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1 International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences 2014 Available online at ISSN X / Vol, 8 (3): Science Explorer Publications Surveying the Management Accountancy and its Different Aspects Contribution to Managers Decision-Makings at West Azarbaijan Applied Sciences Universities LalehSamadi 1, MehranMolavi 2 1. Department of Management, Mahabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mahabad, Iran. 2. Department of Management, Mahabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mahabad, Iran. Corresponding author Laleh.samadi@hotmail.com ABSTRACT: The indispensable need of institutes and organizations to verified information in order for the managers to run them in their decision process is inevitable one. To do this, the management information system is taken into account as the main resource of information. The accountancy information system yields diverse financial information to those using these sorts of information specifically to the managers of each organization as the most important subsystem. The research statistical society (population) includes the 220 wor king staff at West Azarbaijan Applied Sciences Universities among which 89 individuals have been chosen based on the random sampling method. The questionnaire was used in this research to collect the data including 31 questions whose Validity was acceptable and its Reliability ( Cronbach's alpha coefficient) was which reveal the reliability of the questionnaire. The SPSS software was used to do the analysis which surveyed the descriptive as well as inferential statistics using the obtained data of the questionnaire and through using thekolmogorov Smirnov, T test, and Friedman test in the statistical analysis. The research results showed that providing the accountancy information contributes to the decision-making of the managers working at West Azarbaijan Applied Sciences Universities, largely the non-accountancy information which affect top-down reliability variable, the financial knowledge, and the accountancy information providing variable, respectively. Key words: Management accountancy, decision-making, non-accountancy information, reliability, financial knowledge, providing accountancy data, West Azarbaijan Applied Sciences Universities INTRODUCTION We live in an era in which the astonishing part of knowledge and information is taken as unbelievable accelerated era of technology and creativity. Expanding the rapid access to computers, informational technology, and developed media, no country is able to manage 21 st century economic without electronic infrastructure. One of the important factors in managers decision-making is information. Precise and accurate information give rise to decision-making rate leading to impede the inappropriate decisions. Humankind stipulates on the affairs repercussions prior to embarking on them followed by determining appropriate solution, specifically the decision-making has to do with financial issues. So, one of the initial conditions of people to invest is obtaining in-time, precise and reliable information relevant to economic sections financial activities (Zadmehr, 1999:1, Talane, 138:3). Hence, derived information from institutions financial reports should be in such a way that aid investors with assessing management performance in terms of optimum keeping and using the resources (Mojtahedzade, 2005:23). During the recent years, there has been the efficient using of automation systems and a large number of organizations tend to use such systems who show their interest to pay much for installing and using these systems. One should analyze to what extent these information systems have been able to help organization managers in boosting decision-making and whether they have met the managers expectation in decision-making. What

2 managers do at different levels of organization, one would assume decision-making as collecting and processing the information (Sarafizade, 2001:56).In addition to survey the current position of accounting information systems in training accounting and information system of Iran organizations, this article focuses on this position which has been more highlighted.the main task of manager in economic unit is decision-making and the information is basis for decision-making so that one is not able to make decisions without precise information, information is the thing removing the ambiguities leading people to decide logically (Hesabras, 1999:24). In this research, we tend to study the effect of management accounting system on decision-making of managers in West AzarbaijanScientific and AppliedUniversities. Having tested the hypotheses, suggestions will be provided based on the results of the finding. Althoughthere are diverse definitions and beliefs about accounting, what is considered comprehensive and which deals closely with current accounting is the definition which puts the burden of financial information on accounting shoulder. so, one would define accounting as a knowledge whose aim is to provide financial information about one economic unit and its elements to inter-organization and intra-organization users for facilitating economic decisions and responsiveness (BozorgAsl, 2005, 3). Management accounting indicates on using accounting information for managers in organization in order to provide them the wise decision-making which enables them equip their control and management performances. Consideringthe importance of access to accurate information in managers decision-making and the development of advanced technologies in different dimensions accompanied by increasing the complexity and diversity of activities, perceiving such changes and evaluating their effect on organization costs are taken important. It is more important for those service providing units considering the point that changing value in them is more compared to manufacturing units. Having in mind that importance of financial information and the overall expenses on management decision-making will be formed on different dimensions, it is necessary to study and provide practical methods in this field. In this section, the traditional systems for evaluating costs and calculating the overall expenses have not been used despite other economic sections as industry section or other service-providing sections. Hence, the necessity of studying and analyzing different systems in this field and using novel systems of expense estimating which is typical in the world, is broached as fundamentalelement. Considering the essence of services and outputs of training section and non-tangible status of its activities compared to other sections, the importance of expense estimating and calculating the overall costs of services have not been considered in this section. Does accounting information have an effect on improving West Azarbaijan academic managers decision-making? Does management accounting providing necessary accounting information have an effect in managers decision-making? Does management accounting providing financial knowledge in using accounting information have an effect in managers decision-making? Does management accounting providing non-accounting information compared to accounting information have an effect in managers decision-making? Does management accounting providing reliable an in-time accounting information have an effect in managers decision-making? 