This study demonstrates an original contribution to knowledge by providing a deeper understanding of management accounting practices in the context of service organisations. It explores a number of traditional and contemporary tools and their relationship to service organisations. The study focuses on the extent to which both traditional and contemporary tools are utilised in practice and also the underlying reasons why some tools become embedded in practice and the barriers and enablers of management accounting change in a service sector context. The study is explanatory in nature and uses a cross sectional survey to provide an understanding of what tools are used by service sector organisations and five in depth case studies to explore the nature of how the tools are used and the factors influencing the diffusion of new tools and the replication of existing tools. The analysis of the cases is done using Stones (2005) quadripartite framework which allows a sensitising of the data to provide insights into the external and internal structures which govern and are governed by the actions of the accountants. From the empirical research it was concluded that the management accounting practices of service sector organisations are similar to those of other organisational sectors and mainly rely upon the use of the traditional tools with limited use of the more contemporary tools. The exploration of the tools used in the case studies showed the internal structures in place which allowed the traditional tools to be embedded and replicated over time and also the external structures which when coupled with the internal structures resulted in barriers and enablers of change to the management accounting tools used. This thesis contributes to knowledge by providing a greater understanding of service sector management accounting and by the development of the strong structuration model to provide valuable insights into management accounting change and to demonstrate the continued theory practice gap in management accounting.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:702372 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Lorenz, Angela |
| Contributors | Jones, Tracy ; Ryan, Bob |
| Publisher | University of Gloucestershire |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/4260/ |
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