Question

The roll of management accountant has changed considerably over the last few decades from being primarily a ‘number crunching’ function, recording and reporting on a diverse range of aspects of a company’s current financial health status, to a much more valuable broader strategic roll, vitally important in planning and decision making.

Discuss this statement with reference to the changing business environment that has led to substantial changes in how management accounting operates and outline what you have found to be the current roll that the management accountant is required to perform in a large organization.

Answer 1

A Management Accountant is also known as a Corporate Accountant works within a company. There's been a rapid change in the business environment as it is becoming more complex and highly competitive. Globalization, liberalization, technological advancements, and interconnectivity have made life tougher for organizations. Customers are considered to be the king, and therefore they are demanding more variety, better quality, including both reliability, and faster delivery, which is why the need for transparent, reliable and correct statistics is required along with planning and decision for the management accountant. Therefore, this dynamic changing environment requires a dynamic management accountant that can have a greater impact on an organization.

In a large organization, the management accountant has to understand how to create and use good management accounting information. Computer technology is one of the significant reasons to affect management accounting, as it allows the accountant to track performance information that goes beyond the cost-based information of historic general ledger systems. A good management accountant should have the responsibility to manage a wide variety of important information. Therefore, the accountants in large organizations need to anticipate and be well prepared to deal with various ethical dilemmas.