In a longitudinal study conducted in the late 1990s with a UK manufacturing division of a pharmaceutical firm, they find evidence of management accountants’ increasing business awareness, which is driven by organizational restructuring as well as changing business conditions. In German-speaking countries, some evidence of controllers’ role as business partners is given by Angelkort et al. (2009), even though the study of Ahrens (1996) on management accounting in
British versus German firms indicates that this development started only with a time lag in Germany.