Abc in the Uk

ABC Diffusion in the Age of Digital Economy: the UK

Experience

Journal: Journal of Applied Accounting Research

Manuscript ID: JAAR-May-2011-0034

Manuscript Type: Research Paper

Keywords: ABC, ERP, digital economy, IT

Journal of Applied Accounting Research

For Peer Review

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ABC Diffusion in the Age of Digital Economy: the UK Experience

1. Introduction

Nowadays businesses are experiencing new changes and challenges. Being the age of digital

economy might be the most important feature of the 21st century (Bhimani, 2003). Information

Technology (IT) dominates the business environment in the 21st century. Exploiting IT resulted

in the emergence of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, e-commerce applications

(e.g., e-business, e-procurement, e-government, and virtual organisations), electronic data

interchange, Intranets and Extranets (Davenport, 2000; Light et al., 2001). All these new

technologies were used to invent and develop new business structures and forms which have not

been possible before. Hunton (2002: 2) argues that IT “has disrupted our peaceful existence by

radically transforming the manner in which business is conducted across the world and alerting us to the

many challenges that lay ahead.”

Since the beginning of the 21st century, management accounting scholars have called for tracing

the effects of the speedy changes in business environment upon management accounting

practices (e.g. Hunton, 2002; Bhimani, 2003; Granlund and Mouritsen, 2003; Hartmann and

Vaassen, 2003; Gunasekaran et al., 2004; Hyvonen et al., 2008, 2009). Granlund and Mouritsen

(2003: 17), for instance, argue that researchers should increasingly follow these speedy

developments of IT, and investigate the potential and realized changes it may cause for

accounting practices. This is important today as the accounting profession must deal with many

complex issues that never existed in the past (Hunton, 2002). In the future, advances in IT will

influence...