1 Introduction

Manufacturing controls the well-being and wealth of every economy; however, it also directly or indirectly leads to the depletion of the ecosystem and burdens society (Bonvoisin et al., 2017). As a result, society today blames manufacturing enterprises as partly causing global social and environmental problems (Capros et al., 2016). Therefore, high profile multi-national enterprises are also experiencing pressure from stakeholders and broader society to contribute towards environmental sustainability (Syakir et al., 2017; Wangombe, 2013). Jalaludin et al. (2011); Lucas et al. (2013) and Ntalamia (2017) argue that for enterprises to mitigate this pressure from stakeholders, they may need to integrate Management Accounting (MA) into their strategy to help reduce the pressure tarnishing their image in society. Nair and Nian (2017); and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA, 2014), describe MA as the process to assist with decision-making to create value and guarantee sustainable achievements. This is attained when the information provided and analysed allows enterprises to plan, implement and control their strategies. Furthermore, MA provides managers with information to make sound decisions (Dubihlela & Rundora, 2014; Matambele & van der Poll, 2017; Ratnatunga et al., 2015; Tilt, 2018). As a result, the number of enterprises that integrates MA as a practice to disclose their impacts through social and environmental activities in annual reports has increased substantially during the past few years (CIMA, 2014).

However, research shows that manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are mostly unwilling to integrate environmental strategies or accept voluntary strategies such as ISO14001 and ISO14004 (Mat et al., 2018; Tuczek et al., 2018). Despite the increased number of studies on MAPs over the decades, little is known about innovative MAPs’ integration effectiveness into SMEs’ strategies (Ahmad, 2017; López & Hiebl, 2015; Shields & Shelleman, 2015). Furthermore, Volker (2015); and Nair and Nian (2017) argue that large enterprises are favoured for MA empirical research since they have the expertise and capacity that promotes innovative MAPs’ integration. This may create challenges for the study of innovative MAPs in manufacturing SMEs. However, Lynch-Wood and Williamson (2014); and Volker (2015) argue that studies into SMEs may provide different data and settings on fundamental explanations and understanding of the practices within the SMEs sector. They argue that SMEs might even provide less complex settings, which is not provided by large enterprises.

According to the researchers, the literature review shows that little research was undertaken in an attempt to identify suitable innovative MAPs for manufacturing SMEs’ sustainability. Alkhajeh and Khalid (2018) argue that MAPs have an impact on SMEs performance that may lead to increased productivity. According to Maziriri and Mapuranga (2017); and Kefasi (2019), manufacturing SMEs in the Gauteng and Western Cape provinces, which are industrial hubs in South Africa, uses traditional MAPs in costing, budgeting, performance evaluation, decision-making and strategic analysis. Furthermore, Ngibe and Bingwa (2020) identified that even though manufacturing SMEs’ managers are clearly aware of the strategic impacts and benefits of integrating contemporary MAPs as an innovative strategy for sustainability, due to economic challenges associated with its integration, they opt for traditional MAPs. Bearing this in mind, the researchers sought to address the problem by identifying innovative MAPs that can assist manufacturing SMEs to achieve environmental and social sustainability. As a result, the following research question will be addressed:

Which innovative MAPs can be integrated into manufacturing SMEs’ strategy to achieve environmental and social sustainability?

To answer the research question above, the under listed sub-questions were dealt with:

  • RSQ1: What are the traditional and innovative MAPs that manufacturing SMEs can integrate into their strategy?

  • RSQ2: Which innovative MAPs have environmental, social and sustainable development impacts on manufacturing SMEs’ decision-making?

The main finding concludes that innovative MAPs can enable manufacturing SMEs to protect the environment and society through integrating sound environmental; health and safety; supply chain management and recycling polices that may enhance their operational efficiency and subsequently promote their achievement of economic sustainability in the long run. The research breaches the existing gap between theory and practice by identifying seven (7) innovative MAPs that manufacturing SMEs can integrate into their strategies to achieve sustainability.

The structure of this article is as follows: the background to the study is portrayed by defining SMEs and their role in the economy, discussing management accounting practices (MAPs), management accounting change and environmental and social changes in MAPs. This is followed by the research methodology, data analysis and a discussion on the findings. Finally, the article concludes highlighting the findings, contributions, limitations and further research suggestions.

