A Comparative Review of the Status of Domestic and Foreign Management Accounting Research in 2015-2017

This paper summarizes and comments 68 papers published in five academic journals in management accounting from 2015 to 2017 and finds that the research topics and research methods are both diversified. Among them, there are more literatures on budget, salary and performance evaluation than other topics. Domestic research methods are mainly based on empirical research which are based on databases, and are relatively simple compared with the methods used by foreign research institutes, lacking a combination of mul-tiple methods. Although domestic and foreign research basically has a relatively clear theoretical source, domestic research mostly cites existing foreign theories, lacks deep exploration of theory and forms China’s own management accounting theory system. There are few sociological and psychological theories.

tivities and behaviors of its research objects. Management accountants in practice still play a lower-level role, that is, providers of information rather than management decision-makers, and thus there is a disconnection between theory and practice.
In view of this, in order to better understand the status of domestic and foreign management accounting research at home and abroad, this paper conducts a search and statistical analysis of the management accounting empirical literature of five top accounting academic journals in the past three years.

Statistical Analysis of Research Topics
In order to avoid the over-distribution of research topics, this paper refers to the It can be seen from Table 1 and Table 2

1) Management Control Systems
Because the number of documents on Management Control Systems is the most, involving many research problems, in order to analyze the research more clearly, this paper has further classified under the first-level classification of Management Control Systems, and divided them into Budget Management, Performance Evaluation, Compensation System and Corporate Governance.
As can be seen from Research. The focus of the two foreign journals is Performance Evaluation. Next, this article will review the collated literature according to different topics.

a) Budget Management
As an important management and control activity of the company, budget management has two functions: incentives and planning. The incentive function is expressed as the budget as the performance evaluation standard, and the budget completion is used as the main basis for calculating the compensation, and the execution efficiency and efficiency of the budget target in the enterprise are enhanced. This is mainly the budget execution process. The planning function is to set the resource allocation plan for future operation period before the enterprise to achieve the goal of achieving organizational goals and optimizing output efficiency. Liu Hao et al. [2] used the income budget data disclosed by Chinese A-share listed companies to explore the relationship between internal control quality and budget execution results. The research results show that the enterprises with good internal control have better budget execution (small execution deviation and high compliance rate); however, enterprises with good internal control are more likely to have budget slack, and the more defined external business environment will weaken the above relationship between internal control and budget slack. Therefore, for budgetary activities, internal control may improve the efficiency of execution while making the management-level behavior tend to be conservative. In a broader sense, the benefits and costs brought about by internal control construction need to be considered comprehensively.
As an article on the study of budget slack, Jolien De Baerdemaeker et al. [3] studied the impact of participatory strategic planning on managers' budgetary slack. The author uses self-determination and organizational commitment theory to study the relationship between the degree of management layer in- Liu Qingsong et al. [4] use data of A-share non-financial state-owned enterprise executives (general manager or chairman) between 2000 and 2012, with paired sample approach to study. The impact of the company's performance and the degree of social responsibility on executive change, the study found that executive change has a significant correlation with company performance. Specifically, the probability of executive demotion is negatively related to the company's performance. The probability of executive promotion is not related to the company's performance, but it is positively related to the social responsibility of the commitment. Further dividing the sample into the high-low performance of the industry based on the operating results, the two groups found that: when the performance is low, the executive change is significantly positively related to the performance, but not related to social responsibility; when the performance is high, the change is not related to performance, but is positively related to social responsibility.
Lai Li et al. [5] believed that the military experienced managers increased the company's debt and loan levels, increased the company's debt costs, lowered the level of cash holdings, and the company's operating performance was even worse. The impact of corporate finance and business performance is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises.
Jennifer Kunz [6] explored the relationship between autonomous motivation and performance evaluation system using experimental research methods. The author further divided the performance evaluation system into a system that only includes objective assessment and a system that combines subjective and objective factors. The results found that, because there are some subjective performance evaluation which is not accurate, and for lack of self-motivated people, objective and accurate assessment of the performance is better than contain inaccurate performance evaluation of subjective factors; For people of high self-motivation, the opposite is true.
Based on the theory of psychology and behavioral economics, Stephan Kramer et al. [7] conducted a laboratory experiment to study whether providing detailed relevant performance information (i.e. information about the specific performance level of peers) affects employee performance, and Whether a clear performance level ranking will affect an employee's response to relative performance information. The experimental results show that providing relative performance information will improve employee performance, but the relative performance data is similar in terms of whether they are presented in random order or in order of preference or suboptimal.
Bianca A C Groen et al. [8] considered appropriate and effective performance indicators to be an important means of translating organizational strategies into action. The authors examine whether managers believe that there are higher quality indicators for operational staff to participate in development and whether the use of these metrics is associated with higher employee performance. The paper surveyed 86 pairs of operational employees and their direct managers in various jobs and industries, and tested their hypotheses using equation models.
The results of the study show that when employees participate in the development of performance indicators, managers believe that indicators are of higher quality and will use them more to evaluate and reward employees; when these indicators are used for evaluation purposes, employees will perform better. In short, the development of employee participation in performance indicators has a beneficial impact on the quality of indicators and the performance of future employees.
Jasmijn C. Bol [9] believes that companies can influence the manager's rating behavior by using the design of their control systems to influence the individual costs and benefits associated with the manager's rating decisions. The accuracy of the information that managers need to base their assessments and the transparency of performance assessments are two elements of control system design.
The authors assume that improving the accuracy of information increases the extent to which managers distinguish between strong and vulnerable employees, but only when the results of the assessment are transparent. The experimental data obtained by the institute supports this hypothesis.

