No, the absence of management standards does not simplify the work of management accountants because the benefits

of having these standards are much helpful to the accountant than its absence The following are impacts noted due to the absence of these standards. Lack of consistency and comparability inhibiting the reporting of better comparisons and profitability, financial position, future prospects and other performance indicators associated with different business firms. The lack of standards has also led to the failure of incorporation of the latest trends and principles in preparation of managerial accounting information. In the management level; it reduces managerial accountability, the lack of these standards makes it difficult to assess managerial skill in maintaining and improving the profitability of the company, failing to depict the progress of the company, its solvency and liquidity. The only problem to the accountant with having standards is that it will require more effort in search of the standards and much more time and money to seek for the published documents something which lasts only for a short run. Therefore management accounting standards are quiet useful and their formation and adoption will help ease up the work of managerial accountants instead of becoming a load, especially in this fast technology growth era. The finance community has been concerned for many years about the absence of global accounting and financial reporting standards to help compare the financial statements of companies from different countries. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has gone some way towards rectifying this situation. Its mission is to develop a single set of highquality, understandable and enforceable global accounting standards: the international financial reporting standards (IFRS). But there is a serious and almost entirely neglected aspect; that is, managers and auditors also need standardized and reliable internal controlling and management accounting data to support IFRS. This is essential for supporting management in their decision-making and steering their organization towards the IFRS-based performance concept, as well supporting IFRS-based

financial accounting and facilitating fair value valuation of goodwill and intangible assets. IFRS represent a major step forward for transparency and comparability of companies from an investor therefore its absence becomes a stumbling block than simplifying the work of management accountants. Globalization, as businesses become increasingly international, they need standardized controlling and management accounting concepts across their national operations to create a common internal language for decision-making and performance management. New management accounting best practices and concepts, which have evolved in a national context, now need to move up to an international level. This is comparable to the way that IFRS have enabled financial statements to be transparent and comparable for investors across national borders. The absence of these standards has made management performance to be non- uniform in a discipline that requires uniform performance. The second aspect is that traditional management accounting concepts are falling short to support todays managerial decisions and to support the valuation of many of todays corporate assets. The main reason for this is that the foundation of these management accounting concepts and instruments (focusing mainly on cost accounting) have been created 80 100 years ago in an era, were the main value creation process of most companies was mass-manufacturing. For the value creation activities of today in R&D, marketing, strategy management etc., we still lack concepts and instruments in management accounting and decision support that apply the same rigor and strength like the traditional product costing and margin accounting concepts that supported well for decades the mass-manufacturing model. We have to move to the next level in management accounting and controlling. The third aspect is that management accounting cannot be standardized in the same way like financial accounting. Nevertheless companies do not want to reinvent all the time, when they have to find new solutions in management accounting / controlling. What is needed is a set of agreed, best practice standard for how to conceive management accounting and decision support systems in a specific managerial context and for supporting specific managerial decisions.