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Organisational Change and Responsive Management Accounting Practice
Author(s) -
Emsley David
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
australian accounting review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.551
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1835-2561
pISSN - 1035-6908
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-2561.1997.tb00036.x
Subject(s) - accounting , management accounting , business , control (management) , management control system , field (mathematics) , quality (philosophy) , total quality management , process management , management , economics , marketing , philosophy , mathematics , epistemology , pure mathematics , service (business)
The primary purpose of management accounting is to help maintain organisational control (Emmanuel, Otley and Merchant 1990). However, different types of problems can be controlled in different ways (of which the management accounting system is one). Organisational control probably becomes most problematic when a fundamental change, such as total quality management, is introduced because problems can manifest themselves in new and unexpected ways. This article uses two complementary field studies to argue that management accountants need to understand these different types of control problems, how they change when TQM is introduced and how they can be controlled.