1996 Volume 4 Issue 2 Pages 51-66
I conducted a questionnaire survey on the 227 items, covering all areas of management accounting to 1,000 leading Japanese corporations in the Autumn of 1994. I found the serious gap between theory and practice in management accounting as the result of analyzing the replies. There were replies which showed the probable contrary conditions between theory and practice.
Why does practice alienate from theory in management accounting and how should they reconcile?. My thesis challenges above problems. In this thesis I define and classify theory and practice and then study the relationship among them. As Alienation theory and Unification theory cannot be adapted in this case, I discuss how to reconcile from the viewpoint of Reconcilement theory.
First of all, in order to solve the alienation vs. reconcilement problems between theory and practice in management accounting, I pick up the main theme of Usefulness, especially Relevance. I classify them into three categories that is single relevance, duplicate relevance (devise it into relevance by business functions and by management levels) and relevance by environment countermeasures types. I study historically the reasons of alienation and the method of reconcilement through literatures from home and abroad in each of the categories and present the background of theoretical study. I disclose my real intention as well as the formal intention on them.
In the main part of the thesis, I show four hypotheses on the basis of above discussion and then illustrate each of them by the result from my questionnaire survey cited earlier. Lastly, I intend and conclude that the Japanese Association of Management Accounting need to play an important role in order to reconcile theory and practice in management accounting.
