Management Accounting in German-Speaking Countries

The overall purpose of the Management in German-Speaking Countries project is twofold: First, the diverse social and cultural influences on management accounting practices in Austrian companies shall be studied. These influences are supposed to occur on a company-specific level, a national level, and a supra-national, or European and global level. The second purpose of the project is to compare management accounting practices in Austrian, German, and Swiss firms. It is supposed that on a rhetoric level and at the level of formal management accounting systems and procedures there will be a high degree of similarity between the practices in the three countries. However, we expect that there are differences in accounting practices, that is, in the ways in which these systems are employed, particularly with respect to, for example, the significance of management accounting data, the processes of legitimating decisions through management accounting data, or more general, the overall power of management accounting regimes with respect to different institutional and cultural contexts in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. To study these processes of the reembedding of disembedded management accounting systems and standards management accounting practices in three Austrian, three German, and three Swiss manufacturing companies will be studied. The empirical studies comprise repeated interviews with management and financial accountants as providers and persons from production and marketing departments as users of accounting information. Furthermore, there will be participant observation in all nine companies studied. The project will contribute (1) to the knowledge of management accounting practice in the German-speaking world; (2) to a location of Austrian companies` accounting practices within the German speaking world and on the basis of cooperation within a Eurpoean-wide research network Europe; (3) to strengthening the German-speaking voice in international management accounting research; and (4) to the further development of the theory of management accounting as social and organizational practice.

The overall purpose of the Management in German-Speaking Countries project is twofold: First, the diverse social and cultural influences on management accounting practices in Austrian companies shall be studied. These influences are supposed to occur on a company-specific level, a national level, and a supra-national, or European and global level. The second purpose of the project is to compare management accounting practices in Austrian, German, and Swiss firms. It is supposed that on a rhetoric level and at the level of formal management accounting systems and procedures there will be a high degree of similarity between the practices in the three countries. However, we expect that there are differences in accounting practices, that is, in the ways in which these systems are employed, particularly with respect to, for example, the significance of management accounting data, the processes of legitimating decisions through management accounting data, or more general, the overall power of management accounting regimes with respect to different institutional and cultural contexts in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. To study these processes of the reembedding of disembedded management accounting systems and standards management accounting practices in three Austrian, three German, and three Swiss manufacturing companies will be studied. The empirical studies comprise repeated interviews with management and financial accountants as providers and persons from production and marketing departments as users of accounting information. Furthermore, there will be participant observation in all nine companies studied. The project will contribute (1) to the knowledge of management accounting practice in the German-speaking world; (2) to a location of Austrian companies` accounting practices within the German speaking world and on the basis of cooperation within a Eurpoean-wide research network Europe; (3) to strengthening the German-speaking voice in international management accounting research; and (4) to the further development of the theory of management accounting as social and organizational practice.