2 Background

2.1 Definition and the role of SME’s in the economy

SMEs have no singular definition universally and are therefore, defined differently by various countries’ legislative frameworks. In South Africa, they are known as small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or small businesses. The National Small Enterprise Act (Act 2019) in South Africa defines an SME as a “separate and distinct business entity, together with its branches or subsidiaries, if any, including cooperative enterprises, managed by one owner or more, predominantly carried on in any sector or subsector of the economy” (Act 2019:1). They employ less than 250 employees and have a turnover of less than R170 million. Although Australia has a number of SMEs and acknowledges their contribution to the economy, they do not have a uniform legislative definition (Commonwealth of Australia, 2018). However, they do indicate that if it is a manufacturing enterprise, the enterprise employs less than 100 employees. The European Commission (2015) defines an SME as an enterprise employing less than 250 employees, annual turnover less than Eur 50 million or a balance sheet total less than Eur 43 million. They also value SMEs as engines of growth. The US small Business Administration (SBA, 2013) introduces Small and Medium Sized Manufacturers in the United States of America (USA) as those enterprises employing less than 500 employees and having less than $100 million sales.

The development of SMEs is the first step towards economic development and industrialisation (Mat et al., 2018) and they are therefore an engine of growth through which economic objectives are achieved (Ayub, 2018; Dubihlela & Rundora, 2014: 28; Mat et al., 2018). SMEs contribute to a healthy economic sector through creating employment opportunities; high production units; export growth; and the introduction of innovation and entrepreneurial skills (Mahembe et al., 2011: 14; Le et al., 2018). Therefore, governments all over the globe are initiating strategies to safeguard the development of a vibrant SME sector to promote their sustainability (Olalekan & Jumoke, 2017). Hence, SMEs have come under the spotlight among management accountants and scholars all over the globe (Ayub, 2018; Johnson & Schaltegger, 2016).

2.2 Management accounting practices (MAPs)

Technological advancement is causing complex change across the globe hence; enterprises are susceptible to change (CIMA, 2014: 1; Neziraj & Shaqiri, 2018: 22). Currently, large enterprises and SMEs are competing to be the most innovative in the twenty-first century. The idea of long-standing economic improvement is being challenged as both the capacity and speed of data delivery escalate (CIMA, 2014: 2; Neziraj & Shaqiri, 2018: 22). Most importantly, enterprises are doing more to react correctly to emerging risks and defend their created economic values when information is not abundant, difficult or demand complex technology to interpret (CIMA, 2014: 6; Matsoso & Benedict, 2014: 248; Neziraj & Shaqiri, 2018). Against this backdrop, MA is more relevant than ever and in general, is defined as a system that identifies, measures, evaluates, accumulates, analyses, prepares, and interprets data to assist management in decision-making to achieve the enterprise’s objectives (Ahmad & Leftesi, 2014; Radović-Marković & Vučeković, 2015: 186; Drury, 2018). Drury (2018) argues that MAPs deal with the provision of information to improve the enterprise’s internal decision-making, performance and efficacy in the enterprise’s strategy. MAPs enable forward-looking internally and creates structured answers to unstructured problems, enables enterprises to gather information that ensure strategic decisions are reached and reported meritoriously (CIMA, 2014: 3; Neziraj & Shaqiri, 2018). Therefore, MAPs may be suitable to be integrated into manufacturing SMEs strategies to facilitate effective decision-making towards sustainability.

