Management accountants’ role transitions in IT projects: A job crafting perspective

• Examines how management accountants craft their roles in IT projects. • Uses job crafting to operationalize role transition theory. • Based on interviews and focus groups in 11 organizations. • Identifies the “control architect” as a new role for management accountants. • Shows how micro-level transitions unfold through job crafting. This paper aims to explore how management accountants craft their roles to meet the demands of IT projects and examines the factors that may hinder this process. It uses the concept of job crafting to operationalize role transition theory and explore micro-level role transitions. Using a multiple case study approach, based on interviews and focus groups involving IT managers and management accountants in 11 organizations, we show that to meet the demands of IT projects, management accountants engage in various forms of job crafting by altering the scope or nature of their tasks, their relationships, and by changing their perception of their work. They also take on additional tasks, create new relationships, and reframe the perception that they have of their job. These job crafting activities take them beyond the roles of bean counter or even business partner. This leads them to act as control architects that engage in promoting collaboration, facilitating knowledge transfer and skill development and creating a decentralized control network. By examining the concrete micro-processes through which management accountants craft their roles, our research enriches the management accounting literature by moving beyond established role dichotomies and introducing the control architect as a novel form of role, while also advancing the role transition literature by showing how transitions unfold at the micro-level through job crafting.