The unintended consequences of accounting harmonization in a transition country : a case study of management accounting of private Czech companies

The paper addresses the impact of adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards on the mutual relations between financial and management accounting of private Czech companies under foreign control. Being acquired by a parent company, a subsidiary loses its independence and faces institutional duality, as it must respond to the parent’s directives and is simultaneously confronted with local pressures. Using data from a survey, the logistic regression model provides evidence that subsidiaries under foreign control steadily integrate IFRS-based principles into their management accounting subsystems. The study extends current research on the integration of management and financial accounting by identifying a special case from a transition country where management accounting of subsidiaries converges with financial accounting of parents. A radical change in the traditional organization of management accounting is the strategic response of subsidiaries to the constraints of the local regulatory framework for financial reporting and taxation. However, aligning subsidiary practices with the parent’s goals is conditioned by the existence of a functioning compensation scheme of the subsidiary’s management with reference to IFRS-based results.