The need for MAPs to be integrated is that, MAPs create sustainable values through sound decision-making by ensuring complete analysis of data to support SMEs to evaluate, plan, coordinate, and control the implementation of their strategies (CIMA, 2014: 5). Furthermore, MAPs facilitate the accessibility of appropriate and correct information to back enterprise’s activities for effective decision-making. Hence, SMEs’ sustainability and long-term value will be created for stakeholders (CIMA, 2014: 6; Neziraj & Shaqiri, 2018). Rufino (2014) argues that the adoption of innovative MAPs by enterprises to counter environmental and social changes was stimulated by the global crises facing enterprises. MAPs are business practices, which may assist enterprises to create value with sustainable development through the technical skills of management accountants (Nuhu et al., 2016). Through training, management accountants develop special knowledge to uniquely place them to contribute to enterprises’ sustainability (Prowle & Lucas, 2016). Innovative MAPs produce evidence-based reports to solve management problems such as costing, risk and value analyses in enterprises’ strategy and provide data justification (CIMA, 2014; Sharma, 2015). Amara and Benelifa (2017) argue that innovative MAPs harmonised the internal and external factors of enterprises. Furthermore, it also assists management accountants to collect, evaluate and analyse available data and develop scenarios to project alternative outcomes that may benefit the enterprise’s objectives in the context of social and environmental factors (Namazi, 2013). This data flow is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Source: CIMA (2014:6)

Management accounting information flows.

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Figure 1 supports Rufino’s (2014); and Matambele and van der Poll’s, (2017) argument that MAPs are accounting practices that support management decision-making internally based on economic, monetary and non-monetary data generation. Hence, MAPs assist decision-making which might promote manufacturing SMEs sustainability.

2.3 Management accounting change

The most important challenge confronting enterprises in this technology age is the process of acquiring the right mix of data to plan cost of production, quality and time-related activities in enterprises (Matsoso & Benedict, 2014). According to Shah et al. (2011), traditional MAPs identified in RSQ1 (Fig. 3) is inadequate to provide the necessary information in this twenty-first century. They argue that traditional MAPs focuses on the past, are too narrow and mislead managers to plan, evaluate and control decision-making of enterprises in the emerging era when planning, evaluating and controlling. The reason being that these MAPs focus on expired information (reports on transactions that have already taken place and not what is expected). Moreover, Ramljak and Rogošić (2012) argue that the emphasis of traditional MAPs also neglects the environmental issues where management decisions are taken and integrated into an enterprise’s strategy as a major weakness in the 21st-century business contextualisation. According to Amara and Benelifa (2017), many factors influence the change in MA within enterprises. They argue that environmental uncertainty, structures, size, activities, market competition, technology, design, information complexity and strategies are drivers of change in enterprises. According to Ntalamia (2017), such changes may originate owing to diverse factors in the economic and cultural environment. As a result, some studies focus on changes in MAPs (Alleyne & Weekes-Marshall, 2011; Tuanmat & Smith, 2011; Sunarni, 2013:616). Furthermore, IoDSA (2016:14) argues in the King IV report that the economic business environment has changed with the advent of fast-moving technology’s influence on the strategic activities of enterprises. Hence, manufacturing SMEs may need to change from traditional MAPs to innovative MAPs that may provide them with the necessary tools to compete effectively in the twenty-first century.

The next section discusses the environmental and social MAPs changes.

2.4 Environmental and social changes in management accounting practices

Global competition may be leading all enterprises towards reformed obligations, high levels of operational excellence and competitiveness (Dubihlela & Rundora, 2014:27; Smith, 2015:76; Hamann et al., 2017). With economic instability, Annandale (2013:54) and Hamann et al. (2017) enquired how SMEs can benefit from sustainability. To answer this, it is argued in this article that by integrating innovative MAPs into SMEs’ strategy, management would be able to identify environmental, social, and economic strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats (SWOT) during decision-making. Innovative MAPs as seen in enterprises in the twenty-first century involve environmental and social changes, emanating from enterprises’ change prompted by a new interest in practices relating to sustainability. This rise of innovative MAPs attracted the attention of various scholars (Ahmad, 2017; Ahmad & Zabri, 2016; Azudin & Mansor, 2017; Bonvoisin et al., 2017; Maziriri & Mapuranga, 2017; Nair & Nian, 2017; Nuhu et al., 2016; Prowle & Lucas, 2016). These scholars have mainly been evaluating which MAPs such as costing, budgeting, planning, pricing and performance strategies in enterprises have changed to embrace environmental and social issues (Cuzdriorean, 2017; Nair & Nian, 2017; Rufino, 2014; Uyar, 2010). Their studies identify the changes to comprise environmental strategies, health and safety strategies, legal regulations, inclusive total quality management (TQM), and sustainable development. Furthermore, the scholars argue that environmental strategic prospects are identified in the process of integrating, that is, environmental technology, energy conservation strategy, products design, market packaging, and recycling. These activities demand innovative MAPs to evaluate strategic cost/benefits analysis, alternative cost savings scenario’s, full life-cycle costing (LCC), activity-based costing (ABC), reports on waste control, investment appraisals, management control and performance evaluation (Biernacki, 2015; Ntalamia, 2017; Nucci et al., 2016; Testa et al., 2011). For instance, innovative MAPs might identify, measures and link environmental and social accounts to capital budgeting (Ndwiga & van der Poll, 2013; Nuhu et al., 2016). Therefore, innovative MAPs may be viewed as those practices that support internal management to perform their function of planning, controlling, decision-making, evaluation, and long-term strategic development.

