The influence of changes in competition on the changes of management accounting practices in the banking industry : Hong Kong evidence

Abstract

Since the 1997/98 Asian crisis, the increasingly competitive business environment has been observed in the Hong Kong banking industry. Numerous researchers (Shields 1997; Moores and Chenhall 1994) have suggested investigating changes in management accounting practices (using change context rather than cross sectional context). Thus, this thesis examines the change influence of competition in the Hong Kong banking industry from two aspects: 1) the intensity of competition and 2) the impact of deregulation. Two approaches, multivariate analysis (MANOVA) (including general linear model (GLM) procedures) and regression are employed for data analysis. During the observation period (1997 to June 2001), significant changes were found for intensity of competition, impact of deregulation and changes in management accounting practices. We found that changes in management accounting practices are significantly associated with changes in the intensity of competition. Moreover, the influence of changes in competition intensity varies for different components of management accounting practices. Evidence was also been for components of management accounting systems. We also found that organizational capacity to learn was the strongest predictor of changes in management accounting practices from among four organizational characteristic factors: listing status, the level of annual income growth, client mix and size.