The Impact of Management Control Systems on Contemporary Management Accounting Practices in the Public Sector

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the interactive and diagnostic use of management control systems on the adoption and success of contemporary management accounting practices in the public sector. Contemporary management accounting practices includes: benchmarking, activity-based costing, the balanced scorecard, value chain analysis, total quality management, key performance indicators and strategic cost management. The required data were gathered through questionnaire. The population of this study is the financial experts of the public sector organizations of Kermanshah, Kurdistan and Hamadan provinces. The data were analyzed using structural equation model with partial least squares (Smart PLS) method. According to the research findings, the interactive and diagnostic use of management control systems have a meaningful and positive impact on the adoption and success of contemporary management accounting practices. This means that 53% and 33% of changes in the using of contemporary management accounting practices can be explained by the interactive and diagnostic approaches. Among the contemporary management accounting practices, key performance indicators, value chain analysis and strategic cost management are the most effective respectively. According to the research findings, the contemporary management accounting practices not only are beneficial for the public sector organizations but also empower them.