Strategic choices and strategic management accounting in large manufacturing firms
- PDF / 891,155 Bytes
- 32 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 48 Downloads / 205 Views
Strategic choices and strategic management accounting in large manufacturing firms Franco Cescon1 · Antonio Costantini2 · Luca Grassetti1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract This study examines the relationship between strategic choices and the use of strategic management accounting (SMA) techniques in large manufacturing companies and investigates whether external factors such as environmental uncertainty and competitive forces affect the SMA system. The survey results show that SMA usage does not depend on strategy type and only marginally depends on geographic orientation. These findings have been integrated using qualitative data collected in seven large companies through interviews. Although significant progress has been made over the last two decades in describing SMA practices in Europe, the contribution of this study to the accounting (SMA) literature involves both the research content and design. Having identified gaps in previous SMA research, we design a study focused on large manufacturing firms that considers different hypotheses and adopts a mixed method approach. Keywords Mixed method approach · Strategy types · Geographic orientation · Strategic management accounting · Survey and interviews
1 Introduction This study examines the relationship between strategic choices and the use of strategic management accounting (SMA) techniques in large manufacturing companies and investigates whether external factors such as environmental uncertainty and competitive forces affect the SMA system. It provides field-based evidence by employing a mixed-method approach that combines survey and exploratory interviews of a subset of respondents in corporate financial and accounting departments. * Franco Cescon [email protected] 1
Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Udine, Via Tomadini 30/a, 33100 Udine, Italy
2
Department of Management, University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, Cannaregio 873, 30121 Venice, Italy
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
F. Cescon et al.
To respond to the challenges of global competition, companies express strategic purposes and identify their strategy. The complexity of business strategy presents challenges for managers tasked with evaluating strategic activities, which is crucial to defining competitive scope and competitive advantage. Many scholars argue that conventional (or traditional) management accounting (MA) does not provide enough information to support strategic decisions (Lord 2007). Whereas strategic processes consider plans and the possible actions of competitors, management accounting supports strategic decisions by providing managers with internal financial and non-financial information and with financial and non-financial information on the environment and on a firm’s competitors. As suggested by Johnson et al. (2014: 445), “Structure is a key ingredient of organising for success. But structures can only work if they are supported by formal and informal organizational systems”. SMA, as a type of organizational s
Data Loading...
