Accounting information, as characterized by Simon, Kozmetsky, Guetzkow, and Tyndall (1954), has three main uses: decision-making, planning, and control. Academic research has mostly focused on the third role of accounting information. There is a vast literature examining the role of incentives in aligning the interests of managers and employees with organizational goals, that is, the control function of accounting. Much less effort has been devoted to the problem of the design of information systems to improve decision-making and planning. Yet much of what we teach in the classroom and what practitioners highlight as pressing issues for their organizations has to do precisely with the first two roles of accounting information (Labro 2015).
The objective of this paper is to provide a brief, bird's eye overview of decision-making research in accounting. We concentrate here on barriers to decision-making and the tools to overcome them, and largely abstract from...
