Advances in Management Accounting

Abstract 
Purpose 
This study examines the association between the use of a package of contemporary and a package of traditional management accounting practices with organizational change and organizational performance. 
 
 
Methodology/approach 
Data were collected based on a mail survey distributed to a sample of 740 public sector organizations. 
 
 
Findings 
The findings indicate that while the prevalence of traditional practices is still dominant, such practices were not associated with organizational change or performance. Rather, those organizations that use contemporary management accounting practices to a greater extent experienced greater change and stronger performance. 
 
 
Practical implications 
The findings suggest that contemporary management accounting practices can assist public sector practitioners in improving performance and promoting organizational change. 
 
 
Originality/value 
The study provides an empirical insight into the use and effectiveness of management accounting practices in the public sector. The study provides the first empirical analysis of the effect of using a package of management accounting practices in the public sector.

Nuraddeen Abubakar Nuhu

Kevin Baird

Ranjith Appuhami

The Association between the Use of Management Accounting Practices with Organizational Change and Organizational Performance

管理会计实践与组织变革及组织绩效之间的关系

This study examines how firms’ use of competitor-focused accounting information, specifically competitor monitoring information, impacts their pricing, demand, and overall revenue performance. The monitoring activities examined are the scope of monitoring, monitoring above and below one’s own hotel class (i.e., market segment), and the extent of reciprocity of monitoring. Competitor analysis is a central element in strategic management accounting (SMA), yet little empirical research has been done since companies do not disclose competitor monitoring activities. Proving the value of competitive monitoring provides strong support for SMA. Archival, proprietary monitoring information regarding pricing, demand, and revenue were obtained from one of the largest hotel markets in the United States. Using regression, we modeled the relationships between performance measures (pricing, demand, and revenue) and monitoring behaviors, while controlling for quality (hotel characteristics and management skill), competitive intensity, hotel class, geographic location, and ownership type. Our results indicate that two aspects of competitor monitoring impact hotel pricing that, in turn, impacts hotel demand and revenue performance. Specifically, a hotel monitoring more competitors (what we refer to as Scope) achieves higher prices with unchanged demand, resulting in higher revenue performance. Most hotels monitor within their class. However, deviating from one’s class has profound outcomes: looking at lower (higher) quality hotels results in a hotel setting lower (higher) prices, resulting in higher (unchanged) demand and lower (higher) revenue performance. Surprisingly, we did not find support for the reciprocity of monitoring. That is, whether the competitors monitored by a hotel, in turn follow the target, has no impact on hotel revenue performance outcomes. While the SMA literature notes the importance of competitor monitoring, this study fills a gap in an important, under-researched area by documenting the link between competitor monitoring behaviors and organizational revenue performance. This may help promote greater diffusion of SMA practices.

James W. Hesford

Michael J. Turner

Nicolas Mangin

Charles R. Thomas

Kelly Hoffmann

Competitor Monitoring and Revenue Performance: Evidence from the Hospitality Industry

竞争对手监测与收入表现：来自酒店业的证据

Recent studies in cost behavior find that selling, general, and administrative costs (SG&A) and cost of good sold (CGS) are sticky, i.e., costs increase more with activity increases than they decrease in response to equivalent activity decreases. We examine whether the magnitude of the activity changes is the driving force behind this "sticky" phenomenon. Specifically, we explore how costs behave for different ranges of sales activity changes. SG&A and CGS costs do not exhibit sticky cost behavior for small revenue changes, implying linearity of costs with respect to revenue. However, when revenue changes by more than ten percent, costs exhibit sticky behavior. We also find inter-industry differences in the stickiness behavior of both SG&A and CGS costs as well as in the determinants of sticky behavior.

Chandra Subramaniam

Marcia Weidenmier Watson

Additional Evidence on the Sticky Behavior of Costs

成本粘性行为的进一步证据

Abstract 
Purpose 
This study provides evidence on how changes in management accounting and control systems (MACS) associate with competition, organizational capacity to learn, decentralization, and firm size. In doing this, it replicates (and extends) Libby and Waterhouse’s (L&W) Canadian study in the context of Australian manufacturing firms. 
 
 
Methodology/approach 
Drawing on contingency theory, the study uses data from a mail-out survey of a sample of Australian manufacturing firms. 
 
 
Findings 
Change in MACS was found to be significantly and positively associated with greater organizational capacity to learn and a more intensely competitive environment. Firm size and decentralization were not highly significant with changes in MACS. Additional analysis of the data indicated the generalizability of the L&W model across divisions of large corporations, but not across stand-alone firms and local market-oriented firms. 
 
