Management accounting of control practices : a matter of and for strategy

• The present article asks how strategy is expressed through different strategic management accounting (SMA) techniques in a public organization - the Swedish Transport Administration. Strategic management (SM) emphasizes the importance of long-term, proactive and holistic thinking in strategic work. The results of this study, however, shows that these characteristics are much more difficult to represent in public organizations. This is due to the contextual conditions in the public sector. For example, public organizations do not have the authority to influence all aspects of SM. The results also show that it is not only the contextual conditions that a public organization must take into account in order to understand its strategic work, but also the management practice and the specific SMA techniques used. One conclusion is that we need another dimension of strategic management accounting, namely management accounting of control practices. On the basis of the identified tensions in relations to SMA, namely between; parts/hole, short-/ long-term, reactivity / proactivity and complexity/simplicity, we propose a conceptual model to characterize management accounting of control practices with reference to strategy.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

strategic management accounting (SMA)

strategizing

public sector

industriell ekonomi och organisation

Industrial Economics and Organisations

Economy

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)