According to Biernacki (2015), innovative MAPs are not necessarily seeking the abolishment of traditional MAPs, however, it is more of the integration of environmental and social practices into MA. Hence, Namakonzi and Inanga (2014); and Maziriri and Mapuranga (2017:20) argue that innovative MAPs are holistic concepts, which combine environmental and social activities and integrates them into enterprises’ strategy to assist environmental and social costs’ identification and the measurement of production efficiency. These main functions relate to human, social, economic, and environmental aspects which manufacturing SMEs should report (Arena & Azzane, 2012; Lemus, 2016).

From an environmental viewpoint, SMEs are known to be irresponsible, owing to their limited knowledge of MAPs (Ramli & Ismail, 2013; Mat et al., 2018, Ngibe & Bingwa, 2020). As a result, there may be a need for regulatory agencies to be careful when designing frameworks and regulations to ensure that such policies promote benefits for SMEs’ involvement in environmental and social sustainability (Jamil et al., 2015; Nair & Nian, 2017:182). According to Vandayar (2015:54) and Smith (2015), corporate governance philosophies are not only responsible for the survival of large enterprises; SMEs can also benefit from integrating such strategies that reinforce professional behaviour. Stubblefield et al. (2010) argue that the major reason for SMEs to adopt innovative MAPs is not the leading edge, however, it is since the planet matters to them. As MAPs change to accommodate social and environmental impacts of enterprises in management accounting, manufacturing SMEs may stand a chance to effectively protect the environment, which supports their existence to achieve sustainability through the integration of innovative MAPs.

3 Research methodology

The method employed in this research involved a systematic literature review. This is considered appropriate in order to address the research problem. Marshall and Rossman (2014) advocate that the researcher should firstly consider data analysis issues pertaining to the research and secondly, processes of analysing conceptual qualitative data begins at the moment data is collected and proceeds thereafter (Creswell, 2014). Hence, the researchers considered the research questions and decided to conduct a systematic literature review. The researchers opted to use desktop research as a tool to collect the necessary literature to answer the questions. The Unisa Library was used to search for all the necessary frameworks, publications, and articles on MAPs, SMEs and theoretical frameworks globally.

3.1 Data collection process

During this data collection process 350 articles were identified using the following keywords:

  • Innovative management accounting practices;

  • Management accounting;

  • Management accounting change;

  • Environmental and social accounting change;

  • Sustainability accounting;

  • Sustainability management accounting;

  • Innovative management technology;

  • Environmental management accounting;

  • Environmental management system; and

  • Social accounting.

The researchers deemed it appropriate to adopt the philosophy of Creswell (2014), and Wouters et al. (2016) to track subject concepts and data from a wide range of literature through which the following articles were rejected:

  • Articles that only mentioned MAPs briefly, however, the content was misaligned with the scope of this research.

  • Articles that mentioned MAPs, however, it was articles referred to in the reference list.

  • Articles where MAPs were not mentioned at all (that is, the article pops up due to a search term as a result of words in phraseology or at the end, or due to another language –connected context or the abbreviation of the MAPs however a different connotation).

  • Articles which are antecedent of alternative articles with less data important to the research.

  • Articles that were an introduction to another article or merely constituted a brief systematic literature review or an abstract of successive articles.

