Title: The knowledge, attitude, priority of usage and benefits associated with management accounting practices: a survey of Danish companies

Authors: Steen Nielsen, Morten Jacobsen, Preben Melander

Addresses: Department of Business Studies, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, 8210 Aarhus, Denmark. ' Department of Business Studies, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, 8210 Aarhus, Denmark. ' Center for Company Development and Technology, Copenhagen Business School, Howitzvej 13, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark

Abstract: There have been several studies of the diffusion of new management accounting practices. Respondents were asked to answer questions in a questionnaire covering four variables: level of knowledge, level of attitude, priority of usage and level of benefit for 15 new accounting practices. The survey includes a sample of 119 large and medium-sized privately owned manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. For those companies that indicate a |high| level of priority of usage, our results reveal a high level of benefit from the practices. However, significant differences between low priority of usage and high number of practices associated with the company are very likely to contribute to a more modest level of benefits. Based on the analysis between number of practices and benefits, about 20% of the companies associate themselves with four to six projects on new accounting practices in their organisation. This might lead to poor performance and high failure rates.

Keywords: accounting practices; activity-based costing; attitude; balanced scorecard; benefit; accounting combinations; Denmark; knowledge; usage priority; survey; management accounting.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAPE.2009.026628

International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, 2009 Vol.5 No.3, pp.252 - 284

Published online: 21 Jun 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article