Sustainability and Management Accounting Research

Purpose This study aims to examine how gender is conceptualised and addressed within management accounting research, moving beyond its use as a mere “control variable” or “dummy variable”. It identifies dominant themes, highlights ongoing research gaps and proposes directions for developing more inclusive and critically engaged research. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review of gender-related studies in management accounting was conducted, covering articles published in ranked “accounting journals” between 1990 and 2024. Thematic analysis was applied to synthesise key findings and highlight research gaps. Findings The study identifies four dominant themes in the literature, revealing the persistent underrepresentation of gender-focused research in management accounting. While existing studies acknowledge gender, they largely focus on workplace dynamics and overlook how management accounting practices reflect, reinforce or challenge gendered structures. The study underscores the need for deeper theoretical engagement – particularly with feminist and intersectional perspectives – to critically assess gendered power dynamics in management accounting. Research limitations/implications This study provides an impetus for advancing gender research in management accounting by promoting theoretical diversification, methodological pluralism and greater attention to intersectional and contextual dimensions. Originality/value By synthesising existing research and identifying critical gaps, this study calls for a shift from viewing gender as a control or dummy variable towards a more integrated, theoretically informed and critically engaged approach to gender in management accounting.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to reflect upon the feasibility of agile methodologies, Scrum in particular, to supplement the procedural design and implementation of performance measurement systems (PMS).Design/methodology/approachThe study is an interventionist case study that applied agile methodologies in the PMS development. Researchers actively participated in the PMS development, e.g. researchers designed some of the performance measurement prototypes in order to facilitate the agile development.FindingsThe study outlines an agile approach suitable for PMS development. The paper answers the topical needs for adaptability and agility in management accounting, by applying agile methodologies into PMS development. PMS development does not take place only as a project or process that systematically progresses from the measure selection to measure implementation. Instead, as the requirements for the PMS change during the development project, management may reject some measures and new measures emerge as the understanding about changing situations increase. Agile methodologies are a methodological way to respond to the inevitable change and to enhance management accounting adaptability.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the PMS literature by proposing that agile development methodologies can advance organizational features that increase management accounting adaptability. As a result, the study proposes a new approach for PMS development to supplement existing ones. Agile methodologies are especially suitable for extending the PMS in new, yet relatively immature areas of performance measurement. The new approach applies Scrum principles in PMS development. By drawing from the theories of performance measurement (system) development and enabling PMS, the paper furthers academic understanding about agile development of accounting information systems.Practical implicationsCompanies can use the proposed approach in PMS development, particularly after the initial system implementation in redesigning the system. The approach may increase the PMS impact in organizations and prevent PMS implementation failures.Originality/valueThe paper identifies the potential of using agile methodologies to enhance PMS adaptability and provides preliminary evidence of the potential of such approach in supplementing processual PMS development frameworks.

Assessing the quality of evidence in empirical management accounting research: The case of survey studies

Behavioral Implications of Management Accounting Practices: A Contemporary Issue in Management Accounting

In this article we discuss the motivation for and role of theory in management accounting. We argue that theories in an applied field such as management accounting research should provide explanations that are useful for those we study – managers, organizations and society. We evaluate the nature of theories currently used and developed. Those theories that are considered theories by the research community are largely imported from other disciplines, but have hardly anything that makes them unique to management accounting. Those theories that are not currently regarded as theories by many of our colleagues attempt to explain how to apply management accounting to achieve superior performance. We argue that both forms of theories, at present, largely fail to provide valid support for practitioners. We contend that management accounting theory should help us to answer questions of what kind of management accounting systems we should apply, how, in what circumstances, and how to change them. We provide suggestions on how management accounting research could proceed to produce better theories in this regard.

Doing Management Accounting Survey Research

Agent-Based Computational Economics in Management Accounting Research: Opportunities and Difficulties

Agent-based computational economics (ACE)—while adopted comparably widely in other domains of managerial science—is a rather novel paradigm for management accounting research (MAR). This paper provides an overview of opportunities and difficulties that ACE may have for research in management accounting and, in particular, introduces a framework that researchers in management accounting may employ when considering ACE as a paradigm for their particular research endeavor. The framework builds on the two interrelated paradigmatic elements of ACE: a set of theoretical assumptions on economic agents and the approach of agent-based modeling. Particular focus is put on contrasting opportunities and difficulties of ACE in comparison to other research methods employed in MAR. JEL Classifications: C63; D8; D91; M40.

Deception in Management Accounting Experimental Research: A Tricky Issuee Revisited

Under the background of China's economic transformation and industrial upgrading, the content and mode of enterprise management need reform and innovation. Management accounting research also needs to apply the international mainstream research paradigm and root in the real situation of Chinese enterprise management practice. Based on the analysis of the status quo of management accounting research at home and abroad, this paper puts forward some thoughts on management accounting research under the Chinese context, and looks forward to the future development of China's management accounting research, in order to play a positive role in promoting the development of China's management accounting research.

