Utilidade da informaçao financiera autárquica para as tomadas de decisao dos utilizadores internos em Portugal
- Autores: Sónia Paula S. Nogueira
- Directores de la Tesis: Susana Jorge (dir. tes.), Mercedes Cervera Oliver (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ( España ) en 2013
- Idioma: portugués
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jesús Lizcano Álvarez (presid.), Herenia Gutiérrez Ponce (secret.), Silvia Giralt Escobar (voc.), María José da Silva Fernandes (voc.), Maria Antónia Jorge de Jesus (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: Biblos-e Archivo
- Resumen
Governments around the world have experienced an increasing need for accountability towards legislative bodies and citizens at large. Consequently financial information gained an overriding role while determining the level of responsibility and transparency of public entities management. Additionally, recent developments worldwide in the Public Accounting Sector show an enhanced concern regarding the importance of financial information provided by public entities for the purposes of controlling, managing and decision-making.
Within this context, over the last years, there have been some significant changes in both the format and contents of budgetary and financial statements of Portuguese municipalities. Together with the reforms introduced in other countries, a new accounting system was implemented in the Portuguese Local Administration in 1999. Apart from reporting information on the budget accomplishment and legality (Budgetary Accounting), this system allows to make available information about the financial, patrimonial and economic condition of municipalities.
This research addresses the information disclosed by Portuguese municipalities in their financial reporting, with special attention is given to its usefulness for the purpose of internal decision-making. It is based on the analysis about the information needs and the financial reporting usefulness, namely to support local governments in the decision-making process. Accordingly, it contributes to the study of the financial information usefulness within the context of municipal decisions that, in the Portuguese case and considering the current local government accounting system, is so far non-existent.
The study is theoretically comprised within a complementary approach joining the paradigm of the information users and their needs and the theories of contingency, institutional and of legitimacy. Considering these perspectives all together allowed to get a better understanding of the changes in the accounting systems regarding increasing usefulness of the financial information provided.
Fundamentally, the literature review allowed to develop a theoretical framework that set the ground for the analysis of the main Public Sector reforms, and indentified the main users of financial information and their needs. This theoretical framework was used to study the role of financial information for decision-making and to characterise the Portuguese Local Administration current accounting system, analyzing the relationship between financial reporting and decision-making in Portuguese municipalities.
While developing the empirical study, data were initially collected by applying a questionnaire to all Portuguese municipalities. In a second stage they were gathered from interviews in five municipalities. Both the respondents and the interviewees selected were municipal internal decision-makers (politicians and technicians) responsible for the financial area.
Findings show that, taking into account the users¿ (decision-makers) needs for information offered by the local governments accounting system in practice in Portugal, the current financial reporting model is generally considered adequate to make available financial information useful to support internal decision-making. However, there is a trend for technical decision-makers to consider the information disclosed in the financial statements (individual and compulsory) more useful.
Additionally, it was possible to verify that a higher usefulness is given to accrual-based information to satisfy internal decision-makers needs. This reveals internal decision-makers already show some preference for economic-financial accrual-based information compared to budgetary cash-based information. Nevertheless, internal decision-makers consider that usefulness could be improved if new types of information such as consolidated information and separate information between assets generating future economic income and assets generating public service potential would be included in the current financial reporting. Information usefulness could also be raised if certain existent mismatches would be overcome, namely the uniform definition and designation of economic-financial indicators to be included in the financial reporting.
One also concludes that the usefulness of information disclosed in the municipal financial reporting for decision-making in Portuguese municipalities is affected by external and organisational internal factors, such as pressure from professional organizations, pressure from a national problem and the lack of knowledge and adequate training on the accounting information system. Furthermore, the higher the opportunity of financial information disclosure, the greater its usefulness for internal decision-making. Likewise, internal control assumes an important role in preparing financial information for internal decision-making, even showing a positive association with the financial information usefulness.
