Excerpt from Term Paper :

Management

MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING

Reasons that indicate that managers need to be knowledgeable about, understand, and use accounting information

Management accounting mechanisms are official systems for collecting, planning, and communicating information about the company's activities. While conventional management accounting techniques used to pay attention to historical and financial information about activities within the company, modern management accounting techniques also provide external, non-financial, and future-oriented information

If a manager searches for information to choose between possible considerations, to set objectives or to figure out a sufficient level and mix of sources to accomplish those objectives, he is using information for decision-making. The manager can also search for information after a choice has been applied. In that case, he uses the information to benchmark against organized results to make sure that the input, procedures, and outcome are in tune, to accomplish business objectives. This use is commonly known as focused information monitoring (Hermanson, Edwards & Invacevich, 2011).

Information collected by the manager may be used to query the present rationales for activity, the present structures, and strategies are appropriate in a new environment. Management accounting information can activate a curiosity, allow dialectical decision procedures, and help the company to deal with environmental variables. The interactive utility of management accounting information can query the existing operating paradigms. From this viewpoint, accounting information use can also lead to mental model construction.

As CEOs seek information for making choices or monitoring certain outcomes, they will rarely meet information that places their present beliefs and presumptions into question. When managers are involved in targeted search, in most circumstances, they will see what they anticipate seeing. Unless the information is commonly different from their expectations, mental design maintenance is most potential (Martin (n.d.) For example, in the decision-making procedure CEOs may use accounting information to evaluate the effect of a change in the mix and level of sources on the cost framework and efficiency of the company while the real presumptions and policies are not questioned. In the same way, in the tracking procedure, the CEO may learn that real outcomes vary considerably from planned outcomes. He may then try to evaluate the reasons for that and take remedial measures.

How management accounting and financial accounting differ

Management accounting and financial accounting are both important tools for a company, serving different functions. A company uses accounting to figure out functional plans later on, to evaluation past efficiency and to check present business functions. Management accounting and financial accounting have varied audiences. The variation is attributed to the fact that investors are not usually involved in the daily operations of the company, but are involved about their investment, whereas managers need information to create daily company decisions. Management accounting is provided internally while financial accounting is intended for exterior stakeholders. Although financial accounting is important to present and prospective investors, management accounting is useful to managers who create present and future financial choices. Experts argue that financial accounting is accurate and must follow Generally Approved Accounting Principles (GAAP). On the contrary, often, management accounting tends to be an estimate or guess because most managers lack adequate time for actual numbers during decision-making (Hermanson, Edwards & Invacevich, 2011).

The role of management accountants and future trends

Typically, management accountants concentrated on projects of counting, evaluating, recording, and reporting financial data. For their importance to remain significant within companies, management accountants are expected to be in-depth. It is critical for management accountants to increase their knowledge concerning trends affecting finance and business, be ready to modify the types of projects they execute, and willing to obtain the appropriate skills and knowledge to operate as full-fledged associates.

Management accountants are experiencing a transformative shift in various dimensions of their professional workplace. Management accountants are increasingly being propelled to become associates and reform...

Competitions on internet business and computer technology are pushing this reform, in part, from the transaction processor to company partner. Management accountants ought to be ready for their evolving role in business (White et al., 2011).

The advent of computer products allowed management accountants to gather information, execute studies, and report data immediately. In many companies, the accounting division now serves as the data and computer service agency. The accessibility to user-friendly analytical and financial software is now allowing multiple routine accounting functions to be managed by computer. This liberates the management accountant to execute more sophisticated decision support and analysis activities. Technological innovations, notably the Internet, e-mail, electronic information transfer, and Intranets, are shaping how data is revealed and interchanged. For management accountants, the effects are tremendous. With the increase in competition, businesses have reacted by focusing on two new main concerns, enhancing service, and product quality and increasing efficiency. Many companies have implemented the idea of re-engineering to address these main concerns. In many companies, the function of finance has been the first process to undergo re-engineering. As a result, downsizing has been a common outcome of the change (Walter, 2012).

How can management accounting information to add value to the organization?

The difference of decision-making and monitoring as two kinds of targeted data use enables organizations to consider the impact of monitoring actions on business performance. While all information use ultimately influences business performance, monitoring also influences performance directly because the point that tracking by a manager can influence the actions of employees. When a subordinate has understood his/her work under minimum supervision, he/she will usually put more effort into accomplishing intended results (Martin (n.d.).

Classical studies have shown that the simple existence of an observer is sufficient to affect the performance of groups, even if nothing in the workplace is changing. The assessment of employees based on quantitative performance indices affects their actions. Subordinates increase their performance due to the monitoring of their supervisors. The use of management accounting information not only provides superiors with details, which allow them to fix poor performance, but often obviate the need for doing so. A sequence of studies also shows, that monitoring, the announcing of monitoring actions or the presence of a monitoring figure impacts the actions of people in the company (White et al., 2011). This result in the undertaking that the use of management accounting information by CEOs influences the actions of subordinate supervisors and improves their personality. This improves in personal performance should finally lead to a rise in business efficiency and effectiveness.

The connection between planning, controlling, and feedback, all parts of management accounting

Planning, controlling, and feedback is different functions of management, yet they are carefully related. The scope of activities overlaps one other. The detailed formulation of future activities to accomplish a desired end is a management activity known as planning. Therefore, planning requires setting goals and determining methods to accomplish those goals. A company may have the goal of improving its short- and long-term productivity through increasing the overall high quality of its products. While enhancing product quality, the company should be able to reduce rework and scrap, reduce the number of customer problems and the amount of warranty work, reduce the resources currently allocated to inspection, thus improving productivity. This is achieved when service providers help in improving the high quality of inbound raw materials, developing quality control sectors, and studying defects to determine their cause (Walter, 2012).

The procedures of tracking a plan's execution and taking remedial action as needed are usually known as controlling. Control is attained with the use of feedback. Feedback refers to information used to assess or correct the steps being followed to apply a strategy. In accordance with the feedback, a manager may decide to let the execution continue as is, take remedial action of any type to put the activities back in balance with a unique strategy, or do some midstream re-planning. Feedback is a crucial aspect of the control function (Hermanson, Edwards…