حسابداری و مدیریت برون سپاری : مطالعه تجربی در صنعت هتلداری

Interview and survey data have been collected to study the nature and antecedents of accounting systems involved in hotel outsourcing decision-making and control. It has been found that there is considerable cross-hotel variation in the degree of accounting system involvement in outsourcing management. Performance and whether outsourcing decisions are made in the context of a long-term strategic agenda, appear to be variables affecting both the nature of accounting involvement and the degree of accounting sophistication in hotel outsourcing management. Hotel quality was also a significant factor affecting the degree of accounting sophistication in hotel outsourcing. It appears that accounting appraisal of outsourcing proposals rarely include long-term oriented sophisticated techniques such as the discounting of future cash flows. It is conjectured that this may be because outsourcing decisions are not conducted in the context of the formal capital budgeting process.

Langfield-Smith and Smith (2003) note that “Over the past decade, there has been increasing interest in the opportunities provided by strategic alliances, and outsourcing in particular (Ring and Van de Ven, 1994, Nooteboom et al., 1997 and Das and Teng, 2001)” (p. 282). Outsourcing carries several important implications for management accounting. Firstly, the fact that cost relativity is a fundamental issue in the outsourcing decision highlights the potentially significant role for management accounting in facilitating decisions about whether to outsource. Secondly, the decision to outsource has long-term implications (Domberger, 1998), signifying analytical challenges that parallel the type of issues confronted in capital budgeting, which is widely acknowledged as constituting a significant management accounting decision-making area (Dempsey, 2003). Thirdly, the need to develop management control systems for subcontracting places demands on management accounting and its broadening influence in terms of financial as well as non-financial accountability. It is in this context that this study concerning the nature and role played by management accounting in hotel outsourcing has been conducted. The study seeks to: 1. Examine the nature of accounting departments’ involvement and sophistication with respect to hotel outsourcing decision-making;1 and 2. Identify factors affecting accounting departments’ involvement and sophistication with respect to hotel outsourcing decision-making.

This study has sought to advance our appreciation of accounting in the context of outsourcing management. Two research objectives have been pursued: (1) to appraise the nature of accounting's involvement and sophistication with respect to hotel outsourcing decision-making; and (2) to identify factor's affecting accounting's involvement and sophistication in hotel outsourcing decision-making. With respect to the first research objective, both interview and survey data indicate considerable cross-hotel variability with respect to the degree the accounting function is involved in hotel outsourcing decision-making. It is likely that this factor is exacerbated by the high propensity of hotels to engage financial controllers who do not have a professional accounting qualification (55% in this study). Formalising outsourcing decision-making processes ranks highest of the six dimensions of accounting involvement appraised and contractor performance monitoring ranks lowest. This latter observation suggests prime responsibility for gauging contractor performance is borne by the operating department most closely related to the function outsourced. All of the seven measures of costing sophistication yielded means above the mid point of the scale and limited variation across the accounting techniques appraised. It appears that transaction costs receive relatively low attention, as two of the four transaction costs appraised (contract set up costs and subcontractor failure costs) ranked lowest. A particular contribution of this study concerns the inclusion of transaction cost appraisal amongst the accounting practises investigated. This recognition given to transaction costs can be seen to build on the work of Roodhooft and Warlop (1999) and Sartorius and Kirsten (2005) who also employed a transaction cost economics perspective in conjunction with traditional management accounting costs, in an effort to capture the full costs of outsourcing. The three items relating to “degree of long-term analytical sophistication” all ranked lowly (below the mid-points of the measurement scales), with discounted cash flow techniques ranking lowest. The failure of many hotels to consider discounted cash flow techniques is a notable finding. A decision to outsource can carry one-off cash flow implications in future years, particularly if the outsourcing arrangement fails. Uneven cash flows are also likely to be apparent at the outset of an outsourcing contract. Although there may be no immediate outlay, there can be initial cash savings (e.g., avoidance of expenditure needed to overhaul existing equipment), or an immediate cash inflow arising from the sale of an asset that is not needed due to a decision to outsource. It appears inconsistent that a decision to insource can give rise to the use of discounting techniques because a capital outlay is frequently involved, but a decision to outsource would not result in the use of discounting techniques. Unlike the capital budgeting decision which is conducted in a routine and annualised manner, outsourcing decisions generally appear to be made in an ad hoc manner. This factor may signify that outsourcing decisions are buffered from the type of rigorous analysis conducted as part of the capital budget decision-making cycle.