Exploring accounting and market orientation: an interfunctional case study

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the cognate disciplines of marketing and management accounting have embraced a wider strategic conceptualisation in which customers, customer value and competitive positioning have become common research themes. The market orientation concept exemplifies the extant research within the marketing literature in which a firm's interfunctionally coordinated resources are focused on understanding and competitively responding to customers' needs. Within the management accounting literature, a range of similarly focused techniques, interpreted in this study as market-oriented accounting (MOA), have evolved in which information for decision-making is fashioned by the firm's customers and competitors. The findings of an interfunctional case study highlight a number of factors which potentially moderate the adoption of MOA and reveal a space in conceptual linkages between market orientation and contemporary management accounting techniques. Brand, reliability and informality in information and communication protocols emerge as strong interfunctional themes signalling the potential for future research of interdisciplinary cooperation.