process (Siegel and Sorensen (1999, 4-5)). The management accounting aspects that focus on strategic issues usually relate not only to management accounting, but also to strategic management and marketing.
The term “strategic management accounting” represents an attempt to find a framework for the various strategic elements in the field of management accounting. Coined originally by Simmonds (1981), the term has spread throughout the academic literature, but its significance and justification remain controversial. This controversy is reflected in critical comments that regard strategic management accounting as an “esoteric notion” (Simmonds (1981, 26)) or a “figment of academic imagination” (Lord (1996, 364)).
To decide whether this strategic dimension represents a genuinely distinct frame-work within management accounting, and to determine if it has become accepted in the academic world, in this paper we review German and English general management accounting textbooks. A distinct framework exists if we can find congruent, or at least basically similar, concepts and notions that are unique to the discipline. The results of the textbook analysis can be used to gain a better understanding of the relevance of different strategic management accounting concepts and thus guide lecturers to decide on the composition of their syllabi and recommended readings.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the general concept of strategic management accounting and reviews the current academic literature on the issue. Section 3 describes the research design. We present the findings of the content analysis of 20 textbooks in Chapter 4. In Section 5 we discuss the limitations of this study. In the concluding section we summarize our findings and provide a brief outlook on future research directions.
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