Handbook of Management Accounting Research Volume This page intentionally left blank Handbook of Management Accounting Research Volume Edited by CHRISTOPHER S CHAPMAN University of Oxford, UK ANTHONY G HOPWOOD University of Oxford, UK MICHAEL D SHIELDS Michigan State University, USA AMSTERDAM – BOSTON – HEIDELBERG – LONDON – NEW YORK – OXFORD PARIS – SAN DIEGO – SAN FRANCISCO – SINGAPORE – SYDNEY – TOKYO Elsevier The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 GB, UK Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, The Netherlands First edition 2007 Copyright r 2007 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher Permission may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone (+44) (0) 1865 843830; fax (+44) (0) 1865 853333; email: permissions@elsevier.com Alternatively you can submit your request online by visiting the Elsevier web site at http://elsevier.com/locate/permissions, and selecting Obtaining permission to use Elsevier material Notice No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein Because of rapid advances in the medical science, in particular, independent vertification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made ISBN-13: ISBN-10: ISBN-13: ISBN-10: 978-0-08-044564-9 (Volume 1) 0-08-044564-0 (Volume 1) 978-0-08-045340-8 (Volumes 1+2) 0-08-045340-6 (Volumes 1+2) For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at books.elsevier.com Printed and bound in The Netherlands 07 08 09 10 11 10 Contents Contributors to Volume vii Preface ix THE SCOPE OF THE MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING RESEARCH LITERATURE Management Accounting: A Bibliographic Study James W Hesford, Sung-Han (Sam) Lee, Wim A Van der Stede and S Mark Young Mapping Management Accounting: Graphics and Guidelines for Theory-Consistent Empirical Research Joan Luft and Michael D Shields 27 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES Theorizing Practice in Management Accounting Research Thomas Ahrens and Christopher S Chapman 99 Psychology Theory in Management Accounting Research Jacob G Birnberg, Joan Luft and Michael D Shields 113 Economics in Management Accounting Michael Bromwich 137 Theorising Contingencies in Management Control Systems Research Robert H Chenhall 163 Critical Theorising in Management Accounting Research David J Cooper and Trevor Hopper 207 Agency Theory and Management Accounting Richard A Lambert 247 Historical Theorizing in Management Accounting Research Joan Luft 269 v vi 10 Management Accounting and Sociology Peter Miller 285 RESEARCH METHODS 11 Doing Qualitative Field Research in Management Accounting: Positioning Data to Contribute to Theory Thomas Ahrens and Christopher S Chapman 299 Doing Quantitative Field Research in Management Accounting Shannon W Anderson and Sally K.Widener 319 Comparative Management Accounting Research: Past Forays and Emerging Frontiers Alnoor Bhimani 343 Analytic Modeling in Management Accounting Research Joel S Demski 365 There and Back Again: Doing Interventionist Research in Management Accounting Sten Joănsson and Kari Lukka 373 Doing Archival Research in Management Accounting Frank Moers 399 Experimental Research in Managerial Accounting Geoffrey B Sprinkle and Michael G Williamson 415 Doing Management Accounting Survey Research Wim A Van der Stede, S Mark Young and Clara Xiaoling Chen 445 Author Index for Volumes and A-1 Subject Index for Volumes and S-1 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Contributors to Volume Thomas Ahrens Shannon W Anderson Alnoor Bhimani Jacob G Birnberg Michael Bromwich Christopher S Chapman Clara Xiaoling Chen Robert H Chenhall David J Cooper Joel S Demski James W Hesford Trevor Hopper Sten Joănsson Richard A Lambert Sung-Han (Sam) Lee Joan Luft Kari Lukka Peter Miller Frank Moers Michael D Shields Geoffrey B Sprinkle Wim A Van der Stede Sally K Widener Michael G Williamson S Mark Young vii This page intentionally left blank Preface Researching the practice of management accounting is challenging and interesting, because management accounting is a set of practices that are often loosely coupled to one another and varying across both time and space A variety of ways of researching management accounting practice also have emerged, changed over time, and have been diffused unevenly around the world Even management accounting terminology is neither uniform nor constant, with the term ‘‘management accounting’’ itself seemingly appearing in the 1930s and 1940s in America after many of the individual practices had already emerged Focussing on facilitating economic decision-making and the wider planning and control of organizations, the practices of management accounting have tended to have separate trajectories of development and modes of organizational functioning, thus making management accounting a loosely coupled set of fragmented practices Costing and its various derivatives, capital and operational budgeting, internal financial (and increasingly non-financial) performance measurement, transfer pricing between the subunits of an organization, and organization-wide financial planning and control systems can all be subsumed under the mantel of management accounting, although what practices are considered to be management accounting and, indeed, what other fields management accounting is considered to be related to varies around the world In Sweden, for instance, budgeting is considered as a component of general management rather than accounting, and certainly in Japan and in some countries of Continental Europe, cost accounting is considered as having more to with engineering than a more narrowly conceived accounting Indeed, cost engineering is a recognized term in Japan However, although until now these separate management accounting practices have often been loosely coupled, developments in information systems may be requiring and enabling a much greater degree of integration with other practices in and between organizations Costing systems are increasingly a part of enterprise-wide planning and control systems Budgeting, in turn, is increasingly a part of strategic and operational planning, thereby becoming a component in a wider complex of systems and practices geared to organizational coordination and development Similarly, performance measurement increasingly is being expanded to include non-financial measures and integrated with strategy But interestingly, such trends, in turn, often stimulate the development of more ad-hoc local elaborations of these practices as employees at a variety of organizational levels seek to relate their own information needs to their local circumstances and requirements So paradoxically, processes of integration can set into motion counter processes of disintegration and fragmentation In this way, management accounting can take on a variety of forms and produce different information as decision contexts, organizational assumptions, and time horizons that change in time and space More informal information flows attuned to a variety of information needs can reside alongside the structures of more centralized and standardized management accounting practices These developments may be part of a much more general diffusion of economic calculation throughout organizations What might in some countries have been the preserve of the accountant is increasingly becoming a significant part of the functioning of the marketing manager, the operations manager, the research manager, those responsible for strategy, for product design, and so on Management accounting is in the process of becoming a much more dispersed practice because in organizations today economic information and calculation appear to be permeating all of their key management processes Faced with such changes and developments, it is hardly surprising that there is an interest in the state of systematic knowledge in the field of management accounting and in the research processes that develop this knowledge To satisfy that interest is the aim of the Handbook of Management Accounting Research Systematic enquiries into what is now known as management accounting have a long history, particularly in Continental Europe, but by research as we now know it is largely the product of the twentieth century, particularly the latter half of it Key pioneering enquiries were made as part of the development of economic theories of cost accounting and controllership in Austria, Germany, and Italy in the earlier part of the twentieth century, and the school of costing associated with the London School of Economics in the 1930s was particularly influential In the USA there were related attempts to explore the nature of cost accounting and ix .. .Handbook of Management Accounting Research Volume This page intentionally left blank Handbook of Management Accounting Research Volume Edited by CHRISTOPHER S CHAPMAN University of Oxford,... scale and scope of managementaccounting research A great deal has been achieved The task of researching management accounting practices nevertheless remains challenging and interesting Many of the... communications across them Section presents the database and method we use to chart the field of management accounting in terms of topics, methods, and source disciplines Section presents the results of several