Chapter 1 – Organizations and their systems
In realizing strategic organizations goals, strategic management will perform the following activities:
- Planning (formulating strategic organizational goals)
- Structuring (creating cross-functional collaboration between employees)
- Execution (allocating task assignments and providing resources to these employees)
- Evaluation (testing the realization of goals)
- Adjusting (undertaking corrective or preventive measures if goals are not or as insufficiently
realized).
On the tactical and operational level similar activities will be developed. However, as the
specification of these activities gets more detailed, differences will arise. It seems that the strategic
business goals can be divided into more concrete goals that, in turn, can be further concretized as
well.
Information provision is never a goal as such. Information is always provided because there are users
of that information. In general users of information need it for the following three distinct purposes:
for delegation & accountability, decision-making and operating the business.
Information for delegation and accountability and information for decision-making flow vertically
through the organization. However, vertical information flows will differ as information is intended
for lower or higher hierarchical levels. Gorry and Scott Morton (1971) position information within the
following seven dimensions: source (largely internal – external), scope (well defined and narrow –
very wide), level of aggregation (detailed- aggregate), time horizon (historical – future), currency
(highly current – quite old), required accuracy (high – low), frequency of use (very frequent –
infrequent).
Information for operating the business often flows horizontal through the organization; for example
between different departments. To support such information provision a coordinating function is
needed to control knowledge sharing between these departments.
Information can only be called information if it has meaning for its user. Hence, data collection and
recording is crucial in the process of information provision. Information is all the processed data that
contributes to the recipient’s understanding of applicable parts of reality.
Information and communication technology (IT)
Information and communication technology plays an important role in the recording and processing
of data, and in information provision. Information and communication technology can be defined
as: all the electronic media used to collect, store and process data, to produce information, and to
support or enable communication.
Information systems are the most overt manifestations of information and communication
technology. A system can be defined as an organized way of undertaking actions in order to attain
certain goals. Following this definition, an information system is an organized way of inputting data,
processing data and providing information aimed at the attainment of organizational goals.
An accounting information systems (Romney and Steinbart, 2008) can be defined as an accounting
information systems that processes that and transactions to provide users with information they
need to plan, control and operate their businesses. Otherwise, an accounting information system
(Gelinas and Dull, 2008) is a specialized subsystem of the management information system whose
purpose is to collect, process, and report information related to financial transactions.
Governance and control
Two important (strongly related) aspects of accounting information systems are governance and
control.
Control entails a backward-looking component as well as a forward-looking component. The
backward-looking component merely comprises comparing a realization (also ‘what is’ position) with
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,an established criterion (‘what should be’ position). This component of control can be labeled as
checking. The forward-looking component merely involves decision-making aimed at enhancing
future organizational performance. Control, in the simplest fashion, can be defined as continuously
realizing legitimized goals. More refined, all those organizational activities that are aimed at having
organization members cooperate to reach the organization’s goals.
By means of governing a business, management attempts to control it. Governance and control
entail giving task assignments and holding workers accountable for the fulfillment of their tasks.
Governance is the process of keeping an organization on track toward legitimized goals.
An integral control framework
The framework as described below is two-dimensional. The first dimension is strategy formulation
versus strategy implementation, or the external domain versus the internal domain. The second
dimension is the business domain, the information and communication domain and the IT domain.
Within the first dimension, in the strategy formulation domain, the business is positioned toward the
external world. The main managerial task is to formulate strategy in such a way that competitive
advantage can be accomplished. In the strategy implementation domain, which by definition is
internal, the business is structured and operated in such a manner that the intended strategy can be
realized. The accounting information systems is important in helping an organization to adopt a
sustainable strategy position since it provides the necessary information to align business activities
and to connect the business with the outside world. Hence, the accounting information system an
bridge the gap between the external and the internal domain.
The object of information provision is the business, also the underlying reality. Information often
cannot provide a perfect representation of the underlying reality, or can only do so at unreasonable
high costs. The efficiency of data collection, recording and processing and information provision is
strongly influenced by the media used to inform and communicate. The collection of these media is
generally referred to as information and communication technology or IT. Obviously, the current
state of information and communication technology determines efficiency of data collection,
recording and processing, and information provision to a large extent. So, there is a strong
interrelationship between information (and communication), the business and IT.
There is a continuous alignment and balancing between the elements of the two integral control
framework dimensions. The framework may be used for the description, analysis and solution of any
business problem. To apply this generic framework and tailor it for classifying accounting
information system problems, a further refinements must be made. As mentioned before, control is
strongly related to accounting information systems. A number of control concepts can be
distinguished.
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, Quality and quality criteria
Since the quality of a decision is dependent on the quality of information, the information
requirements must be determined as accurately as possible and information provision must be
tailored to these requirements. Information must possess several quality characteristics.
When assessing the quality of information, the focus is on the degree to which information can be
utilized in decision-making. The figure below represents the quality spectrum of information.
Information is said to be reliable if it is valid (in accordance with the represented part of reality),
accurate (mathematically correct) and complete (in accordance with the represented part of reality).
Information is said to be relevant if it has the desired level of precision (degree of detail), is provided
on time and is understandable by the users (presented in a format that is useful for and intelligible
to its users). Together, reliability and relevance contribute to the effectiveness of information.
Besides effectiveness, efficiency is the other main characteristic of information quality. Information
provision is efficient if it is economically justified and hence if it is produced at the lowers possible
costs.
In assessing the quality of the IT infrastructure, the focus is on the degree to which information
systems meet the requirements of the data processing department. The foremost important quality
characteristic of the IT infrastructure is its ability to provide high-quality information. This is the link
between the quality spectrum of the IT infrastructure and the quality spectrum of information. The
figure below presents the common quality characteristics of the IT infrastructure.
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