A survey of cost and management accounting practices in Sri Lanka

Significant changes occurred in business environment in the last two decades have

resulted business organisations to change their cost and management accounting

practices to provide more relevant information for managers facing the challenges

created by the changes in the business environment. A large number of prior studies

have attempted to capture these changes in cost management accounting practices of

business organisations in various countries. However, vast majority of these studies

have been limited to examine such practices in developed countries, leaving a vacuum

in the academic literature in relation to studies on emerging markets. This paper presents

an initial analysis of results of a survey conducted on 55 listed companies in Sri Lanka,

an emerging market in Asia. It examines the extent to which various traditional and

modern management practices are used by business organisations. The survey results

reveal that while most of the Sri Lankan companies are frequently using conventional

cost and management accounting techniques such as budgeting, standard costing

and Cost-Volume Profit analysis with varying level of use from low to high, many

companies are still reluctant to use the modern cost management tools such as Activity

Based Costing, Balanced Scorecard, Lifecycle costing. The over emphasis placed on

the use of financial accounting based reports for decision-making seems to have

contributed to the lack of use and development of various effective cost and

management accounting practices in Sri Lanka.