RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The key results of the research findings are summarised below.
1. The extent of use and perception of management accounting techniques of Thai SMEs are as
follows:
1.1 Top five of management accounting techniques unknown by Thai SMEs, both ITBs and
Non-ITBs, were total-life-cycle costing, kaizen costing, environmental costing, value chain analysis, benchmarking, segment report, transfer pricing, balanced scorecard, quality cost, and absorption costing. Almost all of them were advanced management accounting techniques. However, there were one technique that was unknown by ITB but known by Non-ITB and one technique that was known by ITB but unknown by Non-ITB. Those techniques were benchmarking and absorption costing, respectively.
1.2 Top five of management accounting techniques that ITB and Non-ITB knew but never used were different. ITB knew but never used normal costing, variable costing, actual costing, standard costing, Activity-based costing, job order costing, and financial budget, while Non-ITB knew but never used activity-based costing, transfer pricing, balanced scorecard, job order costing, benchmarking, process costing, value chain analysis, quality cost, absorption costing, total-life-cycle costing, and environmental costing. Only one technique that both ITB and Non-ITB SMEs knew but never used was job order costing.
1.3 Top five of management accounting techniques that ITB and Non-ITB knew and intended to used were variable costing, standard costing, financial budget, actual costing, and target costing. Almost all of them were traditional management accounting techniques. However, Non-ITB knew and intended to use advanced management accounting techniques more than ITB, such as benchmarking, and balanced scorecard.
1.4 Top five of management accounting techniques that ITB knew and used were the same as Non-ITB. Those techniques were standard costing, job order costing, operating budget, financial budget, process costing, variable costing, and segment report. All of them were traditional management accounting techniques. Non-ITB knew and used more techniques than ITB, such as normal costing, flexible budget, and capital budget.
2. When testing statistical hypothesis using Pearson Chi-Square test at a level of significance value of 0.05, the results showed an association between business characteristic, i.e. being ITB or Non-ITB, and a number of management accounting techniques. Those management accounting techniques significantly associated with business characteristic were variable costing, absorption costing, normal costing, actual costing, activity-based costing, segment report, transfer pricing,
operating budget, financial budget, flexible budget, capital budget, value chain analysis, total-life cycle costing, target costing, environmental costing, benchmarking, balanced scorecard, and quality costing. There were only four management accounting techniques having no significant association with business characteristic, i.e. standard costing, job order costing, process costing, and keizen costing.
3. Majority of the ITB respondents agreed that barriers which they had encountered when using management accounting techniques were the delay and incomplete data received by the accounting department, a lack of proper accounting system, and accountants having inadequate knowledge in management accounting. On the other hand, Non-ITB’s barriers were a lack of proper accounting system, accounting officers having insufficient knowledge in management accounting and the management lacking skill to adopt management accounting.
4. There were fourteen common aspects of management accounting techniques surveyed in this SMEs research and the previous research done by Phadoongsitthi (2003) on Thai public companies. The comparison of those fourteen common techniques between two research findings, in other words, between Thai public companies and Thai SMEs was made. The comparison showed both similarities and differences. The similarities were operating budget and financial budget, while the differences were absorption costing, standard costing, normal costing, actual costing, capital budget, variable costing and segment report. However, because of the limitation of existing data, the inferential statistics could not be performed to determine the significant association between the characteristic of being SME or public company and the employment of the management accounting techniques difference or not.