Implementation and Perceived Usefulness of Advanced Management Accounting Techniques: A Survey on Italian Firms

Advanced Management Accounting (AMA) techniques have been the focus of many studies over the last decades. They usually aim to provide better information to improve the decision-making and costmanagement processes. This survey, based on a study of 92 Italian medium- and large-size companies through an online questionnaire, is mainly focussed on describing the state of the art of the Italian companies in the implementation of AMA techniques. In addition, this survey looks at the perceived usefulness of such techniques and compares it with the extent to which they are actually used. It was found out that the perceived usefulness of all these techniques is higher than the extent to which they are actually used. The contingent variable “competitive strategy” was therefore taken into account to shed light on the reasons for such differences in the perception of the AMA techniques. This paper consists of the following: a first part focussing on a brief review of the previous empirical survey studies, the motivations of carrying on this study and the AMA techniques comprised in this survey. The second part describes the research method, the measured variables and the main results. The paper ends with the conclusions and further comments, including some of the limits of the survey and some ideas for future research.