Management accounting and the paradigm change - a journey through the age of digitalization

Globalization, the COVID-19 pandemic, and changes in the use of information technologies have changed the paradigm of companies. The rapid evolution of emerging technologies has brought benefits and harms to everyday life. Accounting and auditing have been the professions most affected by this digital transformation process. On the one hand, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has led to greater efficiency in management’s work, which can lead to more efficient decision-making. On the other hand, there are concerns about the future of professions and even the preservation of ethics in companies. The main objective of this research is to explore the emergence of AI in accounting and how concepts linked to Big Data (BD), for example, have been changing the profession’s vision. To this end, a systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out using the bibliometric analysis methodology of keyword co-occurrences. This enabled a global analysis of the studies found on the Web of Science (WoS). In this way, it was possible to group the studies linked to the theme of AI and BD into three distinct clusters that will support the analysis presented here. The first cluster is called accounting and auditing - future projections for the professions (n=20), the second is called accounting processes: from research to digitalization (n=4) and, finally, the cluster is called the corporate environment and new technological trends (n=9).