The Use of Management Accounting Information among Manufacturing Industries in Malaysia

Abstract

Management accounting information (MAI) has been used by business owners to record their daily business transactions through bookkeeping during the industrial revolution era. Thereafter, MAI is growing and becomes important as business owners demand more relevant MAI to enhance their business performance. The importance of using MAI to perform business operations has been emphasized in the accounting literature. The changes in the business environment have forced MAI to be more relevant which suits the business environment today. The business competition today has made it difficult for some organizations to enhance their performance consistently. This happens to manufacture industries in Malaysia in which the industries are lack of competitive advantage and consequently leads to inconsistent performance. The manufacturing industry is the second largest contributor in Malaysia GDP, which contributes to economic development. As such, it is crucial for manufacturing industries to enhance their performance by increasing their competitive advantage in order to endure a competitive business environment. However, the dearth of research on MAI usage has created a gap in today’s accounting literature which leads to lack of understanding among the MAI users about the use of MAI in enhancing the organizational performance. This research is still at a proposal stage which intends to investigate extent use of MAI element among manufacturing sectors in Malaysia through customer satisfaction element. In order to achieve this attempt, both financial and non-financial performance of manufacturing industries will be considered, and contingency theory will be applied. The significance of this research is to contribute to Malaysia economy development by considering the use of MAI in manufacturing industries as an important key to enhance performance. A questionnaire survey will be emailed to manufacturing companies that are listed in the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM).