Predicting change in management accounting systems: national culture and industry effects

This study replicates the model developed in Libby and Waterhouse's [Libby, T., & Waterhouse, J. H. (1996). Predicting change in management accounting systems. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 8, 137-150] explorator y study of changes in a population of 23 management accounting control syst ems, and the five components of planning, controlling, costing, directing, and decision making, at the organizational level in Canadian manufacturing firms. The determinants of size, organizational capacity, intensity of comp etition, and centralization (replacing decentralization) are used to examin e a sample of manufacturing firms in Singapore. Regression results from sur vey data partially support the cross-national transferability of their find ings. Additional analyses show consistency between manufacturing and indust rial firms but not service-oriented firms, suggesting limited generalizabil ity of the model across different economic sectors. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.