Management accounting and corporate management: insights into multinational hotel companies

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to provide insights into the links between managerial accounting, as a tool for monitoring and governing multinational hotel companies, and corporate management approaches. Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds upon an extensive survey of general managers previously published by the authors, followed up with interviews and an in‐depth analysis of different management scenarios in the context of multinational hotel companies. Findings – This paper's findings suggest that “management by values” appears to be particularly adapted to multinational hotel companies, because of their organisation features, i.e. a network spread in different environments, and partially shapes the management accounting choices of performance indicators at various levels in the organisation. Research limitations/implications – The limitations of this research would depend on the limited amount of data collected, i.e. 13 interviews, of which eight are analysed, if there were any attempt to generalise the findings. Practical implications – Implications are both theoretical and practical: the former refer to avenues of further research being opened within this paper, the latter refer to the suggestion that managers in multinational hotel companies might begin to question their own organisations and consider reflecting upon their management approach, in light of the insights provided in this paper. Originality/value – This paper fits with the established literature on management accounting, but also points towards new connections with the corporate management literature.