Usefulness of Strategic Management Accounting - a discussion agenda

The following diagram indicates the major considerations in evaluating existing Management Accounting (MA) practices and proposed MA practices an in organization in terms of its usefulness to management:

The above diagram mainly suggests some of the key factors involved in examining usefulnes of Management Accounting, notably Strategic Management Accounting. It is not a marking scheme for any specific assignments in the subject of Strategic Management Accounting.

Students studying the subject of Strategic Management Accounting (SMA) need to do further readings and develop their own understanding of this topic of usefulness of Management Accounting.

Some additional ideas as related to SMA assignment 1

What are the key requirements for an Management function to be useful to a specific company? (in 500 words):
Question 1: What are the key concerns of the managment.
Question 2: What management accounting function support and management accounting info do they need [focus on those that have high impacts in the case study; try not to mention specific SMA techniques, e.g. balanced scorecard, ABC, at this stage]
Question 3: Further elaborate a bit on Question 2 answers in terms of specific Management Accounting functions and their desirable offers and/or characteristics.
Question 4: What are some of the specific Management Accounting techniques that can be relevant (ie recommendations; they need to be related to the ideas covered in your answers to questions 1-3)

Try to focus on key factors (e.g maximum 6 factors) as there is word count limit.


Now:  one student's query is: are management concerns = factors?
Answers: Management concerns (A) + desired Management Accounting functions (B) + specific Management Accounting function supports / desired Management Accounting features/ characteristics (C) [when they (A+B+C) are clearly related] = factors that are important to affect the usefulness of an Management Accounting function to a specific organization.

A specific illustration:
A. Concern
Company A's concern: do not know accurate product cost for price quotation of jobs from customer
B. Uesful Management Accounting function support
In this case: a sufficiently refined product costing system to address the concern
C. Usefulness of Managment Accounting function
A refined product costing system inform pricing of jobs to customers, thus improving the competitiveness of the company
D: Optional idea
A refined product costing system can be based on activity based costing

Items A, B, and C explain why and how Management Accounting function can be useful to address a specific company's concern. Item D provides further information on how Item C can be realized (= specific recommendation)