Is Management Accounting Education Keeping Pace with Practice? A Study on the Theory-Practice Gap Using Terminology Analysis

ABSTRACT

Building on theory by Argyris and Schön (1974) and theory on mental models, we argue that a disconnection between the terminology used in management accounting education and practice may be one of the clearest indicators of a theory-practice gap. For this reason, we examine to what extent practitioners understand and use commonly taught management accounting terminology. Overall, we expect a large gap between terminology taught and used, which we expect to depend on the organizational context of the management accountant and whether (s)he exerts a business partner role. We also expect that this gap may hamper management accountants’ professional identification. Survey results show, in contrast to our expectations, a limited theory-practice gap, even if concepts coming from frameworks and typologies are distinctly underused. Further, we find that the gap is smaller for management accountants performing a business partner role.

Data availability: The data are available upon request from the authors.