The Migration of a Government Trading Enterprise's Accounting System during Privatisation with reference to Japanese Management Accounting

This study examines the impact of privatisation upon the accounting system of a large government trading enterprise, with particular emphasis on the capital budgeting system. A case study of a major Malaysian enterprise before and after its privatisation revealed substantial improvement of the accounting system, particularly the component of budgeting. However, several difficulties continued to be faced by the accounting department of this enterprise. For example, although accounting emerged as “visible” in the organisation, its function was confined to narrow procedural aspects of budgeting, accountability and performance appraisal. The accounting department was also seen unable to penetrate into the “values” of non‐accountant managers and professionals, such as the engineers. The discussion of the findings in this paper are extended to a consideration of the potential for Malaysian companies undergoing organisational change to emulate Japanese management accounting systems approaches.