Marc Wouters

2021

With its potential to provide valuable insights for an improved decision-making, digitalisation has recently attracted a significant degree of interest from both academics and practitioners. Due to the traditional responsibility of management accounting as decision-making support for managers, obvious links to the field of digitalisation exist which however have not been addressed in sufficient detail in the literature to date. Using a systematic literature review with the associated comprehensive synthesis of the existing academic work as methodology, this paper examines the applications of digitalisation technologies in management accounting. As a basis, 45 scientific papers relevant to the topic were selected which were published between 2011 and 2021 and which originate from 25 journals. Their content led to the identification of five technology areas from which six digitalisation technologies could be derived that are applied in the four areas of management accounting tasks, customer insights, information delivery, and management accounting techniques. In general, the predominance of conceptual studies is emphasised. The results assist scientists and managers in comprehending the emerging technologies and their interrelationship, in understanding their potential for application, as well as in recognising their limitations. Finally, areas for future research are highlighted.