Organisational Change and Responsive Management Accounting Practice

Abstract

The primary purpose of management accounting is to help maintain organisational control (Emmanuel, Otley and Merchant 1990). However, different types of problems can be controlled in different ways (of which the management accounting system is one). Organisational control probably becomes most problematic when a fundamental change, such as total quality management, is introduced because problems can manifest themselves in new and unexpected ways. This article uses two complementary field studies to argue that management accountants need to understand these different types of control problems, how they change when TQM is introduced and how they can be controlled.