The Adoption of Western Management Accounting Practices in Transitional Economies: Evidence from Romania

• In Event: Accounting Behavior & Organization and Management Accounting

Abstract

This paper is concerned about the adoption of Western management accounting practices in organizations in transitional economies, in particular former communist economies. The aim is to understand how the management accounting innovations are implemented and used in these environments. The empirical setting of our analysis is a large Romanian construction company that had implemented and diffused Western-style management accounting innovations in its 20 independent subsidiaries/business units. Data for the study were collected between 2005 and 2010 from multiple sources, including semi-structured interviews, direct participant observations, informal discussions and document analysis. The paper finds that over time the internal decision facilitating role intended for the Management Accounting System (MAS) changed towards generating information for external financial reporting and taxation. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) the paper explores the role of key actors in shaping the MAS.

Authors

• Nadia Albu, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies

• Catalin N. Albu, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies

• Guinea A. Flavius, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies

• Mathew Tsamenyi, University of Birmingham