Although empirical methods have gained momentum in the business research community lately, there has been little effort, so far, to utilize laboratory experiments for advancing the field of management accounting research. This article presents the state of the art in experimental management accounting research. First, the method’s current popularity amongst researchers in this field is established via a review of existing literature analyses covering empirical management accounting research. Second, a description of potential uses, designs and methodological limitations of laboratory experiments is given. Third, a comprehensive review of the relevant literature body, based on a specifically developed conceptual model, resulting in a map of topics and variables follows. Internationally there is evidence for the use of laboratory experiments for gaining further insights into both classical management accounting functions, decision influencing and decision facilitating. Furthermore, a wide body of research is available to further exploitation by the management accounting research community, emanating from the fields of individual decision making, decision support systems and management information systems.

What is strategy? Management accounting researchers have often ignored this question when they say that management accounting is for implementing rather than formulating strategy. Inspired by Anthony’s seminal work (1965), where management controls and strategic planning were separated, management accounting researchers have often treated strategy as a ‘black box’. However, recent debates have paid more attention to strategy. The debates in the 1990s, for example, emphasized that the future of management accounting (e.g. Bromwich and Bhimani 1994; Ittner and Larcker 1998) is dependent on whether it can frame and conceptualize strategic issues in organizations; to articulate strategy is a way to regain the lost relevance of management accounting (Johnson and Kaplan 1987). In this chapter we study processes of constructing corporate value

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the potential of strong structuration theory in management accounting research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper explains how the ontological perspective of strong structuration theory extends the work of Giddens and explores how the perspective overcomes a number of the limitations of existing management accounting research based on structuration theory. Findings – Strong structuration theory develops and extends the work of Giddens, providing greater insights into the role of agents, improves our understanding of the diffusion of accounting practices through organisational fields, adds to our knowledge of how artefacts are used in the production and reproduction of organisational life and improves research design. Research limitations/implications – Strong structuration theory provides clear guidance about management accounting case study research design, and suggests the potential for the accounting research community to engage more actively in debates about the development of structuration theory beyond the work of Giddens. Originality/value – This paper provides a clear explanation of the ontology of strong structuration theory, its implications for research design and how it holds the potential to overcome many of the limitations of earlier management accounting studies deploying structuration theory.

My task is to provide a perspective regarding the general topic of choosing optimal cost drivers, as that topic is reflected in the selected articles of this Forum. This perspective can be developed more easily if I first digress back to the 1960s when managerial accounting research was beginning to evolve to its present stages. In the 1960s, teaching and research in managerial accounting were heavily influenced by the growing popularity of operations research and management science approaches to business problems. These approaches were largely normative in nature, consisting basically of optimization techniques that, if implemented, promised to improve managerial decision making. Their normative character was carried over into managerial accounting as well, with the basic theme of many managerial accounting articles in that era being, "Here is how optimization techniques may be used to guide the design of improved managerial accounting systems." Rarely, if ever, did the researcher provide empirical evidence or other forms of proof that the new systems would in fact lead to improvements in managerial decisions. Rather, the main result provided was that the new systems could generate new accounting numbers under certain assumed conditions. If these new numbers appeared to be materially different from the old, implementation of the new systems could lead to changes in managers' decisions. The changes in managers' decisions were assumed to be desirable ones to induce. However, desirability was based primarily on subjective criteria adopted by the researcher. Generally, a necessary condition for potential improvements in managerial decisions from new accounting systems is that the new system generate accounting numbers that are materially different from those obtained from the existing system. For this reason, I label such studies as materiality studies, since they basically follow the traditional materiality rule in accounting. But different accounting numbers might not lead to changes in decisions that result in payoffs sufficient to justify the costs of implementing the new systems. Indeed, recognition of this basic limitation of materiality studies was a strong motivation for managerial accounting researchers to investigate the advantages of using the information economics paradigm to estimate the net payoffs from implementing new accounting systems. Recall that information economics is a conceptual framework that can be used to assess how new information will affect managerial decisions and, assuming decisions will change, the expected payoffs from implementing a new accounting information system. Included in the framework Is an assumed decision-maker with a particular utility function who processes information through a specific decision model. The model, in turn, yields an ex ante optimal decision. The value of new information is then measured as the change in the net payoffs induced by moving from a previous optimal decision to a revised optimal decision under the assumption that the new information does in fact induce a revision in the optimal decision. Note that the original optimal decision might still remain optimal even though the new information received by the decision maker differs from the old. Obviously, the conclusion in the latter case is that the new information system would have either a zero or negative expected net value.

We provide a discussion of three of Zimmerman's (2001) conjectures about, and prescriptions for improving, the current unsatisfactory state of empirical management accounting research: its focus on describing practice instead of testing theories; its focus on decision-making instead of control; and reliance on social sciences other than economics. We suggest that these conjectures are based on inaccurate descriptions of current empirical management accounting research and the prescriptions offer potentially misleading guidance for future research. In contrast to Zimmerman (2001), we believe that the current research is guided by theory from a variety of social sciences (primarily economics, psychology and sociology) and that this diversity is appropriate for the applied field of management accounting. We argue that while economics provides a good basis for much empirical research in management accounting, other social sciences offer more potential to explain important features of management accounting such as understanding people's preferences, how they think, how they interact with other people and the process of change. Our conclusion is that empirical management accounting research will be better off if it appeals less to disciplinary identity and instead uses a variety of theoretical frameworks from the social sciences to provide more complete explanations of management accounting practice.