FACTORS THAT INFLUENCED THE CHANGE IN MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING  part 4 1000w

 service role and only few called themselves as the bookkeeper and preferred the management accounting tasks to be centralized. Grnalund and Lukka (1998) presented the transformation from bean counter to business-orientated management accountant position. The transformation occurred with the increasing decentralization of the management accounting function. They concluded that those two roles are very different and a person cannot act in both roles. Some evidence emerging in the literature that transformation of management accountants to business partner started at the top by the business and profit center managers became more depended on accountants. Managers used their help as the guidance to run their business (Siegel, 2003) and they expect from accountants a better business understanding and more flexibility (Pierce and O’Dea, 2003).

Burns and Baldvinsdottir (2005) concluded that it is necessary for management accountants to have a broad range of business skills with their basic technical skills.

4.3 Professional skills of management accountant ( subheading needed)

As processes have changed and accounting has adapted over time to meet the needs of ever changing business, management accountants have been required to change their skills. (Fleming 1999) They are projected to be forward thinking business forecaster s who add value to the entity and not just highlighting whether the targets have been met (Burns and Yazdifar) Traditionally management accountants spent time on preparing standardized reports. Today the shift has moved towards analyzing, interpreting, and providing information for decision making purposes. (Roberta et al 2009) These skills include traditional as well as soft skills that these management accountants posses in order to contribute positively to the tasks that are acquired to perform as part of their role (Jones and Abraham 2007) A recent study by Freeny and Pierce 2007 looked at management accountant skills and asked both managers and management accountants to rank skills in order of perceived importance.

Ethics and honesty were rated highly by both parties. “Managers value the unbiased and objective perspective offered by management accountants- the financial numbers cannot afford to be skewed in favor of a certain standpoint” Accuracy is also crucial. A simple error in calculation could amount to millions of Euros, which could lead to a wrong decision (Siegal 2000 )As part of Management accountants role converging towards hybrid accountants as business partners, honesty is good but they have to take into account a bit of cop on (Freeny and Pierce 2007) and process the commercial knowledge required on their behalf to get the