Organizational Design and Management Accounting Change

Abstract

Changing management accounting systems requires more than appropriate implementation. It is argued that structural characteristics of an organization, centralization in particular, should also be taken into account when deciding on a change. Centralization implies higher costs of communication because the decision-maker has to obtain information from organizational participants who have incentives to influence the decision. A limit on communication reduces influence costs but at the same time it also lowers the quality of the decision. As a result of that, centralized organizations (i) will implement changes in their accounting systems less often than decentralized ones (ii) will more often implement top-down, i.e. ignore local information.

Keywords: organizational design, management accounting change, centralization, influence costs.

JEL Classification: D23, M21, M40, M46