Search results

Accountants’ involvement in environmental and sustainability management has merely been investigated to date. With the continuous take-up of sustainability issues by companies and with the growing experience companies gain in dealing with this topic, this chapter raises the question whether accountants are involved in a way different than previously reported and if yes, what their role is in social accounting practice.

Based on 58 interviews with corporate practitioners, this chapter firstly explores the roles involved in the social accounting practice in companies which are considered to be leading in sustainability reporting in the United Kingdom and Germany. Secondly, the role of professional accountants is analysed from a power theory perspective.

The main findings suggest that professional accountants are partially involved in social accounting practice but mainly exert a gatekeeping role between sustainability managers and higher management.

Investigating the observed behaviour empirically can help improve social accounting. Should it turn out that the accountants have no other option but to act like gatekeepers, accounting education will play a major role in overcoming this deficiency in the pursuit of improved sustainability knowledge and performance. If, on the other hand, it is the defensive stance of accounting professionals and the fear of losing power in corporate structures which motivates them to act as gatekeepers, mechanisms to motivate them to cooperate should be researched.

The chapter empirically investigates and discusses the accountant’s contribution to sustainability information management. This can help overcome organisational challenges impeding companies to successfully implement sustainability measures.

This study aims to take a step toward integrating research regarding the image, role and identity of management accountants by understanding how employers’ perceptions of the ideal management accountant image differ from operational managers’ perceived role expectations, how management accountants perceive their identity and how those factors shape management accountants’ understanding of who they are and want to be.

A qualitative design draws upon the case company’s 100 job advertisements and 31 semi-structured interviews with management accountants and operational managers. Those data are entwined with role theory and its core concepts of expectations and identities and also early recruitment-related theoretical aspects such as image and employer branding.

The findings reveal how employers’ perceptions of the ideal image and operational managers’ role expectations shape and influence the identity of management accountants. However, management accountants distance themselves from a brand image and role expectations. They experience identity conflict between their current and desired identity, the perception of not being able to perform the currently desired role. Although this study presents some possible reasons and explanations, such as employer branding for the misalignment and discrepancy between perceptions of employer (image), expectations of operational managers (role) and management accountants’ self-conception of the role (identity), this study argues that the identity of a management accountant results from organizational aspects of image and role and individual aspects of identity.

Image and external role expectations can challenge identity construction and also serve as a source of conflict and frustration; thus, a more comprehensive approach to studying the identity of management accountants is necessary to understand what contributes to the fragility of their identity.

The results provide an understanding of the dynamics of the image, role and identity to support management accountants and employers and to further address the suggested dissonance and ambiguities.

This study contributes by showing how the dynamics and connections between the image, role and identity influence the identity construction of management accountants. Moreover, this study shows how overpromising as a part of employer branding might not reflect the reality experienced by management accountants but may cause frustration and threaten the management accountants’ identity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions that management accountants have of their roles in accounting for sustainable development in their organisations.

The paper draws arguments from prior literature to identify the roles that management accountants play in accounting for sustainable development. Management accountants' perceptions of their roles in accounting for sustainable development are examined by conducting interviews and surveys of management accountants from various organisations in New Zealand. The study is informed by legitimacy theory.

Management accountants of small-medium organisations in New Zealand play a limited role in accounting for sustainable development, compared to management accountants of larger organisations. The correlation between the type of organisation and their overall goals for achieving sustainable development are closely linked with the roles the organisations' management accountants play in accounting for sustainable development.

This research is limited as it is only an exploratory study with a small sample of small-medium and large businesses in New Zealand. There is a need for greater acceptance by senior management of the role management accountants could play in accounting for sustainable development.

This paper may help management accountants, of both small-medium and larger organisations, to advance accounting for sustainable development within their organisations by actively engaging with the issues that have deterred such advancement.

