Abstract
This paper provides empirical evidence on the adoption of a broad range of management accounting practices in
Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector. Data collected from a postal
survey of 160 accountant managers are used to facilitate the study. The results indicate that the traditional MAPs
such as conventional budgeting, traditional costing and financial performance measures are widely used by the
respondents. The results also show that a significant number of respondents have adopted one or more measures
both financial and non-financial but the reliance on financial measures is greater than for non-financial measures.
The main non-financial measures frequently used by respondents are on-time delivery, number of customer
complaints, defect rate and manufacturing lead time. These findings suggest that respondents, who use
non-financial performance measures, are more internal-process and customer focused rather than employee
focused. Further the recently developed management accounting techniques such as ABC, non-financial
performance measures particularly on employees-oriented measures, decision support analysis and strategic
management accounting are only adopted by the minority of the respondents. The respondents also indicated a
low extent of use of all investment appraisal techniques in their decision making process. The finding suggests
that given the relatively small size of the responding