Exploring the Co-Creation Process of Management Accounting Knowledge

Drawing on research on management accounting change that has been advanced primarily in Nordic countries, my work seeks to elucidate the processes through which management accounting systems change within organizations. Recently, my research has focused on clarifying how management accounting knowledge is co-created within organizations through interactions between accounting specialists and non-specialists. As explained in further detail below, I will start by briefly outlining the path by which my research interests evolved from studies of management accounting change to the conception of my current research theme.

Research on management accounting change has sought to elucidate the processes of change by actively drawing on insights from neighboring disciplines such as institutional theory, actor-network theory, evolutionary theory, and diffusion theory. Personally, I have conducted research on how new management accounting systems change and become legitimized within organizations, grounding my work in institutional theory as widely applied in sociology, political science, and economics. Put simply, this line of inquiry seeks to clarify a series of processes; that is, how organizational members respond when new rules are introduced (for example, acceptance or resistance), and how these responses and the systems themselves evolve over time. At first glance, this line of inquiry may appear to fall into the conventional scope of management accounting research. However, within the field of management accounting, it is positioned as process research, which adopts the perspective of users of management accounting. Much of the existing management accounting research has focused primarily on content research, which centers on the computational structures and mechanisms of accounting systems. In doing so, the analytical emphasis has largely been placed on the viewpoint of system designers, while relatively little attention has been paid to the perspective of users. Accordingly, focusing on the behavior of organizational members who use management accounting when new systems are introduced provides an important entry point for elucidating processes of change.

Management accounting is used to support decision-making and performance evaluation by top and middle managers within organizations. A representative example is the well-known management technique of budgetary control. In recent years, however, the management accounting system of Amoeba Management has attracted growing attention. Amoeba Management is also referred to as all-participation management, as it assumes that management accounting is used by all members of the organization, even those at the periphery. In this sense, it constitutes an ideal case for examining management accounting from the perspective of its users.

Amoeba Management is a management control system advocated by Mr. Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera Corporation. At present, this system has been introduced by many Japanese companies. Numerous scholarly works have been published on the management accounting of Amoeba Management. At Chuo University, representative examples include Theory of Amoeba Management System: An Exploration of Accounting Procedures and Psychological Impact Mechanisms (2025) by Professor Takeo Watanabe of the Faculty of Commerce, and The Management Accounting System of Amoeba Management (2013) by Professor Sumitaka Ushio of the same faculty. In my research, I conducted a case study to examine what changes would occur in the management accounting system when Amoeba Management, which has been designed and implemented at the manufacturing company Kyocera Corporation, was introduced into a non-manufacturing context. Specifically, my research looked at implementing the system at a hotel (Otani, 2018). Through this study, I observed firsthand that service employees engaged in interpersonal work, such as those in hotels, experience relatively little resistance or confusion when responsible for managing accounting figures alongside their routine tasks. This led me to focus on the perspective of management accounting knowledge, with the aim of elucidating what kinds of creative measures and adaptations are used by organizational members (that is, the users of management accounting) to make the system more usable and understandable.

There is research that has approached the elucidation of management accounting change from the perspective of management accounting knowledge. Asada, Yoshikawa, and Kazusa (2013) analyzed changes in management accounting systems as a knowledge-creation process based on explicit and tacit knowledge, clarifying how management accounting knowledge is generated. Management accounting knowledge possesses a composite nature, reflecting both the specialized expertise of accounting professionals and the on-site, operational knowledge of general employees (Asada 2020, 2021). Moreover, when considering that such knowledge is shared between accounting professionals and general employees, it can be said to have a social character (Otani 2023). In fact, much of the existing research on changes in management accounting has assumed that the introduction of management accounting is led by accounting specialists, such as external consultants or certified public accountants. As a result, the perspective of system designers has tended to be emphasized over that of the users of management accounting. Moreover, while external specialists may be well versed in management accounting, they are not necessarily familiar with the operational realities within an organization. In particular, even after a management accounting system is implemented, it is frequently modified or updated from the perspectives of practicality, convenience, effectiveness, and adaptability to the external environment. In other words, it can be said that new management accounting knowledge suitable for a given organization is created through collaboration among accounting specialists and organizational members who are not specialists.

At present, I have constructed an analytical framework focused on the co-creation process of management accounting knowledge (Otani 2023), am examining this framework through case studies. I am particularly interested in how management accounting knowledge, co-created by accounting specialists and non-specialists (organizational members), is understood and interpreted within organizations. A key area of my research focuses on the possibility that, rather than the accuracy of the management accounting knowledge, its plausibility may have a greater influence on organizational members' understanding. Plausibility is one of the key concepts in Weick's (1995) theory of sensemaking. Although this research is still in a preliminary stage, how organizational members (in particular, those who are not necessarily well-versed in accounting) understand management accounting knowledge and translate it into action remains one of the most intriguing questions. While I am still exploring both the research methods and theoretical foundations, I intend to continue pursuing this question in depth.

Reference Literature

- Asada, H., 2020. "Roles of Accountants in Enabling Control: Lessons from the Case of Komatsu," the Journal of Management Accounting, 28 (2), pp. 37 to 51.
- Asada, H., 2021. "Understanding Changes in Management Accounting Knowledge and Practice," Accounting, 200 (6), pp. 44 to 57.
- Asada, H., Yoshikawa, K., and Kazusa, Y., 2013. "Management Accounting Change in Nidec Corporation: From the Perspective of Knowledge Creation Theory," the Journal of Management Accounting, 21 (2), pp. 41 to 60.
- Ushio, S., 2013. "The Management Accounting System of Amoeba Management," Chuo Keizai-sha.
- Otani, H., 2018. "Case Studies of Amoeba Management: What Makes Management Accounting Systems Variegated," Chuo Keizai-sha.
- Otani, H., 2023. "The Transfer of Management Accounting Knowledge in the Process of Implementing Management Accounting: A Knowledge Co-Creation Process Based on the Absorptive and Diffusion Capacities of Involved Parties," Melco Journal of Management Accounting Research, 14 (2), pp. 3 to 18.
- Watanabe, T., 2025. "Theory of Amoeba Management System: An Exploration of Accounting Procedures and Psychological Impact Mechanisms," Chuo Keizai-sha.
- Karl Weick, 1995 (translated by Yushi Enta and Naoto Nishimoto, 2001). "Sensemaking in Organizations," Bunshindo Publishing.