Enrico Uliana

Management accounting change in South Africa

Most research on management accounting change relates to practices in developed countries. This paper reports on a field study of management accounting change in the South African context. It uses a contingency theory framework within four retail companies to understand the processes of their management accounting systems change and to explore the rationales for such change processes. The findings indicate considerable changes in management accounting systems within the four cases. Such changes include increased use of contemporary management accounting practices notably activity‐based cost allocation systems and the balanced scorecard approach to performance measures. The paper suggests that recent environmental changes in the South African economy arising from government reform/deregulation policy and global competition largely facilitated the management accounting change processes within the participating organisations.

The effects of behavioural factors in investment decision-making: a survey of institutional investors operating at the Nairobi Stock Exchange

This study investigated the role of behavioural finance and investor psychology in investment decision-making at the Nairobi Stock Exchange with special reference to institutional investors. Using a sample of 23 institutional investors, the study established that behavioural factors such as representativeness, overconfidence, anchoring, gamblers fallacy, availability bias, loss aversion, regret aversion and mental accounting affected the decisions of the institutional investors operating at the NSE. Moreover, these investors made reference to the trading activity of the other institutional investors and often exhibited an institutional-herding behaviour in their investment decision-making.

Adoption of AMT by South African manufacturers

This paper presents the results of a survey of South African manufacturers that examined their planning and implementation activities relating to advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) investments. Data were collected by means of a postal questionnaire survey to which 84 companies responded to questions regarding their largest AMT investment in the last three years. The analysis is structured on a process model of adoption of AMT comprising three stages: motivation and idea generation for AMT; AMT proposal evaluation; and AMT implementation. The paper presents results relating to formulation of strategies; nature and size of AMT investments; sources of AMT investment ideas and forces motivating AMT investments; AMT proposal development; training in AMT and production management; AMT proposal evaluation; planning and implementation time periods and benefits and risks/difficulties. These dimensions are evaluated across dimensions of company size, types of AMT, and type of production system.

A survey of management accounting practices in South Africa

This paper reports on a survey of management accounting practices in 52 South African firms. The survey was conducted in 2001 between January and April. The changes that have taken place in the field of management accounting and the factors that may have prompted management accounting change are also documented. Our findings indicate an increased use of most of the management accounting practices advocated in management accounting literature, in the sampled firms. Modern management accounting techniques such as activity based costing and balanced scorecard type performance measures are used together with the traditional management techniques such as budgeting and standard costing. Further, our survey revealed a significant change occurring in management accounting practices in South Africa in recent years. Such a change is mainly attributed to the opening up of the South African economy in the early 1990s.

Predictors of management accounting change in South Africa: Evidence from five retail companies

There is limited knowledge of management accounting practices and change in developing countries. This paper explores the processes of management accounting change in five South African retail companies by means of case studies. A number of factors have been identified from the contingency theory literature, which are applied in five cases to examine the management accounting changes and the reasons for them. The cases indicate considerable changes in the organisations’ management accounting practices during the last ten years. Recent environmental change in South Africa arising from government reform/deregulation policy and global competitive environments largely contributed to the management accounting change processes, which is consistent with contingency theory. This paper provides empirical evidence on which future research in less developed countries can be conducted.

Quantitative methods in a developing country: Managers' perceptions and desires

The role of quantitative methods in business decision making has been a subject of much discussion in the literature. Most of this discussion has emanated from developed countries. In this paper, the current practice in a developing country is examined, as well as the desires and perceptions of management. It is evident that the current practice lags that of the developed countries. Moreover, while the practice in companies with international association is not markedly different from local companies, the management of these companies desire a situation closer to that found in the developed countries. It is suggested that adequately trained personnel are not currently available and that a career orientated masters programme in quantitative methods is necessary in developing countries.