Management Accountants in the United States: Practitioner and Academic Views of Recent Developments

Abstract

Abstract Management accountants (although not called management accountants in those days) can be traced back to the 1700s, but some of the exciting developments are in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past two decades management accountants have moved from data accumulators, financial reporters, data analysts, decision-supporters and business advisers to business partners. Top level management accountants are now emerging as members of the most important business decision-making groups guiding major organizational, operational and strategic choices. This chapter focuses on the recent and meteoric rise of management accountants. Research identifies the knowledge, skills and abilities (known also as KSAs) required for doing management accounting, along with transformations and trends changing at blistering rates. The stresses and strains of these new roles are apparent in the continuing educational requirements for current management accountants in transition, as well as the new collegiate entrants into the profession. Studies supported by both practitioner and academic sources identify major gaps between practice and the collegiate classroom. Trying to synchronize management accounting education with practice may require practitioner-driven curricular change and academic programmes willing to risk innovation. A few academics offer innovative approaches to teaching management accounting in an academic environment that is not particularly disposed to publications about teaching. Specific areas of management accounting research (especially empirical field studies, cases and surveys of practice) and education (especially curriculum models and classroom tested cases or simulations with appropriate assessments of effectiveness) justify future support and development. With a rapidly changing environment management accountants may need a possible change in name to reflect the key role they occupy in the finance function of organizations.