Artefatos de contabilidade gerencial e os fatores contingenciais: um estudo no setor industrial de equipamentos médicos, hospitalares, ópticos e de precisão no estado de Pernambuco

Abstract

This research had as general objective to analyze the existing relations between the contingency factors and the management accounting artifacts in the medical, hospital, optical and precision equipment industries operating in the State of Pernambuco. In order to achieve the proposed objective, a research was carried out that was descriptive, regarding the objectives, and with a quantitative approach regarding the problem. For this purpose, data collection took place through a survey, with the sending of an email by Google link containing the semi-structured research instrument. Thus, the questionnaire was composed of 49 questions, of which only two were open and the others closed, most of them were arranged on a 7-point Likert scale. The questions were divided into 4 blocks, in which the first block sought information from the respondent's profile, the second sought information about the profile of the companies, the third addressed inquiries about the importance levels of the external and internal contingent factors of the organizations with respect to the grouping of environment, technology, structure and strategy variables, and the third objective of collecting data on the frequency of use of both traditional and modern management accounting artifacts. The effective universe considered were the 60 industries of medical, hospital, optical and precision equipment, operating in the state of Pernambuco, listed in the register of the Federation of Industries of the State of Pernambuco (FIEPE). So, the research was census-based, since all companies were contacted. However, of those 60 industries, 18 accepted to participate in the research, equivalent to a 30% rate of return. As for the analysis techniques, descriptive statistics and the non-parametric statistical test of Spearman's correlation coefficient were used, in which statistically significant relationships were considered, exclusively, those that presented a level of significance in the order of 95% (p = 0.05). To obtain the coefficients, the software Statistica was used. Thus, considering the methodological procedures presented, the main results allowed to conclude that, regarding the profile of the respondents, there is an inversely proportional significance between their experience time and the use of the traditional budget artifact, however the tests with the variables of the profile of the respondents companies were not significant with any of the traditional artifacts. On the other hand, regarding the relationship between contingency factors and the use of traditional and modern artifacts, it was concluded that all the relationships found with significance were directly proportional. However, the series of statistically significant associations can contribute to specific management accounting literature and to the investigated industrial sector, as it was identified that the use of artifacts of the traditional and modern types is influenced, in some way, by contingency factors. For future research, it is suggested an expansion of the universe or sample involving other sectors and a list of companies more diversified in size, a comparative analysis with other locations, as well as a degree of expansion of the analyzed contingency factors and control artifacts.