Strategic Perspective in Management Accounting: Field-Based Evidence

The aim of this research project is to describe Strategic Management Accounting (SMA) techniques, to explore the relationship between business strategy and SMA techniques and to integrate the survey through interviews for assessing some relevant assertions related to SMA practices to support strategic processes. The paper presents the empirical results of a field-based investigation on SMA practices, such as strategic costing techniques, strategic competitor information, organizational performance in evaluating strategies. The questionnaire results reveal that relatively few companies use strategic costing techniques and this is quite consistent with the literature. However, the companies that use strategic costing consider all the set of techniques for providing information to support strategy. Target, value chain and quality costing are prevalent costing techniques used. In the set of strategic competitor information the survey findings indicate that: competitor position monitoring is very much used; competitor appraisals based on published financial statements are much employed; competitor cost assessment shows a little use. Organizational performance in evaluating strategies, both balanced scorecard and risk management, are considered highly important as SMA techniques. Using the interview method, in assessing whether strategic activities tend to be formal and structured, evidence emerges regarding structure, formality and the importance of strategic information in business development and implementation.