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Contents of the questionnaire
The selection of the questions, possible amendments to questions, as well as the positioning of questions for each of the four main areas on which the questionnaire was designed to obtain data, are discussed in this section. A copy of the questionnaire is attached as Appendix 1.
The first area related to the demographical information of each respondent. This area consisted of nine questions. Section 2.4 indicates that the level and timing of emergence of the business partner role possibly differ based on various demographic variables related to individuals as well as based on the demographic variables of the business at which individuals are employed. Therefore, demographical information on the respondents and the businesses where they were employed, provided valuable analysis opportunities to investigate whether differences in decision-making involvement related to specific demographic variables. Sections 4.3.1 and 4.4.1 also suggest that demographic variables related to the individual may indicate differences in susceptibility to the biases investigated in the present study. Appropriate demographical information therefore also provides valuable analysis opportunities with regard to differences in susceptibility to influence of behavioural aspects. Accordingly, demographical information on the age, gender, work experience, culture, country of employment, and professional associations of each respondent, was requested. Questions on the size of the company at which the respondent was employed, measured in terms of total number of employees as well as in terms of total annual revenue in US dollar, were also included.
The second area of information collected, related to the role and decision-making involvement of the respondents. This section consisted of six questions. The position of the respondent in the company at which he or she was employed was enquired. Respondents were provided with the definition of business-related decisions for the purposes of the study. Thereafter, their perception of their current level of business decision-making involvement, as well as the level of increase in this involvement within the last decade, was requested. Yazdifar and Tsamenyi (2005:184), Clinton and White (2012:40) and Sorensen (2009:1274) investigated the roles of management accounting professionals by means of similar survey questions. The second last question in this section was self-developed and related to the preference, or not, of the respondent for making decisions based on concrete facts, as opposed to being based on intuition. The final question in this section related to the percentage of business-related decisions that the respondent had to make, where ample supporting information was available at the time that the decision had to be made. This question was only displayed to respondents who indicated that they were involved in business decision-making to some extent. The third and fourth areas for which data were collected in the questionnaire were related to the behavioural influence on business-related decision-making of the respondents. To ensure reliability and validity of the questions in these sections, the questions were based on questions from previous studies. However, some of the questions were adapted to varying degrees to ensure that they fit the description of business-related decisions. The questions are discussed here in the order that they were presented in the copy of the questionnaire in Appendix 1. In the actual questionnaire, the questions in the two behavioural influence areas were provided to respondents in a random order to ensure that fatigue and other factors related to the order of presentation of the questions did not unduly affect the data. However, steps were also taken to ensure that questions that related to the same scenario but which were framed differently, were not presented back to back to any of the respondents.
The decision problems presented to respondents were hypothetical decision scenarios, without actual monetary incentives attached to acting rationally. It was not deemed necessary to offer such incentives to respondents to motivate them to act rationally, because previous studies found that the decision behaviour of respondents and participants did not differ when incentives were provided. In his study of the utility theory that best represented the actual behaviour of human decision-making, Camerer (1989:81) also tested whether preferences between experimental participants differed when they received actual incentives for their choices, as opposed to only answering hypothetical questions with no actual incentives attached. Camerer (1989:82) found that the incentives did not significantly influence participants’ decision-making behaviour. Thaler and Johnson (1990:653) also found that participants’ risk-taking behaviour did not differ significantly between participants who participated for actual monetary incentives and participants who simply answered hypothetical questions. Previous studies on decision-making behaviour in the field of management accounting (Lipe, 1993:753) and the related auditing field (Guiral, Rodgers, Ruiz & Gonzalo-Angulo, 2015:110) used hypothetical examples in a manner similar to this study.
The possible influence of frame dependence on the decision-preferences of respondents was investigated by the third area of the questionnaire. Investigation into the influence of frame dependence was limited to 11 questions to ensure that the questionnaire did not become too cumbersome.
Questions 1 and 2 in this area investigated possible preference reversal in decision-making by respondents based on the framing effects of loss aversion. The question options were, in essence, the same, except for Question 1 being positively framed and Question 2 negatively framed. The two questions were based on work by Bazerman (1983:211), which was later replicated by Miller and Fagley (1991:517).
Population and sampling
This study is concerned with the decision-making behaviour of the international population of management accounting professionals. Management accounting professionals may be members of various management accounting institutes, yet may also practise management accounting, without being professionally registered. Accordingly, it was not possible to obtain a complete list of management accounting professionals worldwide. Consequently, a non-probability sampling approach had to be implemented. According to Fogelman and Comber (2002:134-135), convenience sampling, as a method of non-probability sampling, may be used when it is not practicable to obtain a list, including contact information, of the whole population selected for a specific study. Convenience sampling is a sample that is convenient to select due to various possible reasons, including the ability to obtain data via the sample (Leedy & Ormrod, 2013:220).
