The role of quantitative models in management accounting education

The management accounting curriculum in undergraduate and professional level courses consists largely of explanations and discussions of a variety of quantitative models. This unanimity as to the appropriate content of the curriculum is not easy to reconcile with an apparent absence of theory closure in management accounting. However, this paper does not attempt to deductively derive a proposed new curriculum from any particular theory; such an exercise might be considered premature while disagreement over theory still prevails. Instead, the paper acknowledges that quantitative modelling is the preferred approach to management accounting education, and from this starting point two related questions are addressed. First, can management accounting education learn anything about the effective use of models in the curriculum from the experience of other related disciplines such as economics, operations research, and decision support systems? Second, what are the possible justifications for accepting the use of quantitative modelling as an approach to management accounting education, and what are the implications for the discipline of accepting each of these justifications?.