Business Partnering as a complement to accountant's other roles: International survey evidence

Cases involving change towards a more strongly business-oriented, or business partnering, role for accountants have been documented but evidence of the extent of such change more widely is sparse and indicates limited adoption of the role in practice. Extending the approach of Mouritsen (1996) based on the importance attached to accountants’ activities and using data from an international survey of over 3,000 professionally qualified management accountants, it is found that the importance of activities associated with this role is widely recognised, but only as part of a mix of other services provided by accountants. Furthermore, the importance of business partnering activities varies dependent on characteristics of the firm and the accountant, which we interpret in terms of selective adoption of the role driven by institutional factors, such as isomorphic pressure, operational complexity and the ability to resource business partnering after meeting priority demands for other services, and the propensity of the individual accountant to perform the role. Thus, understanding of the development of a more business-oriented role for accountants should recognise its complementarity to other services demanded of the finance function and the conditions that support its practice by the individual accountant