آیا حسابداری مدیریت در فرایند برنامه ریزی نقشی ایفا می کند؟

This study examines the relationship between management accounting and planning profiles in Brazilian companies. The main goal is to understand the consequences of not including a fully structured management accounting scheme in the planning process. The authors conducted a field research among medium and large-sized companies, using a probabilistic sample from a population of 2281 companies. Using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and statistical cluster analysis, the authors grouped the entities' strategic budget planning processes into five profiles, after which the authors applied statistical tests to assess the five clusters. The study concludes that poor or fully implemented strategic and budget-planning processes relate to the management accounting profiles of the Brazilian organizations studied.

The business environment has become increasingly volatile and unpredictable in recent decades, and business management has become correspondingly more complex. In particular, increased competition has become a threat to the survival of businesses in more vulnerable sectors. In this environment, strategic planning with a view to achieving organizational efficacy is critical (Porter, 1985). However, the formulation of effective strategies will not ensure that an entity achieves organizational efficacy unless the entity has actually implemented those strategies (Jermias and Gani, 2004 and Shank and Govindarajan, 1997). This implementation requires the interposition of a particular form of strategic planning between the formulation of policies and their implementation (Mintzberg et al., 1998); moreover, the strategy implementation requires instruments that facilitate and control the effective implementation of the formulated strategies. In order to manage the business and achieve organizational efficacy, the organization takes some elements into account, such as organizational structure, management style and the management control system that includes the management accounting system (Govindarajan, 1988). Particularly the management control system is an important mechanism, responsible for the design and implementation of strategies. In terms of range and reliability, the provision of managerial information that feeds the planning and control processes is critical. Such a management control system consists of two dimensions: (i) information selection; and (ii) information presentation. The first relates to the selection of appropriate management accounting information (Chenhall and Morris, 1986, Bouwens and Abernethy, 2000, Tillema, 2005 and Gerdin, 2005). The second refers to the techniques of management control adopted by organizations, including traditional ones like strategic planning and budgeting (Gosselin, 1997, Chenhall and Langfield-Smith, 1998, Haldma and Lääts, 2002 and Jermias and Gani, 2004). The relationship between these two dimensions of the management control system determines the design of the management control system (Ferreira and Otley, 2006). The present study examines how the attributes of the information produced by the management accounting system affect the selection of management control techniques (Ferreira and Otley, 2006). The premise of this study is that the nature of the planning process, which includes strategic planning and budget, varies in accordance with the accounting profile tools that companies implement. Some companies implement all tools according to the conceptual framework, whereas others present less-developed profiles in terms of these tools (Frezatti, 2005). According to Scapens (1994), organizations use more recently developed accounting tools less frequently than traditional accounting tools. For the purposes of the present analysis, this research do not consider neither strategic planning nor budget as recently developed tools (Chenhall and Langfield-Smith, 1998). The study is not only concerned with whether they exist in an organization, but also to what extent they exist (in terms of complexity and usage profiles). Examining the mutual implications of the dimensions of the management control system is relevant (Ferreira and Otley, 2006) in order to reach an understanding of the association between them. The identification of the attributes' profile can explain relevant differences among the entities in terms of the planning process, usage level and even satisfaction level with the use of the artifact. This study intends to add to the literature the qualitative discussion of the planning process in a more ambitious dimension than to simply identify whether the process exists or not, perceiving if different planning process profiles require peculiarities in terms of the attributes of the management accounting system. Consequently, the development itself and demand of management accounting can be understood in a broader way on the basis of this associative analysis. Considering that management accounting may have different profiles of level of structuring and that, according to these profiles management accounting may have different impacts on the strategic plan and budget, the study aims to address the following research question. Is management accounting structure associated with the planning (strategic and budget) processes development? H1: the structure of the management accounting attributes associates with the strategic planning and budget development.

The analysis provided indication that both the management account structure and planning process (strategic plan and budget) have different profiles, treated in the clusters. This result, when referring to planning process, was in accordance with Steiner (1979) which argues that a universal strategic planning structure that can be equally adequate for all companies does not exist. As the focus of this paper is not the strategy definition but its implementation and control, the lack of structure implies in difficulties to implement and follow that. The several clusters indicate the level of heterogeneity of the profiles, from very poor up to a complex and fully adherent. The results identified different clusters as per considering the management account structure of attributes, in comparison with its construct, from the one that is the poorest one up to the most adherent. An important implication is the association between the most adherent profile from the planning perspective and the poorest, less adherent profile from the perspective of management accounting. The contrary is also true, the most adherent and complete is the one that has the most adherent planning structure. The results demonstrated that a size characteristic is not present due to the fact that the most adherent cluster is the one relatively balanced. Considering the implications, the following arguments are possible: • Any level of association in terms of management accounting and planning process exists. This research can't provide insights with evidences about the drive of that: the results doesn't imply that management accounting profile is fully adherent due to a fully adherent planning process or the contrary, the planning process profile is adherent due to the management accounting is adherent. Causality is not possible from the adopted methodological perspective; • The maturity level detected by the cluster, or lack of that, may demand efforts to prepare the basis for development. In other words, planning process not well structured might demand, first, an improvement in management accounting to provide grounding. After that the planning process might be improved. This result can explain the not matured status of some organization when talking about planning process. • If the prior assertion is true, any crisis time will push or strongly demand the planning process and, as a consequence, will also push a not sufficient matured, with a profile not sufficiently adherent to conceptual framework; • on the other hand, if the management accounting is matured, included in the most adherent profiles, the organization will have a solid basis for planning process development. Accounting literature has given increased attention to the relationship between management accounting system and strategy (Langfield-Smith, 2007). This accounting literature has focused on different strategic frameworks, such as strategy process—emergent and deliberate (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985)—and strategy typologies—defenders, prospectors, and analyzers (Miles and Snow, 1978), leadership, differentiation, and focus (Porter, 1985), and build, hold, harvest, and divest (Gupta and Govindarajan, 1984). The main contribution to this literature is to show which management accounting attributes seem to be more adequate for different strategic planning profiles.