Management Accounting Practice

Abstract

Chapter 2 attempted to demonstrate that many aspects of management accounting’s conventional wisdom, as portrayed in current textbooks, can be seen in the research which took place in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, it is generally supposed that this research has had only a limited impact on practice. The purpose of this chapter is to review some published empirical evidence. Unfortunately, the available evidence is very limited; there is no coherent body of literature which describes management accounting in practice and there are no publications comparable to the ‘survey of published accounts’ and ‘accounting trends and techniques’, which are available in financial accounting. Nevertheless, some descriptions have been published and these are discussed below. In general, however, the assumption of a gap between management accounting in practice and the content of current textbooks appears to be based on anecdotal evidence and impressions gained through informal contacts between academics and practitioners.