Skills, Influence, and Effectiveness of Management Accountants

Abstract

The role of the management accountant (MA) has broadened to include acting as a strategic business partner. Our study examines whether MAs believe they need interpersonal skills (i.e., ability to constructively challenge and question assumptions, numbers, and their meanings), conceptual skills (i.e., making and leading decisions consistent with the organization's business environment and strategy), and/or technical skills (i.e., computer, accounting, and data modeling) to be influential and effective in this expanded role. To examine our hypotheses, we use survey data from 215 controllers in Dutch healthcare organizations and develop a partial least squares path model. We conclude that interpersonal and conceptual skills are associated with MAs' perceptions that they influence management's decision making, while all three skills are associated with their effectiveness. We also find that technical and conceptual skills are jointly associated with the influence of MAs while conceptual and interpersonal skills are jointly associated with their effectiveness.

Big data and decision quality: the role of management accountants’ data analytics skills

“…To the best of the authors' knowledge, our study is the first to underpin the relevance of data analytics skills of management accountants for desirable organizationlevel outcomes such as decision quality. Our study thus confirms notions expressed in the literature suggesting that data analytics skills and other IT-related skills for management accountants are about to increase in importance (Andreassen, 2020;Bhatta and Hiebl, 2022;Coyne et al, 2018;Oesterreich and Teuteberg, 2019;Schnegg and Möller, 2022;ten Rouwelaar et al, 2021;Wadan et al, 2019;Wolf et al, 2020). At the same time, our results complement those of Szukits (2022).…”

“…Note that within any given organization, there are usually several management accountants (Andreassen, 2020; Windeck et al , 2015). So in the following, we do not refer to individual management accountants’ skills, but similar to earlier research on management accountants’ skills (ten Rouwelaar et al , 2021), we refer to the skills that are present in an organization’s entire group of management accountants. That is, we treat the overall skills commanded by a given organization’s management accountants as an organizational-level phenomenon.…”

Kepribadian Serakah (Greed) sebagai Tantangan Etika dan Kepemimpinan dalam Profesi Akuntan Manajemen

“…Peranan etika dalam profesi akuntan manajemen menjadi topik yang menarik untuk diteliti seiring dengan maraknya kecurangan dalam pelaporan keuangan (West, 2017). Hal ini dikarenakan akuntan manajemen bertanggungjawab dalam mengontrol, memastikan kepatuhan, dan mengelola keuangan (Rouwelaar, dkk., 2021) guna menghasilkan laporan keuangan secara objektif dan wajar yang berguna bagi pemangku kepentingan. Dengan demikian, akuntan manajemen memiliki kewajiban tidak hanya sebatas pada perusahaan tempat kerjanya melainkan juga kepada publik sebagai pengguna laporan keuangan (Fatt, 1995).…”

“…Kepribadian greed yang mengarah pada kecenderungan tidak puas dan selalu menginginkan lebih (Seuntjens, dkk., 2016;Sajko, dkk., 2021) berpotensi menjadi tantangan dalam penerapan etika dan kepemimpinan etis bagi profesi akuntan manajemen. Akuntan manajemen bertanggung jawab untuk menyajikan laporan keuangan yang wajar dan dapat dipercaya sehingga berguna bagi pemangku kepentingan (Rouwelaar, dkk., 2021). Disisi lain, pemberian kompensasi dapat memotivasi akuntan manajemen untuk meraih target laba yang ditetapkan perusahaan.…”

The effect of management control systems in managing the unknown: Does the market appreciate the breadth of vision?

“…We suggest that in major crises and unknown situations, such as the unprecedented and catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic (Rinaldi et al 2020 ; Navarro-Picado et al 2022 ), organizations equipped with broad-scope MCS are able to make better and informed decisions (Kober and Thambar 2021 ), and their strategic market movements are detected by investors. Interestingly, despite the potential for MCS to influence and support managers’ forward-looking decision-making, there is scant empirical evidence on their association with market reactions in the accounting and finance literature, even though prior work recognizes the usefulness and effectiveness of MCS for organizations that perceive high levels of environmental uncertainty (Otley 2016 ; Guenther and Heinicke 2019 ; Sageder and Feldbauer-Durstmüller 2019 ; ten Rouwelaar et al 2021 ). Signaling theory also suggests that markets quickly incorporate these movements and new information about organizations with more broad-scope MCS, which might be better able to identify new opportunities.…”