The involvement of management accountants in operational process change

This paper suggests that there is a natural tension between operations managers and management accountants. This tension is particularly evident when decisions are being made about process change. Semi‐structured interviews with 40 operations managers revealed that accountants were only involved in about half of change processes. Surprisingly this proportion was the same for both continuous and radical change programmes despite the latter involving greater risk and capital investment. Six case studies were then used to identify the factors which underpin the degree of involvement where there was close interaction between accountants and operations managers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for operations managers and some suggestions for further research.