Management Accounting in Support of Strategy ― How Management Accounting Can Aid the Strategic Management Process

In the 1980’s and 1990’s management accounting was criticised for being too operationally focused and failing to aid strategic decision making. As a response the term strategic management accounting, along with new techniques, were promoted to address the issue. Despite the emergence of articles and books explaining the strategic management concepts and techniques, the term has not become an accepted element in the lexicon of accounting practitioners. Research, however, suggests that practitioners do use a variety of management accounting techniques to support the achievement of strategic objectives. This book, rather than just explain the techniques, takes a different approach and utilises the strategic management framework to indicate how management accounting can aid the strategic management process and hence strategic decision making. It takes the view that management accounting should aid management decision making whether it be operational, business or strategic. A range of strategy models and accounting techniques are covered in the book together with an explanation of how they can be combined to aid the analysis, development, implementation and evaluation of strategy. The book will aid students who are studying accounting courses as well as those studying courses for which business strategy forms a part of the content. There are books that cover accounting techniques, and books that cover strategy models, but few that emphatically link the two together to provide guidance on how management accounting can aid the strategic management process. The book will also benefit practitioners wishing to understand how the accountant can make a significant contribution to the strategic management of an organisation to ensure its continued success.