The article I chose comes form the November 1999 Journal of Accounting. It’s called “Roles are changing for management accountants. ” The main point of this article seems to be that management accountants are moving away from traditional accounting, and are focusing more of the energy towards, “strategic planning, internal consulting, and computer based operations. ” 53% of accountants contacted in “Counting More, Counting Less: The 1999 Practice Analysis of Management Accounting” say that their most crucial job is long term planning.
This has drastically changed from five years ago where accountants were mainly there to find problems. Now they get to participate in finding the solutions. Management accountants have moved out of the accounting cubicles and have stepped up and joined the management team. This makes perfect sense because who could analyze data better than an accountant. Now instead of translating it into terms that managers can understand, they’re able to voice their opinions and solutions more openly.
The next part of this article discusses one problem with this. That is that college students that graduate with accounting degrees aren’t necessarily prepared for this type of work. To solve this problem, universities are “using the IMA study to modify their current curriculums to prepare students with the new skill requirements. ” Management accountants are gaining more control over their workplace, and are becoming an even more important part of every workplace.