Information Needs Assessment of Managers to the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) Systems across Iranian Industries

Abstract

Nowadays, companies confront many ups and downs due to optimal or destructive decisions made by corporate executives based on industry trends information. Complexities and environmental uncertainties have made companies more dependent on information. But increasing and accumulation of information may reduce the quality of managerial decisions as well as waste the time. This involves assessment of management information needs as a prerequisite to design any information system, either a management system or even an activity-based one. This study takes a descriptive-survey approach to examine information needs for the managers of listed industries in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) in the field of cost accounting with an emphasis on activity-based costing. Following series of interviews with executives, a theoretical framework was developed based on it and two questionnaires for financial and non-financial managers were extracted and distributed among study samples. The questionnaires were analyzed using statistical t-tests as well as exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to determine the information needs to ABC. The empirical findings on the information needs gaps show that information needs of the TSE publicly-traded industries' directors would be lied in financial reporting, planning (budgeting), performance appraisal and control purposes and some suggestions were provided, accordingly.