This paper provides a review of the current debates and positions of accounting for sustainable development as well as the barriers management accountants face in getting engaged in accounting for sustainable development initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between management accounting software and the management accountant, as (re)produced in adverts appearing in professional management accounting journals. The paper analyses how such adverts have shaped the management accountant and the social practice of management accounting; in particular, whether these adverts are producing an image of management accountants who are in control of their management accounting system or who are controlled by it. The paper also discusses whether these adverts reflect changes in broader social practices.

The paper analyses two software adverts that were published in Chartered Institute of Management Accountants' professional journal. It uses discourse analysis to understand both the image of management accountants and the nature of the management accounting software portrayed in these adverts, as well as to explore the relationship between management accountants and their control systems.

It is concluded that the software adverts project an image of management accountants who are effectively handing over control to their systems, and who are encouraged to place substantial trust in the software. The paper relates these changes to trends in contemporary social practices, and reflects in the light of recent events in the financial markets and global economy more generally.

This paper contributes by adding more insight to the diffusion of the images of the accountant as a more action oriented and hedonistic person (while the software system “does the work”), as well as considering the broader implications of such diffusion in the context of the recent financial crisis.

The goal of this paper is to use a coherent conceptual framework to discern variables (triggers) that affect a management accountant's role in an organization, thereby generating a comprehensive empirical picture of the management accountant profession in The Netherlands. Similar research was conducted in 2004, which allows a comparison of the data to see if, and to what extent, developments in the profession have taken place.

Using survey data, groups of management accountants are distinguished based on coherent combinations of activities. Factor and cluster analyses are applied to obtain a segmentation of the data. By doing this, it is established if homogeneous groups of management accountants can be distinguished, how many groups there are and what the characteristics of these groups are in terms of activities.

It was found that controllers either operate as “reporting business analysts” or “business system analysts”. Whether someone is found to be a reporting business analyst or business system analyst is among other things affected by personality traits, a person's experience in finance and accounting, the financial status of an organization and changes in laws and regulations.

The conceptual framework proposed integrates several previous studies on the roles of management accountants. It allows an analysis of their activities, yielding an empirically founded classification of management accountants in groups. In addition, possible factors underlying this classification can be discerned. As this is a generally applicable framework, it can, at a later stage, be used to make a comparison between countries, for instance in Europe.

The resulting picture of the management accountant profession provides information on how to form or even design the financial function in an organization. Apparently, the developments in the profession reflect changes in the business environment and society as a whole, as it seems that internal analysis and risk management have become more fundamental to the profession.

This research uses an original framework covering several previous studies to generate a comprehensive empirical picture of the management accountant profession in The Netherlands. The framework is used to track changes over a three‐year period.

This paper aims to, with the continuous take-up of sustainability issues by companies and with the growing experience companies gain in dealing with this topic, raise the question of whether accountants are involved in the corporate practice of managing sustainability information, and if yes, what their role is. The actual involvement of accountants in corporate environmental and sustainability management has merely been investigated to date.

Based on 58 in-depth interviews with corporate practitioners, this paper, first, explores the roles in the sustainability accounting practice in companies which are considered to be leading in sustainability reporting in the UK and Germany. Second, the role of accountants is analysed from a power theory perspective.

The main findings suggest that accountants are partially involved in sustainability accounting practice but mainly exert a gate-keeping role between sustainability managers and higher management. The findings raise questions of how to better involve accountants in earlier steps of the sustainability management accounting process.

The explorative research is based on interviews in European companies considered to be among the leaders in sustainability reporting.

Empirically investigating the role of accountants can help improve sustainability accounting practice and education. Should it turn out that the accountants have no other option but to act as gatekeepers, accounting education will play a major role in overcoming this deficiency in the pursuit of improved sustainability knowledge and performance. If, on the other hand, it is the defensive stance of accountants and the fear of losing power in corporate structures which motivates them to act as gatekeepers, mechanisms to motivate them to cooperate should be researched.

