Traditional versus Contemporary Managerial/Cost Accounting Techniques – Differences between Opinions of Academics and Practitioners

In  this empirical study attempts were made to determine whether or not  there  was  a  significant  difference  between  the  opinions  of academics and practitioners regarding the usefulness of traditional vs. contemporary managerial/cost accounting techniques. It was also tried to determine the degree of influences of various factors such as age, education, position, size of company, number of products, type of industry and several others on the opinion of 63 participants, 34 academics and 29 practitioners, regarding the above issue. Another attempt that was made in this study was to acquire some information about the opinion of academics and practitioners regarding the degree of importance of eleven skills and ten characteristics for managerial accounting graduates.
The outcomes of this study revealed that out of 38 managerial/cost accounting techniques presented in this research, 16 were rated high by all participants. This ranking was based on the statistical Means calculated for the total of 63 participants in this study.  Out of these 16 techniques, 12 were selected by both groups of academics and practitioners. There were, however, seven techniques that ranked very low and viewed   the   least important by both participants.   The outcomes of the research, however, indicated that a few demographic factors had some influence on the decisions and rating of the participants.
The outcomes of this study also revealed that from the 11 preferred skills for managerial/cost accounting graduates, the "thinking skill" was rated top by both the academics and practitioners. It was, then, followed by "listing", "quantitative", "problem solving" and "writing" skills. The three skills that were ranked as less important by both groups were, "reading", "speaking" and "microcomputer" skills.  The least important skills by both groups were "management", “social” and "marketing" skills.
In regard to the important characteristics for accounting graduates, the outcomes of this study indicated that both practitioners and academics    selected    "common    sense",    "motivation",     "ethical awareness", and "intellectual capacity" as the top four important characteristics. In contrast, "professional appearance", "assertiveness", and "pleasant personality" were the three characteristics selected by both groups as less important. Based on the above observations, the main conclusion reached  by this  research  was  that  no  significant differences   existed   between   the   opinions   of   practitioners   and academics   regarding   the  list  of  the  most  important   managerial/cost accounting  techniques  in this study.