Recently, contemporary management accounting studies have focused on management accounting techniques or procedures initiated in the industrialized countries, and whether they can be effectively adopted· in developing countries. They have explored the factors (both impetus and impediment) that would affect the application of management accounting practices in developing countries? Several studies in different paris of th{ world have investigated the status of their national management accounting practices, such as the study of Chenhall and Smith (1998a) in Australia, Wijewardena and Zoysa (1999) in Japan. and Drury et al (1993) in the U.K. However, this area of research remains inconclusive and incomplete in relation to the literature of some developing countries such as Egypt. This research attempted to investigate two main questions, firstly; the in-firm internal contingent factors to the adoption of recent management accounting practices. secondly. the effect of adopting recent management accounting practices on the firms' performance. with an application solely on the Egyptian pharmaceutical firms. The main motivation for undertaking this research is to fill the gap in literature and provide some information that might benefit both academics and practitioners in this field. In addition, investors and future investors might get a clearer picture on the effect of the Egyptian economy's specific characteristics on the development of management accounting practices in manufacturing finns. A thorough review of the literature suggested a contingency perspective as an appropriate theoretical framework for this type of research (Fisher and Govindarajan, 1993; Fisher. 1995a: 1998: Donaldson. 1996: Ittner and Larcker, 200 I). Data were collected in this research by using interviews. Interviews were conducted in the 20 largest manufacturing pharmaceutical firms. The data were analyzed both statistically and qualitatively in order to explore the research questions.