Review of Handbook of Management Accounting Research, Volume 1

Citation

Stringer, C. (2009), "Review of Handbook of Management Accounting Research, Volume 1", Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 428-430. https://doi.org/10.1108/18325910910987025

Management accounting (MA) involves a loosely coupled set of accounting and management practices in a diverse range of organizations. This provides many opportunities and challenges as it covers a broad range of topics and is multidisciplinary. This complexity makes it difficult for many people reading the MA literature to easily gain an understanding of how the various papers link together because each paper appears to tackle a different topic, uses a different method, and there is often little discussion of how a particular paper builds on prior studies. MA research is at a critical stage where there is a pressing need to reflect on what we have learnt from MA research over the past 30 years so we can work together to build a cumulative body of research.

The challenge to review the MA literature has been taken up by Chris Chapman, Anthony Hopwood and Michael Shields in the Handbook of Management Accounting Research. The editors have brought together some of the leading MA scholars to review, critique and offer directions for future research in their area of specialization. While many review articles have been published over the years, the wonderful thing about this anthology is that it provides an authoritative understanding of the current state of the MA literature.

This book review focuses on Vol. 1 of the Handbook that includes an overview of MA research, the different theoretical perspectives and research methods. The first two chapters provide a review of the MA literature. The bibliographic review is a fascinating read for anyone interested in MA research, or wanting to get an overview of MA research published between 1981 and 2000 (by Hesford, Lee, van der Stede and Young). Some data that interests me includes: MA research accounts for 28 per cent of all articles in the ten journals studied (with half these articles published in AOS and MAR), field studies are mainly published in MAR, while most archival studies are found in the North American journals (JAR, TAR, CAR and RAS), and economics and sociology are the two most used disciplines in MA. Most of the articles are on management control, with the emphasis changing towards performance measurement and evaluation. Using citation analysis they provide further support for the view that the research community is divided into two sub‐networks “one around AOS and MAR, and the other around the eight journals edited in North America”. They then discuss some reasons for this silo‐approach to the research including that “AOS and MAR have a greater tendency to publish case, field and survey studies that draw on sociology”, whereas the eight North American journals “tend to publish more analytical, archival, and experimental studies that draw on economics”. Other striking findings are that 67 per cent of authors published only one article in these journals, highlighting the difficulty in getting published in top journals, and the small pool of top researchers is evident.

Mapping Management Accounting provides a micro review of MA research in Chapter 2 (Luft and Shields). The visual presentation of MA research into nine maps makes it easy to understand the direction of the explanatory links between prior studies. What is striking from these maps is the diversity of variables studied. These maps help researchers to understand what has gone before, and how they can build on prior studies. The authors also highlight a range of important issues that need to be carefully considered in future studies including the nature and direction of the relationships, implications where studies use different levels of analysis, etc.

What we have learnt from MA research from different theoretical perspectives is the focus of Chapters 3‐10. Each of these chapters provides an insightful introduction to the particular perspective, followed by a review of research streams selected by the authors, some critical analysis of the current state of the research to date, and directions for future research.

In Chapter 3, Ahrens and Chapman review interpretive studies that theorise practice including governmentality, accountability, actor network theory and situated functionality. Chapter 4 provides an introduction to psychology theories used in MA research (by Birnberg, Luft and Shields). Their review includes motivation theories (e.g. goal setting theory), social psychology theories (e.g. social comparison theory), cognitive psychology theories (e.g. heuristics and biases). Bromwich reviews economics in MA and explains the methods and assumptions used, and discusses why this area focuses on understanding MA and making predictions and hypotheses. He also discusses the dominance of economics based research, and observes that only a small pool of researchers are responsible for the current research and how much of this research is what he calls “somewhat isolated and subject‐dependent islands”. In the next chapter, Chenhall provides a critical summary of contingency theory research over the past 25 years. He summarises research into the key contingency variables (e.g. external environment), along with research propositions, a critical evaluation, and directions for future research. Cooper and Hopper provide an insightful review of labour‐process theory and post‐structuralism in Chapter 7. They also include a critique of strategic MA and new public management studies, and give some useful directions for future research. Chapters 8‐10 include Lambert's review of agency theory research (see his discussion on common misconceptions), Luft's examination of the findings from the historical research perspective, and Miller's investigation as to why MA is being re‐discovered by sociologists.

The final eight chapters examine some of the typical research methods used in MA. These chapters provide us with rich insights from longstanding researchers about the particular research methods they specialize in. Each chapter starts with an introduction that is useful to gain an understanding of research methods, particularly those we are less familiar with. My favourite parts of these chapters are the range of “tips” and “pitfalls” from experts who have “been there and done it” (many times). The research process can be described as a minefield, as problems in a particular study often become evident when it is too late to fix them. The advice provided from the experts is invaluable.

The extensive nature of the review of research methods in MA is evident from the topics covered in these last eight chapters that include qualitative field research and theory building (Ahrens and Chapman), quantitative field research in MA (Anderson and Widener), comparative research (Bhimani), analytical modeling (Demski), interventionist research such as how to cross the border between etic and emic perspectives (Jönsson and Lukka), archival research (Moers), experimental research (Sprinkle and Williamson), and survey research (van der Stede, Young and Chen).

I wish to congratulate Chris Chapman, Anthony Hopwood and Michael Shields for the work they have done to present this anthology that is an important resource for MA researchers. Another contribution of the editors has been the bringing together of the “two worlds” with contributions from North American as well as European and Australasian MA researchers.

The Handbook is a valuable resource for everyone. Experienced researchers can use this to reflect on their research area, their contribution, and future directions. These reviews also provide a first port of call for researchers beginning the research process, or starting in a new area, or using a new research method. I also use the Handbook as a key resource in my honours classes and with post‐graduate students. In addition to library holdings, I would expect that at least one copy of the Handbook would be held in each MA department.

What a brilliant idea to bring together some of the world's top researchers and to get them to review the area where they have specialized over a long‐period of time. What is surprising is that no one had thought of doing this before!