Management accounting systems and organisational structure

In this paper we present an empirical analysis to test whether organisation configurations and management accounting systems change simultaneously. Using the original application of the fuzzy logic methodology, we analyse the level of development and implementation of the management accounting system and the organisational configuration on a sample of 501 Italian firms. Even though we employ a cross-sectional approach, the results may be interpreted according to the life cycle model. Our findings show that the evolution of the organisational configurations is not always coherent with the relevance assumed by management accounting systems. In particular, we find a large group of companies with a simple organisational configuration and a well-developed management accounting system. We interpret the presence of this cluster dynamically as an intermediate stage of growth towards more complex forms of organisation.