Changing In The Role Of Management Accountant Accounting Essay

Changing In The Role Of Management Accountant Accounting Essay Abstract This essay gives an overview of the changing role of management accountant and the management accounting practices. An idea of how these changes were developed and the factors behind the changes what were the reasons for implementing the changes, what were the main drivers and to what extent these changes are now being practice in the real business world? Introduction Over the few decades- many writers have pointed to the work of Johnson and Kaplan (1987) as an organ in this respect that there has been a shift in the expectation of management accountant. This essay is a brief overview of why, how, and to what extent there has been a change in the role of management accountant over the last three decades. In the past decades business environment has changed significantly, this is mainly because of the changes in technology and ever growing demands of business managers all around the globe. These changes have brought a significant level of change in economical factors of busi ness world and management accounting is no exception. And with these changes management accounting as a whole is effected, it has brought changes in accounting system and techniques and has been subject to various debates as to bring changes in the function of accounting. Nevertheless, there have been mainly two types of development: adoption of new tools and techniques which enhances accounting practice, and on the other hand change in the role of management accountant, which is towards acting more in decision making and advisory rather than solely focusing on providing information. In the following sections this essay will give a brief idea of the main reason behind the changes and how these changes effected the management accounting practices and to what extent these changes are adapted by the accounting sector. Reasons for the changes The ever changing environmental and technological factors has affected the global economy in past few decades, and accounting and finance is a key player in running any economy. And as being a major factor in running any economy accounting practices has suffered significantly. But the focus in this essay is on management accounting and its practitioner and why, how and to what extent there has been a change in their practice. Laboring under the shadow of financial reporting, auditing and taxation, on number of occasion’s management accounting has escaped the spotlight of critics. Often management accounting and the role of management accountant is relegated to the lower crust of accounting, and was limited to the role of organizational book keeping and budgeting and sometimes only to the extent of obligatory university or professional body courses. But if we look in this matter from historical point of view management accounting was and to some extent still considered as a dull profession. We can say that due to globalization of markets which have increased competition, and now markets are more volatile, where reaction time is very little for companies to act. Advancement in information and production technologies, which have reduce the time of information processing by accounting specialist and has enabled other organizational staff to take up tasks by themselves which were previously labeled for accountants.   [ i ]