 
Originality/value of paper 
The results contribute to the field of management accounting change by suggesting that when an organization experiences changes in its business environment its management control systems need changes too.

Zahirul Hoque

Drivers of Management Control Systems Change: Additional Evidence from Australia

管理控制系统变革的驱动因素：来自澳大利亚的补充证据

Behavioral aspects and positive attitudes toward the balanced scorecard (BSC) could be a determinant factor in the success of BSC implementation. In the study we use the contingency theory framework to examine whether adopting a planned strategy improves employees’ buying into the BSC and helps to maximize the benefits of BSC implementation by enhancing corporate performance. We hypothesize that employees’ attitudes and perceptions toward the implementation of the BSC are contingent upon the type of strategy the firm is employing and the suitability of deploying the BSC with this strategy in place. We use a path model that draws an association between the firm's strategy and employee attitudes toward BSC implementation and employs OLS regression to test the association between the variables. We also examine whether employees’ positive attitudes help to improve a firm's performance as proxied by the customer, internal processes, learning and innovation, and financial perspectives of the BSC. We sent a mail survey to Canadian and US firms to collect the necessary data in order to conduct this study. 
 
Conforming to our expectations, we find that firms that carefully plan their strategic objectives are more likely to have a positive impact on their employees’ perception of the BSC. A deliberate strategy – or planned strategy – as defined by Mintzberg (1978) is associated with higher levels of BSC awareness, perceptions of BSC ease of use, perceptions of BSC usefulness, and intentions to use the BSC. We also find that higher perceptions of BSC ease of use are positively associated with aspects of a firm's performance, such as from the customer, internal processes, and learning and innovation perspectives. Hence, we conclude that firms implementing the BSC need to take into consideration that the successful implementation of the BSC requires careful planning to ensure that the firm's strategic objectives are well formulated, in agreement with BSC measures, and effectively communicated to BSC users.

Majidul Islam

Hani Tadros

Corporate Strategy, Employees’ Attitudes Toward the Balanced Scorecard, and Corporate Performance: A Contingency Approach

企业战略、员工对平衡计分卡的态度与企业绩效：一种权变方法

Abstract 
Purpose 
We examine the interactive effects of organizational culture and structure on the success of implementing activity-based costing (ABC) in Chinese manufacturing firms. 
 
 
Methodology/approach 
We applied contingency theory of management accounting and used a questionnaire survey of 106 respondents. 
 
 
Findings 
The results indicate that a formalized organizational structure significantly affects the success of implementing ABC. The organizational culture factors, outcome orientation and attention to detail, were significantly associated with the success of implementing ABC. Further, interactions between centralization and outcome orientation and formalization and innovation were associated with success in implementing ABC. 
 
 
Research implications/limitations 
While this study is constrained to Chinese manufacturing firms, its findings have ramifications for organizations in both developed and less-developed economies as the study demonstrated that organizational structure and culture interact with each other to affect the implementation success of a management accounting system. 
 
 
Originality/value 
This paper presents the first attempt to demonstrate the interactive effect of organizational culture and structure on the success of implementing ABC in organizations.

Yi Fei Zhang

Che Ruhana Isa

The Effects of Organizational Culture and Structure on the Success of Activity-Based Costing Implementation

组织文化和结构对作业成本法实施成功的影响

ISSN	1474-7871
h-index	16

Publication Information	Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: book-series，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 2023，Proportion of original research papers: ，Self Citation Rate:， Gold OA Rate:

Advances in Management Accounting

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The Association between the Use of Management Accounting Practices with Organizational Change and Organizational Performance

Competitor Monitoring and Revenue Performance: Evidence from the Hospitality Industry

Additional Evidence on the Sticky Behavior of Costs

Drivers of Management Control Systems Change: Additional Evidence from Australia

Corporate Strategy, Employees’ Attitudes Toward the Balanced Scorecard, and Corporate Performance: A Contingency Approach

Competitor Monitoring and Revenue Performance: Evidence from the Hospitality Industry

The Association between the Use of Management Accounting Practices with Organizational Change and Organizational Performance

Additional Evidence on the Sticky Behavior of Costs

The Effects of Organizational Culture and Structure on the Success of Activity-Based Costing Implementation

Drivers of Management Control Systems Change: Additional Evidence from Australia