2. Theoretical principles and review of literature Decision-making Decision-making turns out to be a challenge for managers and organizations in today s complex world, the number of decision-making indexes, diversity of quantitative and qualitative criteria as well as the necessity of simultaneous considering and importance of effects and decisions repercussions give rise to the complexity of decisions. During the last two decades, mathematical methods and computer knowledge has aided decisionmaking problems which have provided multi-criteria decision-makings and decision-making supporting systems (Seyed Mahdi Alvani, General Management, p.23). Decision-making is the process throughout which specific procedure style is chosen for problem solving or social problem ( Estoner, 1982).Nowadays, a large portion of managers time and task is dedicated to problem solving and decision making so that one would say tasks of fundamental planning, organizing, leadership and controlling need decision-making. The necessary orders are provided based on the weight of decision, determinations, procedures and future embarks. So, decision-making is the framework for organization staff performance which has a large part to play in management (Estoner, 1982). The importance is leading to the point that Simon considers decision-making equal to management and believes that organizational activity and behavior is a complex network of decision-making (Seyed Mahdi Alvani, General Management, p.33). Accounting information The role and importance of accounting information are probable of mistake. unlike the mental information, accounting information is quantitative and considerable which usually helps effectively to managers in their decision-making, most of the managers draw their attention more on accounting information despite having mental 284

3 information. In general, it is hard to find an organization to keep up its activities without having reliable accounting information. In recent years, the need to accounting information has grown considerably and this growth has decreased the expenses derived from using computer and increasing the application of complex scientific methods in order to planning and decision-making (Jafari, Mohaamdreza, 1993). Qualitativecharacteristics of accounting information the goals of financial reports and accounting principles enforce that derive information from financial reports have determined characteristics, although thesecharacteristics are affectedto a large extent by economic, social, political and society legislature occasion, the provided information should be appropriate, reliable and accurate for judging and decision-making on the part of users (the theoretical principals of financial reports in Iran, Corporate Audit Publications, 2006, 49). Troblad is the name of committee to be established by American Intelligent Committee of Accountants in This committee defines 12 goals for financial statements among which are useful information providing for predicting and evaluating the future cash flows, profitability andproviding useful information for judging the management power in efficient application of a number of industries (Shabahang, 2005, 89). Review of literature GholamrezaDolatshahi guided by Reza Tehrani from Tehran University surveyed the effect of accounting information on Tehran Stocks investors in the year The focus of this research was on studying the reliable qualitative characteristics as criteriafor evaluating the quality of approved company s profit in Tehran Stock Center. Theobtained results reveal that the portrait of companies with higher reliability is more than that of companies with lower reliability. Also, lack of relationship between investment cost and reliable qualitative characteristic was confirmed. HasanAbedi has embarked on surveying in his article on the role of accounting information in superior mangers decision-making of heavy industries supported by Iran Industrial Development Organization in Markazi Province supervised by Mehdi Abzari and consulted by Morteza Mir Shams Shahshahani at Isfahan Faculty of Administrativesciences and Economics in The main objectives of this plan are as follow: 1. surveying the effect of accounting information relevance to managers informationneeds in using and applying these information in society managers decision-making 2- determining the extent of managers financial knowledge effect on using accounting information in decision-makings 3- surveying non-accounting information position in relation to accounting information from judgers (managers) perspective on lack of using accounting information in decisionmakings 4- surveying the effects of in-time and reliable accounting information on using these information in managers decision-making processes 5- providing appropriate suggestions for optimal using of accounting information in managers decision-making. Developing hypotheses Management accounting forms procedural mechanisms so that the assumed organizationmanagement can lead the organization resources to lead the organization resources in order to access to goals and determined plans. This is usually done through comparing the real procedure information with plans and standards. The fundamental of decision-making is one of the management accounting goals. Hence, embarking on surveying the management accounting qualification and the extent of its dimensions effect on West AzarbaijanApplied and Scientific Universities management decisions is of great importance. The research hypotheses fall into two groups: A) main hypothesis: management accounting has an