The Historical Roots of Stream Researches in Behavioral Management Accounting:Theories and Research Methods

Almost 60 years have passed over since Argyris (1952) published the impact of budgets on people. Few years later, Stedry (1960) and Devine (1960) continued to pursue accounting studies under the influence of psychology. Dyckman and Zeff (1984) define as the Decade of Awakening in the accounting literature. However, it was not before the 1967 that the term “behavioral accounting” appeared in the literature.Various disciplines have contributed, and still are contributing, to the research performed in the behavioral accounting literature. The most important fields are economics, political science, organization theory, psychology, and sociology. Among the diversity of disciplines, it is widely recognized that the main role is played by psychology. The three subfields, not mutually exclusive, which are primarily important in management accounting research, are: cognitive, motivation, and social psychology.The role played by the individual processing of accounting information for decision making, that is the focus of the cognitive psychology theory, is recognized some years later with the so called “cognitive revolution”. Nowadays, the presence of the term “behavioral” is commonly linked to the use of laboratory experiments.
Although they represent the dominant research methods, they are not the only possibility pursued in the behavioral accounting literature. There is also evidence of empirical methods other than experiments such as surveys, field researches, and archival studies. Anyway, laboratory experiments and surveys remain the dominant research methods applied in behavioral management accounting research, while the other possibilities are considered more as an exception. Looking forward, to go more in depth in the decision processes and to understand how and why the brain is activated, neuroscientists are making a bridge with economics giving origin to the so called neuroeconomics.