Management accounting systems in Spanish firms

Up until the late 1970s management accounting systems (MAS) lacked relevance for management purposes in Spanish organizations. However, since the early 1980s MAS have been increasing their importance in a large number of small, medium and large organizations. The contention of the article is that not only has this been the response to an increasingly complex and hostile competitive environment but it has been strongly linked to the changes experienced in the last two decades in the social and organizational contexts of Spanish organizations. Particularly, there were two relevant factors in the social context that were intertwined with the rising importance of MAS: firstly, the impact of the late 1970s' economic crisis on the profitability of the Spanish organizations; and, secondly, the changes in the social and political context since the late 1960s. Related to these, the weakening of the previous coercive mechanisms of social control, the end of the paternalistic organizational and social model of the 1960s and the arrival of a new generation of managers created the conditions for making possible an increasing importance of MAS for management purposes. Through the description and analysis of three cases this article explores some of the interactions between MAS and their organizational and social context.