In recent years, public sector organizations have faced increasing pressures from limited budgets, rising public expectations, and demands for transparency and accountability. Strategic Management Accounting (SMA) has evolved from a traditional cost-tracking tool into a strategic enabler of long-term performance. This study develops and validates a comprehensive SMA model tailored to Iran's public sector context using a sequential mixed-methods approach. The qualitative phase involved semi-structured interviews with 12 senior financial managers and policy advisors from Tehran Province public agencies, combined with systematic content analysis of 28 credible sources, identifying five core SMA dimensions: strategic information use, comparative and competitive analysis, alignment of financial and strategic objectives, application of strategic tools (e.g., BSC, ABC), and financial transparency/accountability. These dimensions were operationalized and used to develop a questionnaire that was distributed to 276 financial managers via proportional stratified sampling. Quantitative analysis using EFA, Pearson correlation, and SEM in SmartPLS 4 confirmed all five dimensions positively and significantly influence financial performance, with alignment of financial and strategic objectives as the strongest predictor (β = 0.39, p < 0.001). The study presents a context-sensitive, evidence-based SMA model as a practical framework for public sector leaders.
Razdar et al. (Sun,) studied this question.