CHANGES IN THE ROLE OF THE MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANT

Until the early 80’s there had been little change in the skills of the Management accountant but there has been massive changed in the business environment and this raised a lot of criticism. Although the skills of the management accountant have had to change in the past number of years, the traditional skills have become less central yet remain still important. A broader range of skills, not all purely accountancy related, have come into the skills portfolio of a management accountant.

Yasin et Al 2005 presents the new skills of the management account as “Hard & Soft Skills”. The hard skills included a know-how if information technology. With technologies changing all the time a management accountant needs to be able to understand, design & communicate new systems using these technologies. I am not saying they need to be an expert in this field but the MA does not want the business to fall behind others because they cannot (or will not) change their old