Strategic Management Accounting – A Messiah For Management Accounting.doc

Australian Journal of Business and Management Research Vol.1 No.4 [01-07] | July-2011 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING – A MESSIAH FOR MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING? Haider Shah (Corresponding author) Principal lecturer, Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, U.K AL10 8PN Email: s.h.a.shah@herts.ac.uk Ali Malik Ssenior lecturer Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, U.K AL10 9AB Email: m.a.1.malik@herts.ac.uk Muhammad Shaukat Malik Associate Professor Institute of Management Sciences, Bahuddin Zakariya University, Multan. (Pakistan) Email: shoukatmalik@.pk ABSTRACT When management accounting was introduced as an advanced version of cost accounting after second world war its early advocates had claimed that it would make accounting more useful in assisting managers in their decision making function. As the discipline has failed to live up to the promise now strategic management accounting has been presented as a messiah for the discipline of accounting. New promises have been made that while the traditional management accounting failed to make use of strategic thinking and other qualitative aspects of management the new discipline is likely to make accounting more relevant and important for managers. The empirical evidence on successful diffusion of strategic management accounting is still not overwhelming. It is therefore yet to be seen if strategic management accounting can live up to its promise in future or not. Keywords: Management, strategic management, cost accounting, strategic management accounting, decision making 1. INTRODUCTION Most textbooks of management accounting define the discipline in terms of its decision making role. It is generally stated that since managerial functions involve using information for better planning and control, therefore, management accounting is very important for effective and successful management at all levels. In this paper, we review the role of management accounting and after identifying its limit