Management Accounting in the Digital Economy

The deployment of digital technologies by enterprises affects not just their functioning in economic terms, but also mobilizes broader social, institutional and organizational effects. This book explores these issues, and looks at the way in which management accounting systems structures, thinking, and practices are being altered as a result. There is mounting evidence that the deployment of digital technologies by enterprises affects not just their functioning in economic terms, but also mobilizes broader social, institutional, and organizational effects. At a technical level, digitization directly influences organizational processes. Notions of its potential also define managerial pursuits and the search for enhanced organizational performance. Inevitably, digitizatoin impacts the form, substance and provenance of internal accounting information with attendant consequences on the behaviour and actions of decision makers. Knowledge about the influence of digital technologies on management accounting thinking processes and practices is starting to emerge. A variety of issues relating to pricing strategies, cost management and control mechanisms are evident. But the implications for the field are far wider. Aspects of trust, organizational power, cultural shifts, strategization, convergence of product and information elements, and newly perceived contingencies between information dimensions and contextual factors are altering management accounting systems, structures, thinking, and practices. This book explores these and other issues along different planes of reference. The first part of the book consists of chapters that discuss accounting and management control systems and wider structural shifts connected with the advent of digital technologies. In the second section,…