دانلود رایگان مقاله حسابداری مدیریت و تصمیم گیری

Abstract

Studying the outsourcing decision in two substantial manufacturing companies, the paper explores the use of management accounting information in a complex and strategically significant decision-making setting. The setting involves multiple decision participant switch potentially conflicting preferences, constrained information provision capabilities and uncertainties in respect of the financial outcomes of alternative decision options. The two case studies reveal two different methodological approaches to decision-making: analytical and actor-based. These approaches incorporate substantially different ways of managing in formation uncertainty, fostering interaction among the coalition of decision-participants and making use of management accounting. The findings show that management account-ing information and techniques do play an important role in relation to organisationally complex and strategic decision situations. The revealed methods provide potentially educational examples from which other organisations can learn. The findings address the simplistic nature of the conventional management accounting literature on decision-making (e.g. outsourcing and “make or buy”).

5. Conclusion

This study has explored how two organisations, each facing a complex strategic decision situation of information uncertainty and involving a coalition of decision-participants, structure the analysis of their strategic decision issues and incorporate accounting information into it. The findings show that in their outsourcing decision-making, the two companies intentionally produce accounting information to calculate the consequences of the alternatives constructed. Both companies draw upon conventional management accounting information and techniques. However, the way the two companies organise, produce and use accounting information differs substantially. Both companies have established a methodologically-based decision-making procedure that is tightly integrated with their particular strategic task environment. Thus, confronted with a particular strategic decision (i.e. outsourcing), the cases reveal two different methodological approaches to decision-making. Each company has a different way of handling information uncertainty and of interacting with the coalition of decision-participants. In one case, outsourcing is used as an instrument for radically cleaning up the organisation and reconfiguring the supply chains for the existing product portfolio as a reaction to financial difficulties. In this organisation, an analytical method is adopted for both the structuring of the outsourcing decision and the production and use of accounting information. The essential elements of this analytical method are one centralised decision-maker who formulates the decision-problem, a methodic of a one-way knowledge-accumulating process plus calculative techniques (including accounting) playing important roles in information production. Lower level and decentralised managers and employees are not actively engaged in the decision-making process, but are mainly regarded as information ‘automatons’from which quantitative data can be extracted for subsequent modelling purposes. Relevant, quantified information is assumed to be available by the decision-maker. Accounting information sanctions the definitive decision made by the centralised top management.