Chapter 2: Toward an Integrated Framework for Understanding the Adoption of MAIs

Over the past three decades, management accounting innovations (MAIs) have been promoted as essential tools for improving decision-making, aligning operations with strategy, and driving long-term competitiveness. Innovations such as activity-based costing (ABC), the balanced scorecard, and strategic management accounting represent more than just technical upgrades – they signify a fundamental rethinking of how organizations generate, interpret, and act upon performance information (Chenhall & Langfield-Smith, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c; Kaplan & Norton, 1996). Yet despite their potential, the diffusion and implementation of MAIs have been inconsistent across organizations, industries, and national contexts (Malmi, 1999; Pavlatos & Kostakis, 2018). Many innovations remain confined to symbolic or superficial use, never fully integrated into core routines and decision-making processes.