Separation – integration – and now …? - An historical perspective on the relationship between German management accounting and financial accounting

German accounting has traditionally followed a dual ledger approach with strictly separated internal cost accounting, as the basis for management information, and external financial accounting focusing on creditor protection and based on the commercial law. However, the increased adoption of integrated accounting system implies a significant change in the relationship between financial and management accounting systems. We use Hegelian dialectic to trace the historical development of German accounting from separated systems towards antithetical propositions of full integration, and the emergence of partial integration as the synthesis of this transformation process. For this reason, our paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the literature on the relationship between financial and management accounting in Germany. On this basis, we elaborate how financial accounting in Germany has been shaped by its economic context and legislation, and how financial accounting – accompanied by institutional pressures – in turn influenced management accounting. We argue that the changing relationship between management and financial accounting in the German context illustrates how current accounting practice is shaped not only by its environment, but also by its historical path. Based on this reasoning, we discuss several avenues for future research

Visualisation bifocale sur supports mobiles : une étude empirique

International audienceInteractive visualization on mobile devices addresses the problem of large information spaces and small displays. Focusing on 1D/temporal information structures, the paper empirically investigates bifocal display on mobile devices by considering the output visualization and the input modalities for one-dimensional navigation. The intuitive layout of a detailed view in the center (focus) and perspective/distorted panels on either side (context) is particularly suitable for maximizing the utilization of the available display area in landscape mode. We provide a first experiment of a bifocal display on a mobile device. The results of a first qualitative experiment confirm the users’ preference for a coherent display where two levels of details are concurrently visible on the phone’s screen for tasks that involve exploration of the entire set. The second quantitative experiment focuses on navigational tasks with the bifocal display and compares the traditional touch-based flick and two variants of it, namely tilt+flick and dynamic-peephole+flick. The results show that the combined modality dynamic-peephole+flick outperforms the combined modality tilt+flick when the target is very far from the focus area.La visualisation interactive sur supports mobiles traite du problème d'une grande quantité d'informations sur un écran par définition de taille réduite pour sa mobilité. En considérant des données 1D ou temporelles, l'article décrit une exploration empirique d'une visualisation bifocale sur un téléphone mobile (iPhone 4). La vue bifocale est obtenue en appliquant une fonction de transformation à la dimension horizontale de l'espace des données : la vue détaillée au centre (le focus) et les deux vues non détaillées de chaque côté (le contexte) sont particulièrement adaptées pour optimiser la taille occupée à l'écran en mode paysage. Une première étude qualitative concerne l'interface en sortie. Elle confirme l'apport d'une visualisation bifocale (affichant l'espace d'informations en utilisant deux niveaux de détail) sur téléphone mobile pour un ensemble de tâches nécessitant l'exploration de l'ensemble des données. Dans une deuxième étude quantitative, nous étudions deux modalités combinées qui visent à améliorer la technique de défilement classique gestuelle par flick : (interaction physique dans l'espace + flick) et (tilt + flick). Les performances de la modalité combinée (interaction physique + flick) sont meilleures que celles de la modalité combinée (tilt + flick) pour des tâches nécessitant un grand déplacement dans l'espace des données