The development of the management accountant's role revisited: An example from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency

• Author: Mikael Holmgren Caicedo,Maria Mårtensson,Kristina Tamm Hallström
• Date: 01 August 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12156
• Published date: 01 August 2018

Received: 26 February2015 Revised: 17 March 2017 Accepted:5 July 2017

DOI: 10.1111/faam.12156

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The development of the management accountant's

role revisited: An example from the Swedish Social

Insurance Agency

Mikael Holmgren Caicedo1Maria Mårtensson1,2 Kristina Tamm

Hallström3

1StockholmBusiness School, Stockholm Univer-

sity,Stockholm, Sweden

2Schoolof Business and Economics, Linnaeus

University,Växjö, Sweden

3StockholmSchool of Economics, Stockholm

Centrefor Organizational Research (SCORE),

StockholmUniversity, Stockholm, Sweden

Correspondence

MikaelHolmgren Caicedo, Stockholm Business

School,Stockholm University, SE-106 91, Stock-

holm,Sweden.

Email:mikael.holmgren.caicedo@sbs.su.se

Fundinginformation

Thiswork was supported by Riksbankens

Jubileumsfond(RJ), [P11-0795:1].

Abstract

This study traces the development of the management accountant

(MA) role at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SIA). In 2012,

the agency began a reformation by implementing the Lean manage-

ment system in hopes of increasing customer trust. The results of

this study show that the authority of the MA rests on decentraliza-

tion and the proximity of MAs to managers, as previousresearch has

shown, and more specifically on a definitional and a moral preroga-

tive that may or may not be awardedto MAs enabling them to act as

de facto managers. The study shows how the role of the SIA's oper-

ative level MAs changed into a helpdesk function with the role of

assisting other groups to help themselves,in this case operative-level

teams that had begun performing management accounting tasks.

Thus, this study bears witness not to the expansion and hybridiza-

tion of existing MA roles, but to the reduction in authority and de-

hybridization of the MA role, from business partner to a pedagogical

role on a consultative basis.

KEYWORDS

beancounter, business partner, Lean, management accountant, NPM

1INTRODUCTION

Changes in the role of the management accountant (MA) have been attributed to globalization, shifts in technology,

accounting scandals, and corporate trends (Burns & Baldvinsdottir,2007), but the bulk of research has been oriented

toward the role of reform and specific management accounting techniques in the development of the MA'simage

and role (Burns & Baldvinsdottir, 2007; Byrne & Pierce, 2007; Granlund & Lukka, 1998; Järvenpää, 2007; Lapsley &

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and repro-

duction in anymedium, provided the original work is properly cited.

c

2018 The Authors. Financial Accountability & Management Published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd.

240 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/faam FinancialAcc & Man. 2018;34:240–251.