The Adoption of Management Accounting Practices in Malaysian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Abstract

This paper provides empirical evidence on the adoption of a broad range of management accounting practices in Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector. Data collected from a postal survey of 160 accountant managers are used to facilitate the study. The results indicate that the traditional MAPs such as conventional budgeting, traditional costing and financial performance measures are widely used by the respondents. The results also show that a significant number of respondents have adopted one or more measures both financial and non-financial but the reliance on financial measures is greater than for non-financial measures. The main non-financial measures frequently used by respondents are on-time delivery, number of customer complaints, defect rate and manufacturing lead time. These findings suggest that respondents, who use non-financial performance measures, are more internal-process and customer focused rather than employee focused. Further the recently developed management accounting techniques such as ABC, non-financial performance measures particularly on employees-oriented measures, decision support analysis and strategic management accounting are only adopted by the minority of the respondents. The respondents also indicated a low extent of use of all investment appraisal techniques in their decision making process. The finding suggests that given the relatively small size of the responding firms and due to some constraints, it is unlikely for the SMEs to adopt a comprehensive MAP in their firms.

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