The Investigation of the Fuzzy Logic Applications in Accounting

The purpose of this study is diffusion of the fuzzy logic, as a significant tool for dealing with the ambiguity and imprecision of the human being systems and decision making process, and presenting its application in accounting. Thus this study is an ex-post research design and utilizes the “archival approach” and “content analysis” for discovering accounting applications. The period of the study is confined to 1980-2010, and fuzzy accounting researches appeared in this period is collected by important national and international web sites. The results of this study indicate that the major applications of the fuzzy logic have been in the area of management accounting (74.5%), auditing (17.6%), and financial accounting (7.9%). The major applications in management accounting have been in the domain of management decision making, performance evaluation, and costing. The least application areas of the fuzzy logic have been in the realm of the financial accounting. Overall, despite of the vagueness and imprecision nature of the accounting information, it appears that accounting profession and researchers have not utilized the fuzzy logic sufficiently. Lack of exerting fuzzy logic could lead to a decrease in precision and value of the accounting information. This would affect auditing particularly, since it is based upon human judgments, sampling, and collecting inexact information. The studies conducted in the fuzzy auditing, have not been complete and do not reflect all domains of the auditing.