Professor Alnoor Bhimani Speaks At The Manufacturing & Service Accounting Research

(Msar) Conference In Pisa, Italy

Professor Bhimani delivered a plenary talk at the MSAR conference on 1 July 2022.    He spoke on “how digitalisation is changing accounting”.  He noted the growth of diverse forms of data that are now part of organisational processes and interactions between myriad stakeholders, and he commented on accounting objectives not having evolved alongside the rise of digital data forms.  He discussed how data relating to services and products have transitioned to novel platforms taking on significances which are of organisational relevance but largely ignored by management accountants.   He spoke also on how changing demographics, the confluence of physical, digital and biological planes, and the information focus of younger generations of workers spell different control implications for enterprises leaving behind traditional conceptions of what upholds the profession.  He stressed how for instance. digital financial products, via their integration and inter-connections, offer possibilities for network and other effects to be created for customers enabling growth possibilities that far surpass what we have witnessed in the past.  But unless management accountants develop means of capturing the changes at play informationally, other systems will emerge to fill the void.  Professor Bhimani discussed the impact of artificial intelligence mechanisms running far ahead of the potential conventionally visualised for accounting controls and priorities.  The future of financial management rests on widening what accounting systems regard as transactions worthy of capture and analysis.  Data that is usable for control purposes resides not only within economic transactions or financial extrapolations but can draw on indicators, trends and metrics that take account of financial, non-financial, social and predictive information mash-ups that integrate quantitative and qualitative changes.   Machines enable learning to be had from this in ways not achievable until now. Digital offer many opportunities for management accounting growth, but learning and re-direction is now essential as digitalisation also points to the likely demise and upending of decision making structures which have in the past been assumed to guide the domain of the profession.

 

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