4

Глосарій

business entity – комерційне підприємство

operating budget – операційний бюджет

capital budget – бюджет капіталовкладень

corporate strategy – корпоративна стратегія

strategic objective –стратегічна ціль

budget to actual – порівняння факту і плану

market share – частка ринку

Cost reduction – скорочення витрат

Sales growth – ріст продажів

Goal attainment – реалізація цілей

Budget adherence – виконання бюджету

Profit margin – рентабельність продажів

corporate culture – корпоративна культура

budget number –показники бюджету

management accounting – управлінський облік

management control systems (MCS) – управлінські контрольні системи

cultural values - культурні цінности

behavioural patterns – моделі поведінки

considerable evid­ence – достатні докази

information processing – обробка інформації

Strategic choices in global economy: choosing a suitable numerical measures.

Nature of managerial accounting 1

Overview of culture and management control systems 2

Choosing a strategic objective 3

Interdependence between adequate strategic targets and countries of origin 3

Nature of managerial accounting

The field of managerial accounting and control in a global business environment has the interesting property of being a mixture of two disciplines. The first is the relatively soft art of management which, at least as far as ‘international’ is con­cerned, finds its origins in anthropology and psychology and attempts to provide a perspective on the unique behavioral problems of controlling a business entity. The second part, ‘accounting’, deals with the technical side of recording and manip­ulating information to provide what may be described as an optimal package or set of information.

The need for management accounting and control arises from the strategy of the firm. Management accounting serves both to provide information to management and to be used by management as a tool for ensuring that employees’ actions and objectives are aligned with those of the firm. The basic challenges of management accounting within a firm can be formalized as follows:

• What is the strategic objective of the firm?

• What types of resources does the firm need and where does it anticipate getting them in the short term (operating budgets) and in the longer term (capital budgets)?

• Is there a system in place that tells the firm whether it is going off track and needs to make corrections?

• How does the firm know that it has arrived at where it wants to go?

• How does the firm evaluate and reward the performance of its managers?

Overview of culture and management control systems

Many reasons can be cited for transnational differences in management accounting and management control systems (MCS), for example, history or economic condi­tions. However, these reasons can be distilled into a system of beliefs broadly referred to as ‘culture’. How would a senior manager begin to address the issue of making MCS culturally effective? He or she may wish to start by examining whether the cultural values matter in management accounting. The answer is far from clear.

Some scientists argue that, at a macro level, management accounting practices (including concepts, ideas, techniques, system designs) and the technical aspects of the purpose of management accounting have converged globally and are no longer subject to cultural forces. However, they see culture having effects at the micro level of behavioural patterns and styles of information use. There is considerable evid­ence that cultural attitudes are reflected in the different ways in which information is processed and how persons react to MCS in different countries. Existing evidence suggests that many multinationals respond to these cross-national differences in information processing by creating unique aspects for the MCS for each national subsidiary. In addition, some scientists indicate that there is some shifting of performance goals by US, Japanese and Canadian multinationals for subsidiaries operating in another country (table 1).

Table 1. Rating for key performance measures for US firms only

Performance goal	US domestic	Canadian subsidiaries	Japanese subsidiaries	German subsidiaries	UK subsidiaries
Cost reduction	1	2	2	2	2
Sales growth	2	1	1	1	1
Profit margin	3	4	4	3	3
Goal attainment	4	2	3	5	4
Budget adherence	5	5	5	4	5

In order to understand how cultural values might cause MCS to need interna­tional modification, one first needs to understand how culture may determine what an appropriate management control system is. Harrison and McKinnon’s review provides a good summary of the considerable research that has been done thus far. They conclude that, while some relationships have been demonstrated between culture and MCS, the broad concept remains unproved.

Overall, the research has provided mixed results as to whether culture does have effect across aspects of MCS. There are few areas where consensus can be drawn. This is because studies have examined different combinations of cultural dimensions and have considers aspects of MCS in different ways. As a consequence there is little overlap between studies to enable themes to be drawn or comparisons made and generalizations developed.