← Search

The Role of Accounting Training in Top Management Decision Making.

Francis E. Dalton¹; John B. Miner²

¹ Instructor in Accounting, University of Maryland. 1 · ² Professor and Chairman Behavioral Science Division, University of Maryland. 2

Abstract Accounting professors, and a number of other business administration professors as well, have argued that a solid background in accounting is necessary for effective corporate decision making. By implication and on occasion explicitly, they indicate that top management would be more successful and produce higher profits, if men with considerable accounting training were more numerous at the very highest levels. This article reports on several studies that investigate this hypothesis. The medium of investigation is a simulation of top management decision-making in manufacturing industry. That accounting training is not an essential factor in management success, at least within the manufacturing sector, seems inescapable. Prior research has indicated that intelligence may be a factor in game performance; steps were taken to ensure that differences on this factor could not influence the results. Thus, as with homogeneity of major, the objective was to eliminate a possible contaminating variable which might become confounded with the experimental variable accounting training and make unambiguous interpretation of results impossible.

DOI

10.2308/tar-4484092

Volume

45 (1)

Pages

134-139

Language

en

Export

BibTeX

Sources

openalex crossref