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1. Introduction
During the last few years, management accounting literature has progressively recognized the growing influence of quality management on management control systems. Nevertheless, academic studies providing guidelines for the integration of these two distinct disciplines in practice are still scarce. Due to its strategic focus, strong interaction with operational processes and direct connections with different interested parties, strategic management accounting (SMA) appears as a possible link between conventional managerial accounting practices and traditional quality programs.
The present research explores the relationships between SMA and a specific quality management model: the ISO 9000 quality management system (QMS). Its main objectives are to assess the potential benefits of their joint utilization, to identify and analyze their theoretical commonalities, and to put forward an approach for their combination in practice. For this purpose, Section 2 presents a comprehensive theoretical framework on SMA, which consists of the definition of the tools it encompasses and the assessment of its current status. Similarly, Section 3 introduces some broad concepts and facts associated with the ISO 9000 QMS, covering the requirements for its implementation in organizations and its practical limitations. Subsequently, the reasons for suggesting the integration of these management innovations are introduced in Section 4, through the explanation of the potential benefits of their simultaneous application and an account of previous references to more general connections between management accounting and quality management. Finally, Section 5 provides guidelines for the effective consolidation of SMA practices and QMSs, including a detail of the theoretical links between these two models and a description of a tentative scheme for their use in conjunction.
2. Strategic management accounting (SMA)
2.1 Definition and tools
The term SMA was originally introduced by Simmonds (1981) in the UK, but it was not until a decade later that it acquired academic relevance through the work of Bromwich (1990) and Roslender (1995). The aim of this new discipline may be described as “[…] the provision and analysis of financial information on the firm’s product markets and competitors’ costs and cost structures and the monitoring of the enterprise’s strategies and those of its competitors in these markets over a number of periods” (Bromwich, 1990, p. 28). Almost simultaneously with the emergence of SMA, a similar movement arose in the USA under...