Management Accounting across the World Fred Zinger and Klaus Beier are management accountants working for “Mega Corp.” – a multi-national company headquartered in Seattle, US. Fred is working for the business division “business services” in the US, Klaus is management accountant of the same business division at the German subsidiary. Although Fred and Klaus have been working together closely for many years, they are each still struggling now and then with the way their colleague is doing his job. Fred does not understand why Klaus is not concerned about preparing annual accounts of the German subsidiary. Klaus, in turn, spends a good deal of his working time on preparing detailed cost plans and investment budgets – a task that Fred is hardly concerned with.

Why are Fred and Klaus dealing with different tasks although they are management accountants for the same company? How can these differences be explained?