The future role of management accountants

CIMA’s CEO,  Charles Tilley, outlines his views on the what the future holds for management accountants in a recent interview with Insight, CIMA’s e-magazine.  Accountants might not have a great reputation in recent years with many corporate  scandals and various banking “meltdowns”.

Tilley suggests a number of ways management accountants can develop and enhance their roles over the next decade or so. First, Tilley notes that successful companies focus on longer-term sustainability. To do this, the right kind of management structures and incentives need to be in place. Here, management accountants can help by ensuring boards get the right kind of information to ask the right questions. Second, companies need to focus beyond increasing shareholder value. While capital growth is important, running business with an ethical and longer-term focus might be better. Again, management accountants can help here, by providing a robust and ethical analysis of business information. Third, globalisation will continue to effect management accounting. More and more companies are increasingly bigger and face greater challenges on dealing with local knowledge, cultures etc. Again management accountants have a key role to play in providing information and assessing risks.

You can read the full piece here http://bit.ly/c0t4CA and lots more on CIMA’s Insight.