In the introduction, the author links the widely published criticisms of management accounting practise during the 1980s and 1990s as being the reason for the surge of interest gained by SMA as it assigns strategic role for management accounting. This is, then followed by the author providing arguments for and against the strategic management accounting by the use of relevant academic ideas provided …show more content…
Similarly, the criticisms for SMA as suggested by Hoffjan and Wompener states that SMA is seen as nothing more than a way to increase the importance of management accountants, and also to increase the appeal of the profession by including strategic tasks. The author has placed importance on having clear distinction between the traditional management accounting and SMA.
The article identifies that strategic management accounting doesn’t have a widely accepted definition and that the empirical researches are insufficient as the empirical research carried out are only focused on the techniques and level of usage. Also, there seems to be an existence of accounting lag as evidenced by the lack of progress of SMA despite being introduced for a long time (Lang-field Smith, …show more content…
SMA is seen as a process and the usage of SMA techniques are said to be framed into process stages. Thus, variations in perceptions of SMA process can be expected depending on the variations in the techniques. Some authors see the usage of SMA techniques through four stages process (Dixon and Smith, 1993) and whereas some see it as a six-stage process (Lord, 1996). The differences occur because the perception of this process is heavily reliant on the perception of strategic management