Purpose
Research in the areas of management accounting and control is quite extensive. However, with much of it centring on theoretical development, it is easy to forget that as researchers we should periodically reflect upon the actual management accounting and control practices in situ to add to our knowledge, and to guide us in appropriate directions for future research. To do so, we firstly require knowledge of extant practices. However, in the Irish context, no broad research on the management accounting and control practices of business has been undertaken since the work of Pierce and O’Dea (1998). More recent work such as that of Elafi (2017), Cleary (2015), Byrne and Pierce (2007) and Pierce and Brown (2004) have explored some specific elements of management accounting in an Irish setting, but have not attempted to deliver a representative view of the totality of management accounting and control practices in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Thus, the most recent survey of management accounting and control practices of Irish firms occurred nearly two decades ago. This points to a lack of knowledge in this area and to one worthy of investigation.
Design/methodology/approach
To conduct this study, we used a survey instrument, the questions for which build upon prior work conducted by Rikhardsson et al. (2012), who had previously conducted a similar survey of SMEs in Iceland. The survey contains questions in areas such as the following; costing methods, budgeting, internal controls and risk assessment and performance measurement; the answers to which will allow us to provide a snapshot of the management accounting and control practices of Irish SMEs. Our electronic survey instrument was administered to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or equivalent of over 360 Irish indigenous SMEs, and the number of completed surveys amounted to 109; a usable response rate of just over 30%.
Findings
The findings suggest that Irish SMEs primarily use traditional costing systems and continue to use financial metrics as their main performance indicators. However, the results also reveal a series of interesting facts not previously reported from an Irish SME perspective. For example, some firms are using alternative approaches to budgeting such as zero-based budgeting and kaizen budgeting, the majority of SMEs appear to use a participative approach to budget setting, the importance of internal controls was re-affirmed, and respondents unequivocally endorse the use of management accounting techniques/information for strategic purposes.
Originality/value
The value of this paper is that it adds to our knowledge of the vastly under-researched management accounting and control practices of Irish SMEs, and secondly, its findings should guide us in the appropriate directions to consider for future research endeavours. We sincerely hope that by doing so it will facilitate future discussion, theorising and possibly provide some narrowing of the research practice gap (Tucker and Parker, 2014).
Keywords Management accounting, management control, current practices, change, SMEs, Ireland