Brandon et al. (2013:2) point out that the external validity of convenience samples regularly represents a concern for research scholars. However, Brandon et al. (2013:2) also indicate that research shows that convenience samples are often adequate substitutes for probability samples, especially when the population is widely dispersed and difficult to reach. However, the authors suggest that external validity should still be dealt with by other measures. To this effect, Fogelman and Comber (2002:135) state that research studies which employ convenience sampling should provide information about the selection of the convenience sample, as well as about the sample itself, to facilitate readers in evaluating the trustworthiness of the sample in relation to the population. The sample response collection procedures for the current study are described in detail in Section 5.4.4.
Various previous behavioural studies, especially experiment-based studies, regularly relied only on student sample bases (as examples see: Finucane et al., 2000:5; Glöckner & Pachur, 2012:25; Kahneman et al., 1991:1329; Sebora & Cornwall, 1995:46). Yet, Menkhoff and Nikiforow (2009:319) argue that it is advisable to include qualified professionals in the survey target group to ensure that findings are more representative of the population in terms of respondents who understand the importance of proper decision-making in professional environments. The current study aimed to investigate behavioural aspects in decision-making by management accounting professionals in the environment of their changing role, including the change in their decision-making involvement. Therefore, it was essential that the sample largely consisted of practising management accounting professionals from an international population. A convenience sample composed of management accounting professionals from diverse backgrounds was obtained by means of three main response collection procedures. These three procedures attempted to resolve the issue of external validity by obtaining a wide and demographically diverse sample. The main procedures to collect the sample responses are discussed in detail in the following section.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.2 BACKGROUND
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND CONTEXT
1.3 IMPORTANCE AND BENEFITS OF THE STUDY
1.4 DELINEATIONS
1.5 LIMITATIONS
1.6 DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS
1.7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
1.8 OUTLINE OF THE STUDY
CHAPTER 2: CHANGING ROLE OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANTS INTRODUCTION
2.1 TRADITIONAL ROLE: ‘SCOREKEEPERS’ AND ‘CONTROLLERS’
2.2 EMERGING ROLE: BUSINESS PARTNERS
2.3 POSSIBLE INDICATORS OF HIGHER BUSINESS-RELATED DECISION-MAKING
2.4 INVOLVEMENT
2.5 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 3: BEHAVIOUR AND JUDGEMENT IN DECISION-MAKING
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 PRESCRIPTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE DECISION RESEARCH
3.3 PROSPECT THEORY
3.4 FRAME DEPENDENCE
3.5 HEURISTICS AND BIASES
3.6 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 4: BEHAVIOURAL ASPECTS IN FINANCIAL AND MANAGERIAL
4.1 DECISION-MAKING
4.2 INTRODUCTION
4.3 BEHAVIOURAL FINANCE AND JUDGEMENT IN MANAGERIAL DECISION MAKING
4.4 FRAME DEPENDENCE IN FINANCIAL DECISION-MAKING
4.5 HEURISTICS AND BIASES IN FINANCIAL DECISION-MAKING
4.6 BEHAVIOURAL ASPECTS IN MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING SUMMARY
CHAPTER 5: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
5.1 RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY
5.2 RESEARCH DESIGN
5.3 RESEARCH METHOD
5.4 RESEARCH METHOD
5.5 RESEARCH ETHICS
5.6 LIMITATIONS
5.7 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 6: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING INVOLVEMENT
6.1 INTRODUCTION
6.2 ROLE IN TERMS OF POSITION IN THE COMPANY
6.3 BUSINESS-RELATED DECISION-MAKING INVOLVEMENT
6.4 INCREASE IN BUSINESS-RELATED DECISION-MAKING INVOLVEMENT
6.5 LEVEL OF PREFERENCE FOR SUPPORTING INFORMATION
6.6 PERCENTAGE OF DECISION FOR WHICH SUPPORTING INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE
6.7 COMPARISON OF PREFERENCE FOR SUPPORTING INFORMATION WITH PERCENTAGE OF DECISIONS WITH AMPLE SUPPORTING INFORMATION
6.8 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 7: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF BEHAVIOURAL ASPECTS RELATED TO FRAMING IN BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING
7.1 INTRODUCTION
7.2 LOSS AVERSION BIAS
7.3 CONCURRENT DECISION FRAME BIAS
7.4 CERTAINTY FRAME BIAS
7.5 PSEUDO-CERTAINTY BIAS
7.6 MENTAL ACCOUNTING-BASED BIAS
7.7 ENDOWMENT EFFECT BIAS
7.8 INDICATORS OF HIGHER SUSCEPTIBILITY TO THE BIASING INFLUENCES OF FRAME DEPENDENCE
7.9 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 8: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF BEHAVIOURAL ASPECTS RELATED TO HEURISTICS IN BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING
8.1 INTRODUCTION
8.2 BIASES RELATED TO THE USE OF THE REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
8.3 OVERCONFIDENCE BIAS
8.4 ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT BIAS
8.5 AFFECT BIAS
8.6 INDICATORS OF HIGHER SUSCEPTIBILITY TO THE INFLUENCES OF BIASES RELATED TO THE USE OF HEURISTICS
8.7 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSION
9.1 SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS AND FINDINGS
9.2 CONCLUSIONS
9.3 IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
9.4 EPILOGUE
LIST OF REFERENCES
APPENDICES
