Discerning interrelationships among management accounting systems, organizational variables, and managerial performance

Abstract In today’s global market, information plays a determinant role in the competitiveness of business organizations. Information systems have become essential resources in daily management, strategy development, and implementation. In this context, management accounting systems (MAS) have undergone substantial changes to adapt to new technological and environmental realities and have become an increasingly valuable instrument to support managers’ decision-making processes. Nevertheless, managers may not effectively leverage the information provided by MAS to enhance the quality of their decisions and, consequently, their overall performance. Discrepancies in research outcomes suggest a potential oversight in analyzing other organizational variables through which MAS might impact managerial performance. Based on an extensive literature review, we identified a scarcity of recent research focusing on three variables that could potentially mediate the relationship between MAS and managerial performance. These variables are intricately linked to people-oriented aspects and include the accountants’ involvement in strategy formulation, implementation, and monitoring, user satisfaction with the information supplied by MAS, and the decentralization of decision-making processes. To address this gap, we used the finite mixture - partial least squares (FIMIX-PLS) to discern the interrelationships among the variables in the research model. The results highlight how the interaction between firm characteristics can enhance the use of MAS in managers’ decision support and consequently improve their performance. This research provides relevant theoretical contributions to the debate about different organizational environments and their influence on MAS effectiveness. It also offers managerial implications for business organizations that need to design, implement, and use management accounting systems.