The screening identified 60 articles suitable for analyses. The conceptual data collection process requires an interactive stable movement of concepts and data, and related continuous procedures across all indications to regulate the level and scope evolved in data (Creswell, 2014). The following data collection processes were adopted:

  • Mapping of data routes;

  • Analysing and classifying the identified data;

  • Recognising and coding of concepts;

  • Deconstructing and sorting of concepts;

  • Integrating and re-integrating concepts;

  • Synthesising, and re-synthesising to make sense out of them all;

  • Establishing credibility, transferability and conformability of concepts; and

  • Re-thinking of the concepts and frameworks.

3.2 Data analysis

A thematic analysis was used in this qualitative study. This choice was justified by the arguments of the under-mentioned scholars. Bryman and Bell (2015) define thematic analysis as a method that analyses documents and scripts to enumerate content relating to pre-arranged groupings, methodical and in a replicable manner. The major practice of thematic analyses comprises coding the collected data in order to identify a qualitative data set for analyses (Cooper & Schindler, 2014). Furthermore, Saunders et al. (2016) propose three (3) main sources to derive names for coding:

  • Using terms that appear in data;

  • Actual terms used by study participants; and

  • Terms used in existing literature.

The thematic data were derived from existing literature. The researchers considered it a suitable approach to use a thematic analysis to understand the meaning and the content of the MAPs literature. The qualitative data coding and analyses software of Atlas.ti was used to synthesise data from the identified MAPs literature.

3.3 Trustworthiness of the study

Bashir et al. (2008:38) argue that a paradigm is a worldview that bridge ontology, epistemology, axiology and the quality of a social study completed within a paradigm must be judged by its own paradigm's terms. Centred on the perception of various constructed realities, it is more vital for qualitative research to demonstrate that its findings are credible, transferable and conformable as follows:

  • Credibility To certify the credibility, the researchers ensured that the literature used in the research were predominantly from peer-reviewed published articles.

  • Transferability To ensure transferability, the researcher compared MAPs literature from different settings and continents.

  • Confirmability An audit trail was left when the researchers discussed the details of the process of data collection, data analysis, and interpretation of the data.

  • Dependability Other researchers have enough information to replicate the research and obtain similar findings.

4 Data analysis

Innovative MAPs provide management with information for internal solutions. The problem is how to identify specific innovative MAPs that manufacturing SMEs can integrate into their strategies to achieve sustainability. In this research, the researchers employed figures and tables to make conclusions meaningful to communicate and answer the main research question:

Which innovative MAPs can be integrated into manufacturing SMEs’ strategy to achieve environmental and social sustainability?


To answer the main research question, the research sub-questions (RSQ) were answered next.

  • RSQ1: What are the traditional and innovative MAPs that manufacturing SMEs can integrate into their strategy?


To answer RSQ1, the data analysis identified traditional and innovative MAPs generally employed by manufacturing SMEs as depicted in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Traditional and innovative MAPs (Authors’ own)

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The researchers have been able to identify MAPs from synthesised and reviewed articles and have categorised them into traditional and innovative MAPs as shown in Fig. 2 to simplify understanding.

  • RSQ2: Which innovative MAPs have environmental, social and sustainable development impacts on manufacturing SMEs’ decision-making?


To answer RSQ2, the data analyses revealed that for manufacturing SMEs to cope with changes in time and modern technology, strategies have to be integrated with MAPs that provide management with all-round information to deal with enterprises’ environmental and social impacts (Ghorbel, 2016), since innovative MAPs relate to providing solutions to management internally (Nuhu et al., 2016). Managing environmental impacts of enterprises involves the control of environmental and social effects of enterprises’ actions and their effects on the ecosystem (ISO14004, 2016; Bebbington & Unerman, 2018). Ntalamia (2017:6) argues that to avoid manufacturing SMEs incurring high environmental and social costs, they may need to integrate innovative MAPs to reduce such costs. Though many innovative MAPs were identified in Fig. 3, the study considers innovative MAPs that may promote manufacturing SMEs’ sustainability as MAPs which may impact the decision-making of SMEs regarding the environment, society and sustainable development. Hence, the innovative MAPs for sustainability are MAPs that can impact decision-making on the three (3) footprints of manufacturing SMEs’ strategies as presented in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Sustainability MAPs (Authors’ own)

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In Fig. 3 the data analysis has identified seven (7) innovative MAPs which cut across all three (3) footprints, namely:

  • Activity base costing/budgeting (ABC/B)

  • Product lifecycle costing (PLCC)

  • Total quality management (TQM)

  • Environmental costing (EC)

  • Target costing (TC)

  • Kaizen costing (KC)

  • Value analysis (VA)

These seven (7) innovative MAPs will be discussed in the findings section.

