Strategic Management Accounting and the Contributions that It Can Make to the Success of Organizations

During the late 1980s, criticisms of traditional management accounting practices were widely publicise and new approaches, which were more in tune with the current belligerent and business environment, fall outd (Drury, 2002, p923). A particularly effective approach was strategical management accounting (SMA). However, Tomkins and Carr (quoted in Drury, 2008, p.570) note that there is no comprehensive definition of SMA, even though it has received a lot of publicity. This essay will seek to compromise the definitions strand in literature. It will also focus on most selected modern management accounting techniques encompassed within the domain of SMA, much(prenominal) as life-cycle costing, target costing, value chain abbreviation and the equilibrise scorecard. Furthermore it will analyze how they can make their contributions towards the winner of an organization.

SMA is the ?provision of information to support the strategic decisions in organizations? (Innes 1996, cited in Drury, 2008, p.570) and these strategic decisions usually involve the longer-term, have a important effect on the organization and have both informal and impertinent elements. This definition is supported by Cooper and Kaplan (1988). A variety of writers have suggested that target costing, life-cycle costing and activity-based management ar additionally encompassed within SMA (Drury, 2008, p.570).

Other writers have adopted definitions that SMA emphasizes external elements (Drury, 2008).



Simmonds (1981, 1982, cited in Drury, 2008, p.570), who first created the term SMA, views it as the provision and analysis of information about a business and its competitors which is useful in the development and monitoring of the strategy of that business. In his view, profits emerge not from internal efficiencies but from the firm?s belligerent position in its foodstuffs. (Drury, 2008, p.570)Although there is a lack of consensus on what SMA is, some basic characteristics are reflected uniformly, that is, involving the external environment and market and hence...

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