The role of management accounting in a company in transition from command to market economy

This article will examine the role of selected aspects of management accounting in a company that is changing from command to market economy. By applying the institutional theory to a Hungarian, previously government‐owned and production‐oriented transition company, calculation practice and cash flow management are analysed as technologies that represent recognisable and non‐recognisable rationales and logics in the transition process. It is concluded that calculation practice is not new in terms of technology, it is the application of the practice that is new. However, cash flow management is a completely new discipline that is not so easy to handle. Indeed, the new “everyday reality” has fundamentally changed the purpose of management accounting and related expectations about (re‐) constitution of rationales and practices. But the changes in management accounting are based on a historical cargo of experiences and rationality that cannot be dismissed just like that.