5 Findings

To conclude this research, the innovative MAPs identified from the data analyses which may assist manufacturing SMEs to protect the environment and society when integrated into their strategies to achieve sustainability are therefore discussed next.

5.1 Activity-based costing/budgeting (ABC/B)

ABC/B focuses on managing the variety of activities that SMEs engage in. It is structured on the principles that activities consume costs. Consequently, by controlling activities, costs are controlled in the long-term (Dubihlela & Rundora, 2014; Mahal & Hossain, 2015). ABC/B aims to facilitate client approval whilst making a few changes to SMEs’ resources. Ascertaining activity costs permit activities with a high cost to be identified and prioritised for a thorough study to determine if they can be performed more efficiently or eliminated (Drury, 2018; Tsai et al., 2010). The integration of ABC/B into manufacturing SMEs’ strategy will allow management to:

  • Identify major activities in the SME;

  • Assign costs to each activity;

  • Identify cost drivers for every main activity; and

  • Allocate cost to each activity in accordance with the product’s demand.

ABC/B may offer appropriate target areas to reduce environmental and social costs in product designing. Hence, manufacturing SMEs may allocate costs to processes and further activities using environmental data provided by ABC/B methods for decision-making on sustainability (Andersson et al., 2011). As a result, management might become efficient in identifying the real production costs and offer insights for improving on-going processes in manufacturing SMEs. Hence, ABC/B was identified as an innovative MAP that may assist SMEs to be sustainable.

5.2 Product life cycle costing (PLCC)

According to Biernacki (2015); Nucci et al. (2016) and Drury (2018) PLCC projects and calculates a product’s cost cumulatively over its total life cycle to ascertain if the expected profit in the manufacturing stage will defray the costs incurred over the entire manufacturing stage. They furthermore maintain that the identified costs incurred over several stages of a product’s life cycle may offer an understanding of the product’s total costs accumulated in its life cycle. Accordingly, PLCC gives management an understanding of the magnitude of a cost structure by detecting areas in which a reduction strategy can be affected. Testa et al. (2011) argued that PLCC certifies that enterprises decision-making is centred on increasing awareness of the perspective problem in terms of costs on the environment and society at the product design phase. Furthermore, Arena and Azonne (2012) indicated that PLCC can facilitate sustainability through the integration of innovative MAPs such as TC, VA, PLCC and ABC which are powerful management tools that SMEs can use to overcome the challenges faced in implementing general sustainability standards. PLCC includes allocating costs and revenues on a product-by-product basis over various phases throughout the life cycle as depicted in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Source: Rebitzer and Hunkeler (2003)

Product life cycle cost and revenue tracking.

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Figure 4, shows that management can use PLCC as a practice to identify cost components in products which may impact negatively on the environment and society to be eliminated in subsequent product design stages before the cost is committed into production. Hence, the identification of PLCC as innovative MAPs for manufacturing SMEs sustainability.

5.3 Total quality management (TQM)

TQM is a method that permits manufacturing SMEs to estimate the degree to which its resources are employed in activities that prevent poor quality. These costs are grouped into three (3) categories: preventive, appraisal and failure cost. Its purpose is to attract management attention to prioritise quality standards (Barone, 2020). Drury (2018) argues that TQM is a tool that may assist management to compete effectively in the twenty-first century by making clients’ satisfaction an overriding priority. TQM is a practice used by management accountants in the setup of an SME. It assists internal management to meet clients’ demands and improves service levels regarding costs, quality, dependability, supply and high-quality in innovation.

It is plausible that the integration of TQM as an innovative MAP into manufacturing SMEs’ strategies may assist managers to achieve quality goals through the provision of the under-listed reports as per Drury (2018):

  • Preventive costs Assist to report on costs of prevention, maintenance, and quality planning, training and the additional cost of obtaining advanced quality materials. This will draw management’s attention to devise strategies at the product design stage to reduce or eliminate such costs.

