Role Duality of Management Accountants: Insights from a Public Sector Organisation

Abstract: For decades, there has been a strong push for increased business orientation among management accountants both in practice and in the academic conversation. However, the increased business orientation with its accompanying role duality is not unproblematic. Prior research has found that it gives rise to the involvement-independence dilemma, which further contributes to the loss of corporate control. Through the theoretical lens of role theory, the first part of this thesis investigates the individual level consequences of role duality in terms of role strain. Two central constructs of role theory are role conflict and role ambiguity. The novel findings indicate that role duality results in increased role strain for management accountants, mediated through role conflict and role ambiguity. Since the research on how management accountants can cope with role ambiguity is scarce, the second part of this thesis is dedicated to that topic. The data is collected from a public sector organisation through interviews, documents, surveys and observations.