Research and Practice in Management Accounting

1 Research and Practice in Management Accounting Introduction In management accounting, the managers of an organization base their decision making and planning on the organization’s accounting information. As the global business environment continues to grow and evolve, the accounting information that managers require is also becoming more complex and diverse. Management accounting research plays an integral role in improving the practice (Malina, 2018). This paper provides a review of a journal that analyzes the correlation between the theoretical and practical aspects of management accounting, and how to improve integration and communication in the practice.

Review This journal focuses on how integration and communication can be improved in research and practice in management accounting. The topic is important because currently, there is a gap between the research and practical aspects of the discipline due to ineffective communication, which causes a challenge in integrating research findings into the practice. The paper argues that researchers should aim to work more closely with management accounting practitioners to develop research that is relevant and applicable to the practice, as opposed to one that is too theoretical and therefore not useful to the practice.

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While academics have made significant progress in their research on management accounting, the research has not had sufficient impact on the actual practice of management accounting. Researchers in this discipline have the tendency of publishing work that does not represent the views of management accounting practitioners as a result of failing to involve them in the process of research. Research into the discipline can only become valuable and practical through the collaborative effort between researchers and practitioners. The divergence between the discipline’s research and practice is caused by the researchers’ excessive focus on the theoretical aspects instead of the technical aspects which are of more relevance to the practitioners.

Currently, there are three channels through which research information is disseminated. These are; from academic researchers to other academic researchers, from academic researchers directly to practitioners and from academic researchers to practitioners educationally through teaching and textbooks.

Reasons for the Divergence between Management Accounting Research and Practice Despite having studied the same discipline, management accounting research and practitioners have different skills and experiences as a result of the differences in their career paths and work situations. In the course of their career, the practitioner undergoes a lot of practice-based training which tends to have a technical inclination. The career of the researcher, on the other hand, primarily involves researching and publishing management accounting literature for their academic peers as opposed to performing research for the practitioners. The contents of management accounting research are disseminated through the closed-loop basis which makes it highly theoretic in nature since it is designed primarily by

3 researchers whose primary objective is to provide information that is useful to the research community (Mitchell, 2002).

Additionally, management accounting is by nature not technical; it seeks to answer questions such as, ‘What is management accounting? and ‘Why does it exist?’, instead of the more technical questions such as, ‘How can this problem be solved using management accounting?’

Making Management Accounting Research More Applicable to the Practice Researchers should aim at ensuring that their research provides solutions to practical issues in the discipline. This can best be achieved by using practitioners as partners in the research as opposed to using them as mere objects. One of the main ways through which this can be achieved is by using practical problems to conduct research. Researching a practical management accounting problem will produce results that can be applied to the practice.

There are several areas for research in management accounting; this includes; determining overhead absorption in extraordinary situations and the integration of inflation in DCF calculations. To develop research that is relevant to the practice, researchers should focus on topics relating to the future skills required in the discipline as opposed to researching mainly on the current state of the practice.

Personal Perspective As Mitchell (2002) states, management accounting research is of insignificant value to the practice of the discipline if it fails to address the issues that are relevant to its practitioners.

Currently, management accounting research lacks credibility due to its failure to address the pertinent issues and topics in the management accounting field. Researchers have neglected the technical aspects of the discipline which if addressed would lead to the advancement of management accounting. There is a need for the gap between researchers and practitioners to

4 be addressed by eliminating communication barriers between them and sharpening the focus on the technical aspects of management accounting.

Conclusion According to Mitchell, (2002) management accounting research can only be considered to be relevant if it adds value to the practice of the discipline. Currently, there is insufficient integration of the technical and practical aspects of management accounting in research; it is primarily theoretical. To achieve more effective management accounting research, researchers should identify the needs of practitioners, and conduct research based on these needs and requirements. The journal is well cited and well-structured and contains information that can easily be applied to management accounting.

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Reference Malina, M. (2018). Advances in management accounting. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited.

Mitchell, F. (2002). Research and practice in management accounting: improving integration and communication. European Accounting Review, 11(2), 277-289. doi: 10.1080/09638180020017087