Chartered Institute of Management Accountants

04 May 2005

The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) is encouraging research effort into a range of topics through the launch of its new Research Strategy.  This supports CIMA’s Royal Charter to develop the science of management accountancy.

The Research Strategy adds value to both CIMA members and other professional accountants in business, via the generation of articles, research reports and executive summaries, or by providing discussion opportunities.  Participants in the research program include academics, volunteer members, technical staff, consultants and other business partners.

The major development themes contained within CIMA’s research agenda are:

• Enterprise Reporting
• Enterprise Governance
• Strategic Enterprise Management and
• Integrity.

The research agenda also incorporates the wider role of the professional accountant in business reflected in the CIMA Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Content Framework.  As such CIMA encourages research effort into a wide range of issues falling under the above mentioned themes.  These include:

• External reporting, e.g. the role of chartered management accountants in preparing external narrative and financial reports based on management accounts and other non financial information.
• Board effectiveness, e.g. is the board concentrating on the key strategic decisions and how is the Finance Function involved?
• Management reporting, insight and analysis, e.g. how management identify where value is being created and destroyed.
• People and processes infrastructure, e.g. what reward systems work best in practice and for who? and
• The professional accountant in business, e.g. what are the most significant challenges facing finance professionals today and in the future?

Roland Kaye, CIMA President, commenting on the new Research Strategy, said, “The new strategy is designed for those interested in our research funding programme for ad hoc and initiative projects.  Due to the diverse nature of management accounting, we encourage researchers from all over the world and from a range of backgrounds and industry sectors to apply.  We are also interested in exploring collaborative opportunities with other relevant organisations such as institutes and funding bodies.

The new strategy outlines and compliments the major development themes for CIMA’s Technical development agenda and incorporates the wider role of the professional accountant in business reflected in the CPD Content Framework.”

Full details of the Research Strategy are available on the web in the Business Partners Section at http://www.cimaglobal.com/

For further information please contact:
Peter Stanhope, Senior Press Officer, CIMA
020 8849 2347
peter.stanhope@cimaglobal.com

Notes to editors

1. CIMA is the only UK body whose sole focus is on the training and qualifying of accountants in business. It represents financial managers and accountants who work in business. Its key activities are related to Business Strategy, Information Strategy and Finance Strategy. CIMA's focus is to qualify students, support members and employers, and protect the public interest. CIMA represents the voice of over 85,000 students and 65,000 members in 156 countries.  CIMA's focus on management functions makes it unique, and it is internationally recognised as offering the financial qualification for business. CIMA works with leading employers in the UK and around the world to train and qualify financial managers. We pride ourselves on the commercial relevance of our syllabus, which is continually enhanced to reflect the latest developments in business. CIMA's members and students work across all business sectors at all levels throughout the world, demonstrating the flexibility of the qualification.