In their influential book, ‘Relevance Lost, Rise and fall of Management Accounting', Thomas Johnson and Robert Kaplan (J&K), came up with the reasons of why management accounting systems have become ‘stagnant' in organizations and their negative consequences.

Please write an essay, analysing J&K's argument, contrasting it with alternative perspectives advanced by Ezzamel et al (1990) and Hopper and Armstrong (1991), and whether you agree or disagree with J&K based on a wider reading of the relevant literature.

References

Ezzamel, M., Hoskin, K., &Macve, R. (1990). Managing it all by numbers: a review of Johnson and Kaplan's ‘Relevance Lost'. Accounting and Business Research, 20 (78), 153-166.

Hopper, T and Armstrong, P (1991) Cost Accounting, Controlling labour and the Rise of Conglomerates, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 16(5/6), 405-438

Johnson, T & Kaplan, R. The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, Management Accounting; Jan 1987; 68, 7

Coursework is as follows:

COMPREHENSION (Evidence of in-depth knowledge and understanding. Critical evaluation of relevant theoretical concepts and ideas.)

RESEARCH (Ability to synthesise, integrate and evaluate material from a variety of appropriate sources.)

ANALYSIS (Evidence of critical analysis and evaluation with reference to relevant theoretical ideas and debates.)

PRESENTATION (Clear, coherent, structured and concise presenation of arguments and ideas. Correct referencing.)

We expect you to engage in critical reading of the overall claim/argument to enhance your understanding of management accounting issues in a broader and inter-disciplinary way. This will help you analyse problems - some might be familiar to you but some totally new - suggest and account for possible ‘solutions' but also to define new problem areas. Below you find some suggested questions that can help you conduct critical reading and to help you summaries the article.

o What is the main research focus/question?
o What is the knowledge gap the article tries to fill? (e.g. What is lacking or not fully explored in previous research?)
o What kind of references does the article draw on?
o What are the main arguments developed in the article?
o What evidence does the article use to support its claims?
o What connections or ‘hooks' are constructed to link evidence to claims? o What are the main results from the research?
o What are the limitations of the findings?