Title: A survey of management accounting practices in South Africa

Authors: Nelson M. Waweru, Zahirul Hoque, Enrico Uliana

Addresses: School of Business and Administration, United States International University, P.O. Box 14634 – 00800, Nairobi, Kenya. ' School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia. ' Department of Accounting, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa

Abstract: This paper reports on a survey of management accounting practices in 52 South African firms. The survey was conducted in 2001 between January and April. The changes that have taken place in the field of management accounting and the factors that may have prompted management accounting change are also documented. Our findings indicate an increased use of most of the management accounting practices advocated in management accounting literature, in the sampled firms. Modern management accounting techniques such as activity based costing and balanced scorecard type performance measures are used together with the traditional management techniques such as budgeting and standard costing. Further, our survey revealed a significant change occurring in management accounting practices in South Africa in recent years. Such a change is mainly attributed to the opening up of the South African economy in the early 1990s.

Keywords: management accounting change; strategic management accounting; developing countries; South Africa; activity-based costing; ABC; balanced scorecard; performance measures; budgeting; standard costing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAPE.2005.007674

International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, 2005 Vol.2 No.3, pp.226 - 263

Published online: 01 Sep 2005 *

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