Perception of Management Accounting and Controlling by Polish Authors in Publications in 1990-2016

Abstract

Accounting addressed to support the management has been developed in enterprises in Poland on a wider scale since the 1990s, i.e. since the restoration of the market-based economic system after a half-a-century break. The paper aims to identify the perception of the nature and scope of management accounting and controlling by the authors in Poland since the early 1990s and demonstrate the role played in shaping this perception of accounting researchers and practitioners by two major Polish journals in this area. We conducted the management accounting and controlling literature studies including selected positions in the English, German and Polish languages and performed the review of the articles published in the Polish scientific journal Zeszyty Teoretyczne Rachunkowości and in the journal Controlling i Rachunkowść Zarządcza dedicated to practitioners. Our research allows to confirm that there is no uniform perception of the relations between management accounting and controlling among Polish researchers. We point in this respect to at least three positions.

The Functional Controller for Sustainable and Value Chain Management: Fashion or Need? A Sample of Job Advertisements in the COVID-19 Period

“…Both accounting elements serve different information needs, i.e., internal and external [18,31,32,49,60,62]. There are also emerging countries where both accounting approaches can be indicated [39]. As a result, the microanalysis of the accounting system reveals the integration of its subsystems, but, on the other hand, it shows the separation of controlling from financial accounting.…”

“…The special development of controllers against the background of globalization is visible in German-speaking countries. On the practical side, controlling is identified with management accounting, and controllers correspond to management accountants [17,30,[35][36][37][38][39].…”

“…The paper contributes in different ways to science and practice. Firstly, previous publications on the studied issues have mainly focused on showing the general importance and development of controllers from the conceptual point of view (professionals supporting the management process in organizations, which are especially links in the supply chain), or their location in specific economies (management accounting as controlling in Germany) and business models (controlling for the holistic supply chain management) [5,18,31,35,39,[44][45][46][47]. However, there is no publication on an international scale that presents a new perspective of the controller, i.e., functional controllers, regarding their competences and tasks.…”

Managers’ perception of the management accounting information system in transition countries

“…What is specific for management accounting development in transition countries is the fact that these countries were under Russian control until 1990, at which time management accounting was mainly known as a cost accounting procedure and played only a marginal role in state-owned enterprises. From this point on, however, management accounting practice started to develop, especially in Poland, in line with the Anglo-Saxon and German approach (Szychta & Dobroszek, 2016) and, later, in Romania following the French approach and International Financial Reporting Standards implementation (Feleaga,1996;Jianu & Jianu, 2012).…”