Accounting for Strategic Positioning: Responding to the Crisis in Management Accounting¹

SUMMARY Recent diagnoses of a debilitating crisis within management accounting have quickly given way to the development and dissemination of many new techniques intended to restore the lost relevance of the discipline. Some of these techniques promise to have significant consequences for the future nature not only of management accounting but accounting in general. This paper identifies three generic approaches to relevant management accounting which are collectively termed accounting for strategic positioning, discusses the range of techniques which presently exist within these approaches and considers some of the difficulties involved in ensuring their widespread adoption. The paper concludes with some brief thoughts on how best to realize the full potential of accounting for strategic positioning.