The special issue will reflect and revisit the role and value of management accounting (MA) in the current evolving and complex business context. The value of management accounting lies in its ability to serve managers in different roles in their decision making and broader managerial work, all situated in their operational environment. The nature of managerial work and the potential support from MA therein are being challenged by several intertwined contemporary developments: a) technology advancements, such as algorithms and the artificial intelligence (AI) penetration to many professions, MA included, b) human judgement, ethical considerations and responsible behaviour, and c) global and local issues that influence the business context, such as geopolitics and climate change.
The originality of the special issue stems from its integrative view on the timely challenges influencing MA and the necessity to revisit the foundations of management accounting and control. Now, we need to take a closer look at the implications of the timely challenges with a realistic, but rather long-term view – 2020s and beyond. The MA profession has witnessed some remarkable changes, but some issues have remained: decisions are still made under uncertainty, with limited relevant data available, and human judgement is still fundamental to set the directions for organizations and take responsibility of decisions. Meanwhile, new requirements for information provision emerge as well as new challenges of understanding the local and global business contexts.
MA is a wide and connected field that builds new knowledge for a wider array of business needs, processes and problems. MA is situated in time and place, i.e., in a context. Indeed, the desired perspectives of the special issue are connected to the organizational practices: operations, offerings, business models and value-generation processes in different types of organizations. All these practices could/would benefit from MA: but how is MA (information) different in the 2020s compared to earlier years? What is expected from MA in the future when we look at where the operational environment is and its multiplicity of trajectories could be? Detailed examinations of these perspectives in the contemporary MA contexts as well as research methods to engage with those practices remain too scarce. Especially, there is a need for contributions on the new and desired roles of MA based on in-depth empirical understanding and evidence, especially qualitative in nature.
The special issue stems from the Manufacturing and Service Accounting Research (MSAR) 2026 conference, in Tampere, 6/2026, with the theme "Understanding, extending and redefining the value of management accounting in organizations". MSAR 2026 hosts scholars interested in both the traditional "core" MA topics and those that are more emergent in the 2020s and beyond. A special feature of the conference is the tradition of in-depth access to real-life cases and practices, which greatly benefits the aims of this special issue.