Are management accounting reports useful?

This article reports the results of a field study on the usefulness of management accounting reports. Users in three companies with different technologies claim to benefit greatly from such reports. Their motivations for this suggest that accounting reports fill a score-keeping function (Simon et al., Centralization vs Decentralization in Organizing the Controller's Department, New York: The Controllership Foundation, 1954) rather than a decision support function. Factors which strongly influence the users' benefit from management accounting information differ for different technologies. In the Mass-producing Company, the ability of management accounting systems (MAS) to describe activities is associated with the usefulness of the reports, while in the Processing Company aspects attributable to the user are the most significant. In the Wholesaling Company, finally, both user characteristics and organizational structure are associated with the usefulness of MAS reports. Most significant is the ability to control operations and measurability in the particular situation.