Chair Profile
The chair in management accounting focuses on management accounting for operations, innovation, and entrepreneurship. We are interested in the usage and design of management accounting information in business functions such as manufacturing, purchasing, supply chain management, new product development, and business market management-in established firms as well as in startups.
Our research is interdisciplinary in nature, and research projects are often conducted jointly with firms and with academic colleagues from other disciplines. Such collaboration enables the use of different research methods, but professor Wouters' personal preference and specialty is conducting case studies.
In German-speaking countries, the term "Controlling" is often used for management accounting. Management accounting is exciting, because it has everything to do with what happens in core processes of organizations. It includes financial and other quantitative information; it includes measurement of what has happened and estimates of what is planned to happen. Management accounting information, we believe, should not only be a control instrument, but it should enable people in the organization to share knowledge, increase understanding, develop improvements, make decisions, etc.
Research topics:
- Financial customer value in business markets (from the supplier's and from the purchaser's perspective, also for startups)
- Management accounting for product innovation
- Participatory development of performance measures in operations
- Management accounting for operations management
- Management education issues, teaching cases