The essence of management accounting in the context of its evolutionary development

There is an ongoing discussion among domestic researchers about what is management accounting and what is its essence, but there is still no consensus on this issue. In the author's opinion, this gap needs to be closed by the means of developing a unified approach to understanding the essence of management accounting, which can significantly contribute to the development of Russian theory and practice in this area. This article attempts to define the essence of management accounting by considering the cause-and-effect relationships that led to the emergence of management accounting and studying the stages of its evolutionary development in Russia and some other countries. Thus, a step towards conceptual rethinking of Russian management accounting and understanding of specific features affecting its further development has been made. For the purposes of the study, a number of general scientific methods were used, including historical method, method of comparison, induction, deduction, analysis, synthesis, abstraction.