Does Management Accounting Lose Relevance Again? Supply-Chain Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore how supply chain has pose new challenges for management accounting regarding costing and performance measurement issues and whether management accounting contend with these challenges. The development of management accounting and how it regained its relevance will be discussed in general. Then, the new challenges rose as a result of the introduction to the notion of supply-chain in the areas of costing and performance measurement will be clarified. Although current management accounting practices are perceived by many researchers as useful in the context of supply chain, the new challenges rose by supply chain have now propelled the management accounting researchers to realise a “condition for possibility” for revisiting the “relevance lost” thesis and its post-relevance-lost era in which a number of management accounting innovations have been introduced. The major contribution of this paper is that it paves the way for researchers to commence in re-testing the ideas embodied in management accounting and its relevancy to supply-chain context.