IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-4039-4815-1_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Control Functions of Accounting and Management Accounting

In: Management Accounting

Author

Listed:
  • Akira Nishimura

Abstract

Accounting is a human act to recognize and control economic activities by means of accounting concepts (such as capital, assets, liabilities, profit, expenses, and revenues) and accounting methods (such as double entry, T form-account, and accounts system). It has a strong relation to the social structure, because these concepts and methods are not merely mathematical – they also rely heavily on historic, economic and political contexts. Consequently, there has been some debate as to whether accounting is fundamentally a mathematical method, an economic behaviour, or a political activity, but this question is yet to be settled.1 It may appear to be an easy solution to consider accounting as a boundary science in which the above three aspects interact with each other,2 but such a conclusion cannot clarify the fundamental nature of accounting, because it assumes an ambiguity as to which of the three aspects fundamentally regulates the essence of accounting, and what relationship exists between them. Therefore, the first question that we must consider is: what is the fundamental nature of accounting and how does it relate to management accounting? Such an elucidation may offer the key to an understanding of the features and structures of today’s management accounting.

Suggested Citation

  • Akira Nishimura, 2003. "The Control Functions of Accounting and Management Accounting," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Management Accounting, chapter 2, pages 11-22, Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-4815-1_2
    DOI: 10.1057/9781403948151_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-4815-1_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.