effect on mangers decision-making, secondary hypothesis: management accounting with providing accounting information having to do with managers information need has an effect on managers decision-making. METHODOLOGY The reliability of questionnaire is described by its reliability in variables measurement. Inorder to determine the consistency of questionnaire items, the Cronbach alpha was used. In order to ascertain the reliability of questionnaire, 25 questionnaires were distributed and the Cronbach alpha was calculated as Based on the obtained alpha value, one would say that there is an internal consistency. One would declare that measuring tools are reliable statistically in this research. The statistical population is comprised of all staff working at West Azarbaijan Applied and Scientific University who perform in order to meet the needs of different working sections of organization which occupy two main units of superior managers and intermediate managers. The total number of statistical population is 220 including the whole staff of managers working at West AzarbaijanApplied and Scientific 285

4 University in which 37 individuals are in the group of superior managers and 183 individuals are in the group of intermediate managers. The sample volume was obtained as 89 using Cochran formula in which 15 individuals will be in superior managers category and 74 individuals will be in intermediate managers category. Data analysis Descriptivefindings According to the obtained results: 88.8% are male sample and 11.2% are females. 45.5% of sample members fall between age range of 20 to 30, 37.7% between 30 to 40, 15.1% between 40 to 50 and 1.8% over 50 years of age. Findings based on the research hypotheses In order to show the normal and non-normal variable distribution, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test has been used. If the level of significance is more than 0.05, then the distribution is normal; otherwise, it is non-normal. Table 1. The results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for surveying the normal distribution of data Number Standard deviation ± Kolmogorov-Smirnov Level of significance Decision-making criteria ± Providing accounting information ± According to table 1, the results show that none of the variables is normal. Main hypothesis: management accounting has an effect on managers decision-making Table 2. Surveying the effect of management accounting on mangers decision-making Standard deviation frequency Level of significance Table3. df T-value Mean difference Mean of average standard 0/ frequency according to the estimated level of significance which is lower than 0.05 and of having T value higher than that of table (6.450), the hypothesis is rejected i.e. management accounting has an effect on West Azarbaijan Applied and Scientific Universities managers decision-making so that the more the use of management accounting at universities, the more the effect on mangers decision-making will be leading to managers efficiency and decision-making progression. This results in overall efficiency and optimum status of organization tasks enabling them equip their control and management performances better. Secondary hypothesis Management accounting with providingmanagers required information has an effect on managers decision-making. Table4. Surveying the effect of providing management information relevant to managers required information on managers decision-making. Standard deviation frequency Level of significance Table5. df T-value Mean difference Mean of average standard frequency According to the estimated level of significance which is lower than 0.05 and of having T- value higher than that of table (3.938, the hypothesis is rejected showing that providing accounting information relevant to managers required information has an effect on West Azarbaijan Applied and Scientific managers 286

5 decision-making so that the more the accuracy of accounting information relevant to managers required information, the more it has an effect on managers decision-making leading to managers decision-making development. this results in overall enhancement of their efficiency and optimum status of organization tasks and activities. CONCLUSION According to the obtained result from research main hypothesis showing that accounting information has an effect on managers decision-making, the more the peripheral information of economic events and other occurred events being worthy to do the predictive affairs, it is notable that these lead to managers decision-making development leading to overall proficiency and efficiency of organizationactivities. Thisindicates that managers and authorities of West Azarbaijan Applied and Scientific Universities should aid the development and increase in accounting information through empowering staff, employing qualified accountants as well as meritocracy system and providing job security for staff. REFERENCES Adel Azar M Statistics and its application in management, second edition, third publication, Tehran: Samt publication Alvani M General management, 31 st edition, Tehran Unviersity, Nei publication. Billio M, Gia A, Bison, Comelli L, Pelizzon, Sartore D Dynamic Derivative Use and Accounting Information, Forecasting Financial Markets,July: 1-8. Bitgham J, Davis G Systems analyses (translated by: Ahmad Azizi), first edition, Tehran: Audit Department Chen J, Song L An lnteractive Neural Network-Based Approach for Solving Multiple Criteria Decision Making Problems. Decision Support tems, October: Christoffersen L Impact of Information on Decision MakingProcesses, GRID Arendal Issues Paper, June: Delavar A Theoreticalprinciples of research in social and humanistic sciences, fourth edition, Tehran: Roshd publication. HasasYegane Y.2003.The effect of independent audit reports on users decision-making, accounting studies, 1: Iran NejadParizi M Research methods in social sciences, first edition, Tehran: manager spublication Jahankhani A, Parsaeian A Stocks center, second edition, Tehran: Tehran University Management publication. Moon P, Keasey K Information and decision making: A search for method and understanding. Managerial & Decision Economics, Sep: Reymond P, Nov Financial management (translated by: Ali Jahankhani and Dr. Ali Parsaeian), fifth edition, Tehran: Samt publication. Shabaghang R Management accounting, Exerted Center of Research in Accounting and Audit; Audit Department publications. Shim S Managementaccounting. First edition, Tehran: Industrial Management Organization. 287