The Marketing / Accounting Interface

When marketing managers and financial managers join forces within any business, the result can often be poor communication on financial criteria and goals. The risk of this situation occurring is inevitably present when those with different professional backgrounds and roles are working in accordance with their own norms.

In his seminal 1956 paper on general systems theory, the economist Kenneth Boulding referred to the phenomenon of "specialised ears and generalised deafness", which can be seen to exist when marketing managers are financially illiterate or when financial managers lack the necessary insights to design, implement and operate accounting systems which are useful to marketing managers in carrying out their roles.

It is increasingly difficult to attach credence to the idea of marketing managers who lack financial skills, or financial managers who fail to relate to the context in which marketing managers operate. Understanding the marketing/accounting interface is therefore important in generating emergent properties from the interaction of marketers and accountants whereby the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The chapters in this volume seek to address this challenge.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Robin Roslender is Professor of Accounting and Finance at the University of Dundee, UK, where he is also Director of Research in the School of Business. He pursues research interests in both mainstream and critical accounting, with most of his contributions in the field of managerial accounting. His work at the marketing/accounting interface dates back to the mid 1990s. Since 2008 he has been the Editor of the Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting.

Richard M.S. Wilson is Professor of Business Administration and Financial Management (Emeritus) at Loughborough University, UK. He holds degrees and professional qualifications in both marketing and accounting, has held academic and commercial appointments in each of these subject areas, and has published extensively on their interface as well as in the fields of marketing and accounting more broadly. He is the founding Editor of Accounting Education: an international journal (of which he is currently Editor-in-Chief).