Pandemic and Budgeting: What are the Impacts on the Management Account-ant’s Role?
This paper aims to shed light on the Covid-19 pandemic crisis’s impact on budget-ing and management accountants. Particularly, the objective of this paper is two-fold. First, this study explores if and how the pandemic influenced budgetary sys-tems and, second, it analyzes if and how such influence impacted the role of management accountants with regard to budgeting practices and processes. Using survey data collected from Italian management accountants, findings show that during the pandemic crisis budgeting became less useful for planning activities, but it played a pivotal role in understanding the changes that occurred and in support-ing decision-making processes. Findings also show that the pandemic crisis caused management accountants to become more involved in scenario and predictive analysis, to take part more frequently in meetings with top management, and to interact with other operational managers.
Keywords: Covid-19, Management accounting, Management control systems, Budgeting, Controller, Management accountant.