  • Appraisal costs Assist to report on costs of checking materials, inventory-in-progress and completed inventory, audits and fields trials.

  • Internal failure costs Assist to present an internal assessment report on materials or products that fail to meet quality standards. Hence, management will be able to establish costs that will be incurred on products’ ratification before they are dispatched to clients such as re-work, cost of scraps, downtime and stoppages caused by defects.

  • External failure costs Managers will be able to assess costs that will be incurred on products and materials dispatched to clients that have failed to meet quality standards. These costs may involve the cost of controlling a client’s grievances, guarantee replacement, repairs of returns and cost of impaired enterprise image.

When these costs, which are components of TQM, are integrated into SMEs’ strategies, it may generate reports that will support management to identify and control the above costs internally (Boca, 2011). TQM will provide management with information to determine the potential savings to be gained by implementing process improvement (Mohamad & Wahab, 2017; Sahoo & Yadav, 2018). This confirms the Sigma philosophy, which strives to achieve zero defects in the production process the first time rather than to rectify (Cuzdriorean, 2017). Hence, management will devise strategies to minimise these costs to the best possible level or eliminate them entirely during products’ design stages to increase manufacturing SMEs’ sustainability.

5.4 Environmental costing (EC)

Environmental costing (EC) is a method of determining costs linked to the real or prospective depletion of natural assets owing to economic undertakings of an enterprise. EC ensures that SMEs’ resources, processes, obligation, planning activities and structures are developed to implement, attain, appraise, and maintain environmental strategies. The data analyses uncovered that SMEs have challenges to integrate the right innovative MAPs into their strategy to assist them to track environmental costs to facilitate decision-making (Ntalamia, 2017). Moreover, Drury (2018) argues that environmental costs are accrued in different cost pools, analysed into suitable classifications and traced to the products that caused the cost with the help of ABC no matter the size of the SME. Such knowledge may assist management accountants to categorise environmental costs and their causes. It may also provide management with information needed to manage such costs effectively through process designs to reduce pollutants emitted into the environment. Manufacturing SMEs with their scarce resources might integrate EC into their strategies to assist them identify and manage environmental costs through the following techniques (Drury, 2018):

  • Environmental prevention cost It is a strategic tool used to avert waste that may cause or impair the environment at the product design stages. This may comprise costs connected to product design and operational routes to minimise pollutants, products recycling and gain accreditation relating to national and international environmental standards.

  • Environmental detection cost It is used to trace products, activities and procedures that do not adapt to controlling laws and standards at the product’s design stages. This may assist managers to inspect manufacturing products and procedures to ensure environmental compliance, audits and tests.

  • Environmental internal failure costs It is a practice used to identify costs incurred from executing activities that may produce containments and waste discharges into the environment. These are costs incurred by rectifying or minimising waste which do not comply with controlling laws and are brought to management’s attention for decision-making during the product design stages.

  • Environmental external failure costs It is a cost incurred on the activities after discharge of waste into the environment. These are costs of renovating contaminated soil, land restoration, oil spills, and waste discharged clean-up costs that are brought to management’s attention for decision-making during the product’s design. Management could, therefore, establish measures at the manufacturing design stage to reduce or eliminate such a cost entirely.

With the integration of EC into manufacturing SMEs’ strategies, society may be assured that negative environmental impacts of SMEs could be minimised or eliminated entirely in the manufacturing SMEs’ sector.

5.5 Target costing (TC)

Target costing is a practice that assists enterprises’ management to estimate a target price, production costs and the expected margins for a new product (Hendricks, 2015). Where such manufacturing projections cannot be achieved, management may cancel the designing of the product entirely (Romanova et al., 2017; Volker, 2015). According to Drury (2018), the prime aim of TC is to support management to employ practical cost planning and management by integrating cost reduction strategies during the product design and development cycle.

The principles of TC are:

  • Price led costing;

  • Cross purpose teams;

  • Client emphasis;

  • Emphasis on products design;

  • Life cycle cost minimisation; and

  • Value chain investment appraisal.

The integration of TC into manufacturing SMEs’ strategy may ensure inclusive cost planning, management and control principles are integrated at the primary stages of product design in order to impact cost structures for sustainability.

