An Experimental Study Based On Task Characteristics, Presentation Format And Management Accounting Reporting

Be helpful to the decision-making makes the value of the information. Decision usefulness is the eternal theme of accounting information, which accounting is just an information system. It is obviously not only applicable to the financial accounting but also the management accounting. From the pioneering research of Ball&Brown, the research of empirical evaluation of financial accounting is over-abundant while the same research in management accounting is rare. The decisive manager value is to some extent more difficult to observe because the management accounting information is closed-door. So it means that there will have no way to copy the same research methods and design such as financial accounting. There are two aspects of the decisive manager value of management accounting, which are content and format. Management accounting practice has been well-researched in the content of the decisive manager value, while it is few and far between the decisive manager value to the format aspect. The decisive auxiliary value means improving the efficiency and effectiveness of managers by the melioration of the format in management accounting reporting, which means depress of the uncertainty after decision.With the wide-spread use of modern management accounting controls and methods, management accounting reporting, such as the reports of economic activity analysis, cost analysis, and financial analysis etc., becomes the most important and formal means in the base of field study in some enterprises. It is known to all that-forced by the pressure of the investors and other stakeholders, the normative and decisive value of financial reports have been consummated with the improvement of the accounting principle, while it is almost blank in the management accounting reporting for the reporting discretion, which means that there are no unification of format in MAR. Though MAR is very important in the enterprise practice in the mouths of CFOs, it is difficult to read and understand because the influencing factors, such as task Characteristics, presentation format and cognition of the managers etc., which make the MAR widely varieties. So it makes the MAR delivery management accounting information ineffectively.In order to study those above, this paper inspected the decisive manager value from the behavior perspective that information may help to learn the role of MAR table type and graph format plays in accuracy and timeliness of the management decision, and we tried to use the variable of task characteristics to explain the inter mechanism. Focus on the task characteristics and presentation format, we put forward the conceptual model of the two presentation formats, namely table type and graph form on the basis of theoretical analysis and the on-the-spot interview, which influenced management decision. In the support of Visual Basic programming language, I chose2(MAR formats:tabular, graphical)×2(task characteristics:performance evaluation, business forecasting) two-factor computer simulation, and invited more than100postgraduate students to participate in the computer experiment. Background information on the experiment has selected retail sales of costume design companies named as ABC Company as a research object, which has many famous designers of the fashion birthplace all over Paris, London, Milan and Copenhagen, and so on. In the material, there is a Workshop Department in the ABC Company, which is an officer wearing business suit, mainly for the gentle and generous OM (Office Man), and with a strong work ability, temperament and wisdom OL (Office Lady). It used tabular and graphical format to provide the Workshop business, nearly seven years of sales statistics. Subjects has evaluated the sales of Workshop Business Unit in the past years on the base of the tabular and graphical statistics, and given a more precise prediction interval about the next year’s sales revenue and profits of Workshop Business. This is an experiment about how MAR improves the decisive auxiliary value of management accounting.The arrangement of the main content:The first chapter:introduction. This part mainly introduced the research background, significance, main contents, research methods, research framework, features and possible contribution.The second chapter:theory basis and literature review. It reviewed the related research at home and abroad, laid a solid theoretical foundation separately from the cognitive fit theory, graph and table processing theory model and task-reporting compatibility model. Furthermore, it summarized the related research about MAR, presentation format, and management accounting information decision-making, then put forward the possible research scopes.The third chapter:hypothesis and experiment design. Based on the existing literature, gradually analyzed the logical relationship among the variable level table or graph of the presentation format, the variable level of performance evaluation or management forecast of task characteristics, the presentation format and MAR aided decision making, then put forward the research hypothesis. In addition, it discussed the detailed experimental designing process, including the practical investigation and research in experiment preparation stage, experiment task design, process control, preliminary experiment and before-test, and the experiment steps is showed in the form of a flowchart.The fourth chapter:the empirical analysis of task characteristics, presentation format and the decisive auxiliary value of MAR. It completely displayed the experimental materials, the dependent variables was analyzed with descriptive statistics, inspecting the effectiveness of independent variables. Furthermore, it took empirical test to inspect the influence of task characteristics, presentation format on management decision accuracy and timeliness through T test of independent sample, single factor variance analysis, and presentation format and task characteristics interaction variance analysis methods. Through statistical analysis of experimental feedback information and adding experiment with working experimental to supply analysis, the paper deeply discussed the research topic once again.The fifth chapter:conclusion and prospect. It summarized the empirical result, analyzed the reason of the failure of partial hypothesis, finally, the paper summarized the theory and practice significance. Discuss the practical enlightenment of improvement of the future MAR in the format based on the enterprises practice. Finally, it discussed the possible future research directions.Through empirical research, the main conclusions of this paper are drawn:In the decision-making accuracy, when task characteristics are the overall consideration task of performance evaluation, reporting format significantly affects decision-making on management accounting reports; When task characteristics are analytical task of the operating forecast for the details, reporting format doesn’t significantly affect decision-making on MAR, but graphical format is relatively accurate in the absolute change of sales range forecasts; In decision-making timeliness, task characteristics and reporting format have a significant interaction in the decision-making time, specifically graphical reporting format improves the decision-making timeliness in the performance evaluation tasks, but business forecasting tasks require detailed analysis and information processing, and the table format improves the efficiency of decision-making. Finally supplementary analysis adding work experience showed that reporting format, task characteristics, work experience, have no significant impact on decision time. However, reporting format, task characteristics and work experience between any two have a significant impact on the decision-making time on the level of a=0.05, showing work experience may be an important factor to affect the MAR decision, which can be investigated in future research.The topic of this paper is the decisive manager value and its mechanism of action of MAR, which has not only complemented and expanded the field of traditional accounting, but also extracted certain universal significance of the scientific issues from enterprise practice. Computer experimental study focuses on the contingency variables and behavior motivation of the decisive manager value of MAR from the perspective of accounting, decision science, psychology, which is based on the reporting discretion of MAR. Discussion pays particular emphasis on revealing the decisive manager value and its mechanism of action of MAR, so as to provide a basis theoretical support for the generation, use and management of MAR, and the topic is the basis of a behavior management accounting field research.The characteristics and contributions:First, in research method, we can learn about the transmission mechanism of management accounting information on the basis of field study of enterprise practice, and the rigorous experimental scene design makes us to realize the computer simulation experiment by the Visual Basic programming language. Inviting hundreds of postgraduate students participated in the computer experiment to study the decisive manager value by fully using the resources of the national natural science funds, and in the experimental process record the experimental data and fill in the feedback survey data of the subjects through the computer software platform designed by outside experts, which has broken the mainly research paradigm of pure experience or pure theory in the related field before. What’s more, the computer accurately collected the decision time and other kinds of data to ensure the experiment data validity and reliability.Second, in view of research, it has researched the Cognitive Fit Theory from the view of decision-making, psychology, the chart processing model, or Task-Display Compatibility and so on which focus on every contingency variables and behavior reasons. It has revealed the decisive manager value and mechanism of MAR gradually, and provided the basic theory supports for the generation and utilization of MAR.Third, in approach of research, this paper has thrown off traditional MAC. By focusing on the improvement of MAR form, it provides deep management enlightenment to adapt to the need of enterprise practice. Finally, the paper advances the topic of the decisive manager value of management accounting information mainly by empirical research of ANOVA.