The Roles of Management Accounting and Control Systems in the Investment Decision-Making: The Case of Energy Efficiency Investments

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elodie Allain ◽  
Sophie Tessier
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Control Systems ◽  
Management Accounting ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Investment Decision Making ◽  
And Control

scholarly journals The Role of Structural Context in Making Business Sense of Investments for Sustainability–A Case Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 7006
Author(s):  
Josefine Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Sustainable Manufacturing ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Improve Energy Efficiency ◽  
Structural Context ◽  
Investment Decision Making

Energy efficiency is an important means for sustainable manufacturing. One action for manufacturing companies to improve energy efficiency is through investments. While these investments often are profitable, opportunities remain unexploited. This paper explores the structural context of the investment decision-making process by examining the associated activities, procedures, and the role of information. While the structural context may limit complex investments that do not fit predefined rules and controls, such as energy efficiency and other sustainability-related investments, it remains a scarcely studied aspect of investment decision-making for energy efficiency investments. Method-wise, the paper is based on a case study of a major investment at a pulp and paper company, motivated and justified based on productivity, strategic, energy, and sustainability rationales. The paper contributes with illustrating how configurations of internal investment activities and procedures may be crucial for sustainability-related investments to pass through the investment process. Moreover, the configuration of activities and procedures is also indicated as influential for the way in which an investment is executed. Hence, for energy efficiency and other sustainability-related investments to make business sense constitutes more than achieving desirable payback periods; the structural context should be considered.

How to de-bias investment judgements–unpacking bias and possible remedies in a capital investment context

2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Scherm ◽  
Bernhard Hirsch ◽  
Matthias Sohn ◽  
Miriam Maske
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Management Accounting ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Managerial Decision ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Decision Context ◽  
Investment Decision Making ◽  
Management Accountants

PurposeResearch on biases in investment decision-making is indubitably important; however, studies in this context are relatively scarce. Unpacking bias has received attention in the psychological literature yet very little attention from management accounting research. This bias suggests that the perceived probability that an event will occur generally increases when the event's description is unpacked into a disjunction of subevents. The authors hypothesize that for a capital investment decision context, managers' judgement of the probability of a future event depends on whether the event is described as one packed event or is unpacked into several disjoint subevents. Additionally, the authors propose that altering the format of the description of an event's occurrence from percentage values to relative frequencies reduces unpacking bias.Design/methodology/approachTo test the study’s hypotheses, the authors conducted two experiments based on a 3 × 2 mixed experimental design in which manager participants were asked to estimate the failure probabilities of technical systems in the context of an investment decision.FindingsThe authors provide evidence that unpacking bias occurs in an investment scenario, which can be characterized as a high-stakes decision context. Changing the format in which probabilities are presented from percentage values to relative frequencies significantly reduces the bias.Research limitations/implicationsAdditional instructions did not further reduce unpacking bias.Practical implicationsFor investment decisions under uncertainty, performance indicators in management templates should be presented in relative frequencies to improve managerial decision-making. The fact that the authors could not show an additional effect of instructions in management accounting reports indicates that it is challenging for management accountants to reduce the biased decision-making of managers by “teaching” them through the provision of instructions.Originality/valueThe authors contribute to accounting research by illustrating unpacking bias and by deriving a debiasing mechanism in a capital investment decision context.

The role of affective reactions on investment decision-making

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Rubaltelli ◽  
Giacomo Pasini ◽  
Rino Rumiati ◽  
Paul Slovic
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Affective Reactions ◽  
Investment Decision Making
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