c) Compensation System
The research on performance-oriented compensation system mainly discusses the issues related to the company's executive compensation. The research on executive compensation is mainly based on the prevailing salary control in China, and studies the key influencing factors of executive compensation (including equity structure, political factors, the nature of ownership, executive power, business risks), the gap between executive pay, executive pay affect business performance and salary disparities and other state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. After 2006, since the CSRC officially promulgated the Measures for the Administration of Equity Incentives for Listed Companies, a large number of researches on equity incentives began to appear. The research content also focused on the factors affecting the formulation of equity incentive plans and the impact of equity incentives on corporate performance. However, the above research on the compensation system adopts more research ideas and methods in the field of corporate finance, but the research topic belongs to the research category of management accounting. In the past three years, domestic research in this field has gradually expanded to the salary incentives of the manager and employee levels. Executives and employees are entrepreneurial value creators, all of which are important human resources to be motivated. Whether it is more effective in motivating executives or motivating employees, and the interaction between the two, the existing research has not given enough attention.
Chen Donghua et al. [10] used the listed companies in China as a sample to analyze the incentive effects and interactions of the two types of human resources. Specific consideration of the following three questions: 1) Whether the executives and staff salaries paid is sensitive to the performance or not? 2) What is the impact of the sensitivity of the two compensation performances on future performance? Is there a difference between the two? 3) What is the impact of executive compensation and employee compensation (measured by synchronization) on future performance? The study found that executives and employee compensation are sensitive to corporate performance, and executives' compensation performance sensitivity is significantly higher than that of employees, indicating that both types of incentives have a positive effect on future performance growth. In addition, a positive effect on the company's future performance weakens than executives; the stronger the executives and staff salaries paid change the synchronization, the more obvious positive effect on future performance. This paper introduced employee compensation research into the field of corporate governance research, and extended the principal-agent problem at the enterprise level to the staff level. By comparing the incentives of two types of human resources, it analyzed the role of two types of human resources in the process of enterprise performance creation and expanded the research in the incentives field.
Huang Jicheng et al. [11]  The income distribution effect of tax policy is the focus of attention in the academic and practical circles. Han Xiaomei et al. [12] took the 2008 salary offset tax reform as the background. Based on the company observations of the three years before and after the event, the double difference method was used to study the salary tax reduction brought by the salary tax reform impact. The study found that the salary and tax costs caused by the salary tax reform have been reduced, and the total salary of employees has been increased. The total salary increase is reflected in the increase in the average salary of employees, rather than the increase in the number of employees. The salary tax reform has mainly improved the average employees. The salary level, and reduce the salary gap between corporate executives and ordinary employees, and ultimately improve the company's total factor productivity. This effect is more pronounced in companies with lower wages, non-state-owned enterprises, and companies with lower dividend payout rates.
Although the income gap between corporate executives and ordinary employees has been widely concerned, how the internal income gap affects corporate innovation has not yet been discussed. In this context, Kong Dongmin et al. [13] used the data of Chinese listed companies to examine the impact of the pay gap between management and employees on corporate innovation. The study found that: First, the overall pay gap has a positive impact on innovation output.
In order to control endogeneity, the article adjusts the construction tool va- In addition, Lu Zhengfei et al. [16] believe that non-executive directors directly elected by major shareholders and other significant influence shareholders may be more independent of management. Therefore, non-executive directors may have more control effect on management than independent directors. The study found that non-executive directors have a significant inhibitory effect on the smoothing of earnings by management. When the equity balance is high, the non-executive directors have more obvious inhibition on earnings smoothing.
Compared with the state-owned background, the non-executive directors in the non-state-owned background have more obvious inhibitory effects on earnings smoothing.
Shao Shuai et al. [17], through an empirical analysis of A-share private listed companies from 2004 to 2012, found that natural person directly holding companies have higher accounting performance (ROA and ROE) and market performance (Tobin's Q) than pyramid-structure companies. It also confirms the three ways in which direct shareholding enhances corporate value by improving corporate governance, that is, the lower the probability of actual controller change in the direct shareholding company is, the more willing the actual controller to operate for a long time. This paper found a mechanism to reduce agency costs from the perspective of equity arrangement and gave a path to improve corporate governance structure.

2) Cost Accounting and Management
Since Anderson, Banker and Janakiraman discovered the phenomenon of Cost Stickiness, many scholars both domestic and overseas began to explore related issues. George Venieris et al. investigated how the company's perception of intangible economic sacrifices affects the volatility of sales and management (SG&A) expenses [18]. The author believes that in the case of declining sales, companies with more intangible assets use more unused resources than those with less intangible assets. This is because more intangible investments increase the level of adjustment costs and drive managers to expect more optimistic expectations that future sales growth will absorb slack in unused resources.