The paper empirically investigates and discusses the accountant’s contribution to sustainability information management. This can help overcome organisational challenges impeding companies to successfully implement sustainability measures.

The paper investigates and discusses the accountant’s contribution to sustainability information management. The empirical analysis is based on a framework to identify different roles in sustainability accounting. Two possible development paths for a stronger constructive involvement of accountants are identified – to improve sustainability education for accountants if lack of sustainability knowledge is a major obstacle, and/or to improve incentives and structures motivating accountants to contribute with their information management expertise on all steps of the sustainability accounting process.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of management accounting change within an Egyptian organization that implemented an extranet.

Old institutional economic (OIE) theory and Hardy's model of power mobilisation are chosen as a theoretical framework to inform the analysis of the case.

The results show that the extranet facilitated changes in information availability and business process re‐design. The findings confirm that management accounting practices have changed in the case under study and show how management accountants have become more involved in planning and control. The case highlighted some factors that facilitate the natural processes of routinisation and institutionalisation over time.

It could be argued that one limitation of this research is related to the gap between the change in leadership in TexCo (1993) and the timing of the visits (2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005). However, this problem has been minimized by crosschecking memories of events through interviews. Another limitation of this study is that the author was not allowed to review some of the financial documents in TexCo. However, the author tried to verify the financial figures given by them through inter‐subject checking.

This paper fills a gap in the literature as it focuses on the process of management accounting change associated with the implementation of business‐to‐business (B‐to‐B) e‐commerce. The findings, indicate that the B‐to‐B e‐commerce has facilitated the change in the management accounting practices towards decision support and control. Implementing the B‐to‐B e‐commerce system in TexCo facilitated greater control over inventory and invoicing. It improved the planning process through providing the accountants with accurate and real time information about sales, receivables, cash collection and inventory turnover. The system also facilitated the settlement process, the performance evaluation of TexCo's exhibitions; and saved the time and effort of the accountants during the stocktaking process. The case suggested that there are some factors that may facilitate the processes of routinisation and institutionalisation.

This paper suggests that there is a natural tension between operations managers and management accountants. This tension is particularly evident when decisions are being made about process change. Semi‐structured interviews with 40 operations managers revealed that accountants were only involved in about half of change processes. Surprisingly this proportion was the same for both continuous and radical change programmes despite the latter involving greater risk and capital investment. Six case studies were then used to identify the factors which underpin the degree of involvement where there was close interaction between accountants and operations managers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for operations managers and some suggestions for further research.

This paper aims to focus on the recruitment and selection processes of management accountants to enhance the understanding of how employers form perceptions of a suitable management accountant.

The analysis is based on 17 interviews with individuals involved in the recruitment of management accountants. Empirical data were collected during the recruitment process at eight organisations.

The findings suggest that in the social context of recruitment, technical skills and abilities related to management accounting are increasingly perceived as “taken for granted”, and employers instead focus on evaluating candidates’ appearance and overall credibility. In particular, employers look for individuals who appear to be sociable, dynamic and appealing. Thus, a candidate’s overall appearance and personality are central to the recruitment process, both of which are assessed through characteristics and traits associated with personal charisma.

The findings have practical implications for both job seekers and recruiters of management accountants.

This study complements past studies on the role and image of management accountants by elucidating the social nature of their recruitment and selection.

The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of the work of management accountants in the context of a shared services centre.

A single case study method is used and data are collected via semi-structured interviews and internal documents. The empirical materials are analysed from the theoretical perspective of dirty work, incorporating aspects from practice theory.

Findings suggest that management accountants working in a shared services centre develop their occupational esteem by refocusing and reframing strategies. Through these strategies, management accountants can decrease the perceived “dirtiness” associated with their work.

The study sheds light on the under-researched topic of management accountants’ work within a shared services centre. Moreover, it offers the metaphor of liminal work to characterise how management accountants develop their occupational esteem in circumstances where gaining efficiency is the main objective.