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Abstract

The abundance of new innovative data sources creates opportunities and challenges for all professions and professionals working with information. One of these professionals is the management accountant (MA). Although their tasks have expanded over time and especially recently, MAs have not fully employed all the available internal and external data sources to describe, diagnose, visualize, predict and prescribe possible solutions that enable smart decisions with positive effects on businesses. Thus, the paper investigates the impact of Big Data, including Data Analytics, on MA’s job profile. Through a review of the most recent academic and professional publications, the paper contributes to the debate surrounding the redefinition of the role of MAs in organizations in a novel informational perspective of Abbott’s theory. The results could serve as a research agenda and incentive for further studies, as well as provide MAs with a guide on the topic of the enlargement of their role(s), respectively, the augmentation of their tasks and responsibilities regarding the analysis of Big Data. Furthermore, the research may provide both a rich and flexible framework to help practitioners in their analysis of potential risks, opportunities and challenges when handling Big Data, and a lens for professional accounting associations and bodies by helping them to prioritize the holding and seizing of jurisdictions as an imperative part of safety and security.

۱٫ Introduction

The digital transformation of economies, as well as technological innovations, trends, and breakthroughs worldwide, are currently affecting all businesses, through enabling new more fluid and dynamic forms of cooperation and, thus, requiring companies to reflect on their business model and strategies (Möller et al. 2020). In the digital era, there is a tremendous variety of open data sources available on the Internet that requires specific data-processing software and hardware to handle it and advanced techniques for analysis. At the same time, there is an increasing request in using predictions and data-driven decision-making in organizations’ practices. The new digital technologies like Blockchain, Big Data (BD), Data Analytics (DA), Robotic Process Automation, and Artificial Intelligence have revitalized the relationship between technology and the accounting profession (Vasarhelyi et al. 2015; Moll and Yigitbasioglu 2019; Tiron-Tudor et al. 2021). Moreover, it is expected that accountants’ job profiles will be highly altered in the future by the synergic effect of all these disruptive technologies.

Management accountants (MAs) are in the best position to establish the data needed in terms of volume and type to support an organization, as they have a holistic view of an organization and its existing information systems (ACCA 2020a). Business managers rely on MAs’ capability to monitor the business’s costs and performance and to plan the business strategy (Appelbaum et al. 2017; ACCA 2020a, 2020b). Management accounting as a profession involves collaborating in management decision-making, conceiving planning and performance systems, and supporting financial reporting and control to sustain topmanagement in defining and implementing an organization’s strategies (IMA 2019; ACCA 2020c, 2020d).