Management accounting goes digital
This essay places current fascinations with the digital revolution into the historical and cultural contexts that have intertwined with the evolution of management accounting as a practice involved in the production of knowledge for decision making. In outlining similarities and differences in the production of management accounting information from aural to digital cultures, it argues that while the effects of the digital revolution on management accounting and decision making are still unclear, these effects surely (and hopefully) will not deliver the dream of perfect information and rational decision making as one may be lead to believe by the growth of data driven organizations and societies. Becoming aware of this impossibility is the first step for bringing wisdom back into decision making processes and making management accounting gaining central stage again in the organizational arena. Acknowledgements: I wish to thank the founding editors of Management Accounting Research, Bob Scapens and Michael Bromwich, for their kind invitation to join a panel to reflect on the future of management accounting at the 25 Anniversary Conference of the Journal, celebrated at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 17 April 2015. I also thank Wim Van der Stede, who chaired the panel, for inviting me to develop my thoughts further for this article, and even more so for his patience in waiting for this manuscript to be delivered. I also wish to thank Bob Scapens, again, and especially, as some of the thinking he has stimulated in all of these years of fruitful collaboration is contained in these pages. The usual disclaimers apply.