The roles of accounting information systems in an organization experiencing financial crisis

Article Abstract:

Organizations frequently face crises of many types, which often have an impact on the organization's members and clients and pose a challenge to the organization's management and accounting information systems (AIS). A longitudinal case study of an AIS at a university faced by funding cuts, a situation illustrating an externally-generated financial crisis, reveals important, though partial explanations of the role of AIS in organizations. The case study was used to evaluate the research into the role of AIS by M.J. Earl and A.G. Hopwood (1980) and Burchell et al. (1980). Research results reveals that the AIS in the university corresponded to the normative AIS framework elucidated in the prior research, but that it offered only partial explanations of the role of AIS in organizations. The AIS lacked some of the mechanisms needed for proactive crisis management.

Accounting and auditing, Crisis management, Management information systems, Burchell, S., Earl, M.J., Hopwood, A.G.

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Ambiguity and accounting: the elusive link between information and decision making

Article Abstract:

Theories of choice are incomplete and may mislead those considering or modifying information systems design. Contemporary notions about information engineering link strategies for seeking, organizing, and employing information to concepts of anticipatory, consequential options portrayed in decision theory. Behavioral studies of organizational decision-making suggest that the portrayal of decision-making and information seen in decision theory leaves out or substantially underestimates choice ambiguities. Information systems are often incomplete that are closely articulated with choices in a manner recognized within decision theory. Information engineering might benefit from decision making concepts that blend traditions of theories of choice with knowledge of other traditions in history, culture, and literature.

Information theory

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The accounting of interpretations and the interpretation of accounts: the communicative function of 'the language of business'

Article Abstract:

The underlying objectivistic, philosophical assumptions in modern accounting research are challenged, and an interpretive alternative offered. A 'hermeneutical' decision-making view is considered, first as it relates to science in general, and then for the human sciences, and finally as it relates to economics. Human decisions are not portrayed as objective, but as part of a communicative process that is bi-directional. Professional assessments made by researchers and practicing accountants are seen as 'matters of interpretation', but not as being arbitrary.

Hermeneutics

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