Empirical strategic management accounting (SMA) research has paid insufficient attention
to the practices through which strategising occurs. SMA research has also overlooked the
importance of strategy in the public sector and the specificities of this context that prob-lematise
existing knowledge of techniques that might make up SMA. Consequently, this
study examines the role of management accounting in organisational practices through
which strategy is enacted, and does this by way of a longitudinal study of a public sector
agency. It is informed by the strategy-as-practice perspective that increasingly features
in strategy research. The study identifies roles for management accounting in strategising
that extend beyond the typically ascribed functions of decision-facilitation and decisioninfluencing.
Its main contribution is the detailing of specific ways in which management
accounting is constitutive of strategising through specific organisational practices. The findings
of particular management accounting techniques being used for strategising by entities
in the public sector provide a useful counter-point to the private sector orientation that
has dominated SMA research to date. The study also outlines particular directions that a
rebalanced SMA research agenda might take.