Capital Investment Appraisal Techniques: A Survey of Current Usage

This paper seeks to show that organisational change, fuelled by the expansion of information technology, may have contributed to the erosion of the previously established relationship between company size and the quantitative investment appraisal criteria selected. It finds that companies are using more methods together, that usage of the more sophisticated discounted cash flow techniques is higher, and that usage of the less theoretically sound accounting rate of return technique is lower, than previous studies would have suggested for companies of the size involved. It suggests that the size/method selection relationship may only be identifiable when the companies involved are all part of one study, or the studies compared are contemporaneous.