Cost Accounting in Anglophone Subsidiaries

This study analyses the design, use and performance of cost accounting systems in Anglophone subsidiaries in Germany. The empirical results suggest that management accountants and managers in these firms prefer to deviate from their parent companies' cost accounting traditions to ensure the information-usefulness of their cost accounting systems.

Cost accounting in Anglophone countries is in general less detailed than German cost accounting. Such cross-national differences imply a tension for Anglophone multinationals operating in Germany. These firms have to balance the group-wide application of their home-country traditions and the approval of diverging local cost accounting systems. By the means of a dyadic research design, this study finds empirical evidence for Anglophone cost accounting traditions to prevail in subsidiaries of Anglophone multinationals in Germany. However, the top management teams in these subsidiaries tend to work around such coercive pressures. The findings also suggest that the subsidiaries prefer to deviate from their parent companies' traditions to ensure the usefulness of information for their cost accounting systems.

Autorentext

Moritz Schröder studied Business Administration at the University of Mannheim (Germany) and the University of Strathclyde (Scotland). He worked as a research assistant for the Chair of International Accounting at the University of Münster (Germany) and the Chair of Management Accounting at the University of São Paulo (Brazil).

Inhalt
Contents: Cost accounting in subsidiaries Anglophone multinationals in Germany Dyadic research design Empirical results.