5.6 Kaizen costing (KC)

Kaizen costing (KC) is a method that can be integrated into the manufacturing stage of PLCC (Drury, 2018). The purpose of KC in MA is to achieve cost reduction primarily through increased efficiency in production. The possible cost reduction takes place, one slight pace at a time, to solve precise problems since these products are already in the manufacturing phases of the life cycle. Hence, a significant amount of cost has been locked in.

The real power of KC is to create a small amount of perfection repeatedly in the processes or reduce waste (Romanova et al., 2017). As a result, KC depends on employee empowerment as they are presumed to have more infomration on the product and the best way out to increase its efficiency in the production line (Romanova et al., 2017). The philosophy of KC creates a culture that places more importance on the working environment as an actual place of improvement and a source of evidence concerning the improvement of the enterprises (Mind Tools, 2018).

According to Boca (2011), when enterprise management is thinking of going green, KC is one of the innovative MAPs that can be employed to promote enterprises’ environmental friendliness. Hence, manufacturing SMEs may stand a chance of achieving environmental and social sustainability when integrating it into their strategy.

5.7 Value analysis (VA)

Value analysis is a method that applies a systematic, inter-disciplinary valuation of causes that affect production costs in order to devise appropriate ways of realising the exact activity most economically at the prerequisite quality (Ismail et al., 2010). The benefit of VA aims at a specific product or process to increase efficiency in managing projects by resolving problems, encourage innovations and improve communication across the SME (Drury, 2018). VA also enables people’s contribution to the value-added process by continuously focusing on products design and services. Finally, VA provides risk reduction and continuous improvement of SMEs (Ismail et al., 2010). To achieve the above, VA undertakes activities such as cost analysis of products’ functions and evaluates alternatives. Secondly, VA recommends to management issues that may facilitate environmental and social protection in product design for manufacturing SMEs (Ramli et al., 2013). Hence, integration of this innovative MAP into manufacturing SMEs’ strategy may assist to strive towards environmental and social sustainability.

6 Conclusion

To address the problem of this research, the systematic literature review discovered that manufacturing SMEs exert considerable pressure on the environment and society through their collective impact of smaller activities (Wangombe, 2013). These impacts could be traced and controlled by using innovative MAPs as a strategic tool which may provide precise information to advance manufacturing SMEs’ social and environmental disclosure on its performance to promote their sustainability. The summary of the findings is presented in Fig. 5 to show the identified innovative MAPs, how they may impact manufacturing SMEs strategic policies and operations to promote their sustainability.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Innovative MAPs impacting manufacturing SMEs policies and operations for sustainability

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From Fig. 5, the research concludes that innovative MAPs will enable manufacturing SMEs to protect the environment and society through integrating sound environmental; health and safety; supply chain management and recycling polices that may enhance their operational efficiency and subsequently promote their achievement of economic sustainability in the long run.

The research has also contributed to:

  • Creating internal and external awareness on the complex environment in which manufacturing SMEs’ operate, and the need to consult them when enacting policies that may impact the sector.

  • Educating manufacturing SMEs on available innovative MAPs that can be integrated into their strategy to achieve environmental and social sustainability in the economy;

  • Breaching the existing gap between theory and practice by identifying seven (7) innovative MAPs that manufacturing SMEs can integrate into their strategies to achieve sustainability, and

  • Add to the extant literature of management accounting.

The research had the following limitations:

  • A limitation of a qualitative research approach to data analyses is that findings cannot be extended to the broader population and its equivalent degree of conviction compared to quantitative. It is because the findings of this research are not tested to ascertain whether they are statistically significant or due to chance.

  • The research focused on manufacturing SMEs only and is not open to analyses of the whole SME sector, hence the findings cannot be generalised to cover the whole SMEs sector.

  • The research seeks to identify only innovative MAPs that can promote manufacturing SMEs sustainability considering environmental and social impacts in decision-making with regard to economic challenges.

The above limitations notwithstanding, it is believed that this research has resulted in insights for scholars and practitioners. It is hoped that this research will also inspire further research in the discipline of management accounting to identify factors; strategic procedures; and the environmental and social benefits of integrating these identified innovative MAPs into manufacturing SMEs to achieve sustainability.