5. Conclusion
The essay has raised the question whether industry matters for management accounting practice and, if so, how this particular context can be accounted for in empirical work. I have highlighted that existing studies vary in terms of how strongly they take industry context into consideration. Moreover, those studies that take industry context seriously differ with respect to the kind of industry specifics they focus on; the effects on management accounting they identify; and the empirical approach they take. For each of these dimensions, I have suggested some research opportunities that future studies could exploit. It is of course important to emphasize that not every empirical study needs to comment on industry specifics. There are good reasons for aiming to produce findings that hold across industries and for examining how accounting is shaped by other components of the empirical context in which it is practiced, such as societal discourses (e.g., Miller, 1991), national culture (e.g., Jansen et al. 2009; Merchant et al. 2011) or corporate strategy (e.g.,Roberts, 1990).Yet, a more explicit consideration of industry specifics would appear to be worthwhile, not only from an empirical point of view, i.e., so as to highlight how different industries work, but also in theoretical terms, i.e., to offer better explanations for why accounting is practiced in the way it is. Tracing the scientific, technological, material and social dimensions of industry-specific practices can improve our understanding of commonalities and differences in management accounting practice across organizations.
