Abstract:
In the past decade researchers have suggested that the use of e-transactions in business has been increasing steadfastly. This phenomenon may be attributed to a number of operational benefits like cost reduction, improved product quality and better customer care. Unfortunately e-transactions have on the other hand increased electronic fraud and other electronic-enabled business consequences including data theft.
While this problem exists in any organization, big or small, it is worse for small manufacturing companies that may not have adequate resources to deploy detection and prevention mechanism. Moreover, in a country like Kenya, the increased use of e-transactions and m-transactions in business operations make consistent record
keeping difficult and sometimes impossible. This has serious implications on the accounting process.
Contemporary researchers in accounting have raised questions over whether the scope of accounting research has been too narrow to provide the longer-term solutions of modern enterprises. Criticism has also been leveled at the failure of academic research to provide an effective critique of the key assumptions and practices underpinning the prevalent economic and business models. Among the key criticisms has been the failure of accounting practices that these models advocate. The increasing use of mobile and electronic transactions has magnified the failure of these models and overblown the problem to both the taxman and the business manager. Additionally, the involvement of a revolutionary emerging technology such as mobile and electronic transactions is the subject of considerable debate for both academia and practitioners. Prominent market observers have alleged that out dated and flawed accounting practices contributed to the crash of the Internet-led high-tech bubble of the late 1990s. Shockingly there is lack of research on the impact of etransactions on management accounting practices in enterprises in general and in particular in small and medium manufacturing companies, and more so in Kenya.