3) Decision-Making Method
When summarizing the irrational characteristics of decision makers, Chen

4) General Issues of Management Accounting
The literature on this topic includes five articles in China and five articles in foreign countries. How to improve corporate performance is a hot topic in management accounting research, and it is general, so it falls under such topics.
Zhang Xiangjian et al. [20] studied the relationship between executives' elite governance model and corporate performance. The article argued that CEO's control can improve corporate performance by improving resource allocation and innovation capabilities. There is an inverted U-type between CEO social association and corporate performance. Relationships are attributed to the combined effect of performance improvement effects and performance impairment effects caused by social associations. Hao Yang et al. [21] examined the impact of state-owned and private equity shareholders on company performance and its mechanism of action. He believed that the "mixed-owner" equity structure im- companies, but the improvement in the latter stage has been significantly weakened, the fund helps to improve the performance of its holding companies, while other institutional investors lack this improvement.
Luft et al. [23] reviewed a series of experimental studies on the impact of survey management control systems on competition and cooperation between employees, and analyzed the role of management control systems in social comparison, competition incentives, support cooperation in the organization and the role of teamwork and reciprocity in the process. Clara Xiaoling Chena et al. [24] used abstract experiments to test how the interaction between classification predictions and performance-based incentives affects the accuracy and optimism of predictions. They found that classification predictions lead to the absence of performance-based incentives, improve the accuracy of predictions and predict the increase in optimism.

5) Externally oriented Management Accounting
The literature on this topic in this sample is mostly concentrated in China, and most of them focus on the relationship between strategy and firm performance. Wang Kemin et al. [25] studied the relationship between industrial policy, government support and corporate investment efficiency. The article argues that in order to promote regional economic development, local governments prefer to provide financial support for local companies based on national industrial policies. However, between government and companies, information asymmetry may reduce resource allocation efficiency, trigger excessive investment, and harmly affect the effect of the implementation of the industry policy.

6) Management Accounting Information System
The main research of management accounting information system is to manage the usefulness of accounting information. There is only one paper in this research field in the sample, which is the article published by Thomas in Accounting, Organizations and Society. The authors examine whether providing feedback on short-term management accounting information system adjustments will trigger more subsequent adjustments, and the results of the experiment found that it depends on whether the feedback information sets the organization's members to a long-term high standard goal.

7) Other Issues
In addition to the above topics, some of the cross-cutting and research review literatures are included in this category. For example, Xu Liping et al. [28] studied 13 listed companies with executive marriages as of the end of 2014, and in-depth study showed the impact of executive marriage on corporate governance, stock price performance and company performance. Corporate performance has a profound impact. After the divorce of executives, the company's profitability declines, stock valuations decline, stock volatility intensifies, capital expenditures decrease, and debt levels decrease. Based on the regional cultural background and social identity theory represented by dialects, Dai Yiyi et al. [29] analyzed the influence mechanism of the dialect consistency of the chairman and general manager on the interaction between the two parties. It was found that the consistency in dialect of the chairman and general manager can significantly reduce agency costs. The narrower the use of a dialect, the more significant the effect.

Summary
In summary, the research topics of management accounting literature domestic and overseas are quite extensive, and the application of research methods also presents a diversified situation. Similar to the research results of Meng Yan et al. [30],

Main Contribution
China's management accounting research is still based on economic theory.

Insufficient Research and Future Prospects
This paper attempts to sort and classify the management accounting literature in the past three years according to the research topic, but there are some limitations. First of all, the selected literature is selected by the author of this paper, the sample selection is anti-randomness, and the representativeness of the sample may be affected to some extent. Therefore, this paper does not take the method of Meng Yan et al. (2014) to test the statistical significant difference between the data and the results of other similar studies. Secondly, management accounting itself has a cross relationship with many disciplines from the beginning of its development, such as traditional financial accounting, corporate finance, finance, behavioral science, etc. in view of my limited understanding of the essence and connotation of management accounting, this paper may not be accurate and detailed in the classification of management accounting research topics.
In addition, this paper only selects five representative journals at home and abroad for retrieval and screening, which may lead to a small number of studies observed under some topic classifications, so the trend analysis of research status is not so accurate.
According to the simple collation and comparison of domestic and foreign management accounting documents in recent three years, and the above comments, the future management accounting research in China can be improved from several aspects. Firstly, rooted in the practice of Chinese enterprises, gradually broaden the scope of research topics, explore the special problems presented in the Chinese context, and at the same time, conduct in-depth exploration and exploration of the existing theory, find the connection point that is consistent with Chinese practice, and on this basis refine and sublimate the unique theoretical framework system of management accounting in China, so as to better guide the practice. Second, pay attention to the matching of research methods, research theories and research topics, and further use a variety of research methods in an innovative way, integrate the theoretical basis of various fields to explain the phenomenon, and view the problem in a more diversified perspective, so as to draw a more comprehensive and novel conclusion.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.