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Accounting for Management and Managing Accounting: Reflections on Recent Changes in the UK[Note 1. Address for reprints: Mahmoud Ezzamel, Department of Accounting and ...]
Author(s) -
Ezzamel Mahmoud,
Lilley Simon,
Willmott Hugh
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of management studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.398
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1467-6486
pISSN - 0022-2380
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6486.00058
Subject(s) - management accounting , accounting , accounting information system , positive accounting , business , cost accounting , context (archaeology) , project accounting , competition (biology) , financial accounting , paleontology , ecology , biology
This paper uses data derived from interviews carried out in a number of UK companies to explore the extent to which management concerns are driven by accounting practices, and also how accounting practices are mediated by the views that managers have of the role of accounting. The paper also analyses accounts given by UK managers of the ways in which changes in accounting are being managed. Two specific issues relating to accounting change are examined: (1) the impact of new information technology on accounting change, and (2) the competition between accounting and alternative bodies of expertise as mechanisms for change. In studying accounting in the context of wider organizational change, the paper focuses on a number of distinct, yet related, themes: (1) management accounting’s power to reinvent itself; (2) the interface between management accounting practices and employee empowerment (as one example of ‘new’ management practices); and, (3) contradictions in using management accounting calculi to facilitate the ‘new’ organization.