64 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS
The aim of critical management accounting is to promote a greater level of
self-awareness in management accountants and so develop an improved form of
management accounting that is more insightful as to its consequences (Roslender,
1995). Readers should also be aware of the concern expressed by Power (1991), who
decried traditional accounting education and ‘the institutionalization of a form
of discourse in which critical and reflective practices are regarded as ‘‘waffle’’ ’
(p. 350).
An advantage in understanding interpretive and critical alternatives to the
rational economic one is what Covaleskiet al.(1996) called ‘paradigmatic pluralism
...alternative ways of understanding the multiple roles played by management
accounting in organizations and society’ (p. 24). The full text of the Covaleskiet al.
paper is included as one of the readings in this book.
References............................................
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