Recent Management Accounting Literature: Bibliometric Analysis and Contributions from Latin America

Abstract

Journals and citations are networks of practice in which management accounting, management control systems, and performance management carry significance. A total of 2,560 publications and 43,425 citations from the Web of Science between 2000-2020 were used to perform a citation analysis of articles, authors, and journals, along with a bibliometric study to map keywords co-occurrence. Citations and publications had an explosive growth due to new journals and Web of Science expansion, with the number and share of top journals decreasing over time. Performance management is eclectic with journals and authors from various disciplines; bibliometric maps suggest that management accounting and performance literature rooted in strategy are competing to integrate this emerging topic. Regardless of the increase in citations and publications, there are only 28 Latin American articles (1% of the total). Despite calls for more diversity in accounting research, we observe the pre-eminence of Western academic norms and practices. Although management accounting is an active field in Latin America with many local publications, few appear in internationally ranked academic journals.

Keywords:

• Citation analysis
• bibliometric
• management accounting
• management control systems
• performance management
• journals
• authors

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.