Management Accounting Profile of Firms Located in Brazil: a Field Study

Companies must have resources that provide competitive advantages and are important factors for success. There is a great variety of such resources—including information systems, concepts of participation, models, and organizational structures. These can be referred to as components of managerial practice. Each company can be characterized as having a unique configuration of tools that can be recognized as the company profile. This paper analyzes the conceptual adherence (i. e., the relationship between theory and practice) of the managerial accounting practices of medium-sized and large Brazilian companies. Statistical multivariate analysis has allowed for the identification of five clusters within the group of companies studied. The main conclusion for the sample is that conceptual adherence to tactical components is greater than to strategic components. In addition, it is apparent that the newer components have not been widely adopted in the sample, similar to other field studies in the UK and USA.