He concluded with a call for more research to evaluate whether FA rules may bring about changes in MA or whether MA may affect FA. He argued that these issues are relevant for researchers, managers and firms at large.
Furthermore, Cinquini and Tenucci (2011) analyzed the potential of MA in providing financial and non-financial information, within the framework of the management commentary.10 Hence, they identified day-by-day activities that linked the management accountants with the financial accountants, increasing the overall value performance information perceived by these types of managers.
Nonetheless, no empirical findings with regard to the relationship between the management satisfaction with the overall quality of FA and the management satisfaction with the overall quality of MA have been produced yet in the Italy.
From these assumptions and to shed some light on such relationship, the following hypothesis is put forward:
Hp5: The level of perceived quality in FA positively affects the level of perceived quality in MA.
Specifically, participants are classified into the following two main classes according to their job title: Controllers and Financial Accountants. Controllers are management accountants responsible for internal reporting,12 whereas Financial Accountants13 are managers responsible for the corporate disclosure essentially useful for external purposes. Within the class of Financial Accountants the follow- ing managerial roles are included: Chief Financial Officer (CFO), investor relator (if the firm is listed14), Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the head of annual reports.
The present work is, hence, based on the aforementioned top managers, because they could be considered as the most involved people in the FA information and practices. Furthermore, the controller has a wide acquaintance with the information flow regarding both FA and MA (Caglio2003; Jones and Luther2005).
The research was conducted in two main phases. During the first phase, explor- atory in-depth pilot interviews were carried out from April to September 2014 and during the second, an Italian survey was sent to top managers in October 2014.
Fig. 5.3 The research design and the research hypotheses (Source: author’s presentation)
12For additional details about the role of controller, see Chap.3.
13For additional details about the role of financial accountants, see Chap.2.
14The survey was addressed to both listed and non-listed firms; for this reason from the FA side, the current research also considers the investor relator.
5.3 Sample Selection and Data Collection 95
This combined method of interviews and survey could allow the researcher to understand managers’ perspectives, highlighting different viewpoints of Control- lers and Financial Accountants about the relationships between FA and MA and about the other issues investigated in the present work. This methodology is particularly useful in evaluating perceptions and interpretations of social actors (Colwyn Jones1992) and reflect the participants’experience in business activities (Colwyn Jones and Dugdale 2001; Giddens 2013). Furthermore, the joint use of both research methods allows the author to overcome possible weaknesses and limitations of the single research method.
Firstly, six in-depth pilot interviews were carried out in order to elicit early qualitative feedback and to better refine the research design, the research hypotheses and the subsequent survey (Chen et al.2010). Moreover, qualitative interviews allow researchers to have descriptive answers about the possible explanations and causes for the alignment of FA and MA (Graham et al.2005). In fact, through the interviews, it was possible to identify the antecedents and consequences of the integration of FA and MA as well as the endogenous and exogenous variables.15 These preliminary findings helped in building the research design and in discussing results.
The six interviewees were selected from Italian firms on the basis of their willingness to cooperate in university research projects (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009; Yin2011; Rubin and Rubin 2011), using the LinkedIn social network to contact the managers. In this preliminary step, interviews were carried out exploiting an open semi-structured questionnaire for a total of a maximum of 40 min per person. The interviews, involving three controllers and three financial accountants, were divided into the following three main sections: (1) definition of the respon- dent’s role, his/her responsibility, the type of his/her relationship with other top managers; (2) the information flow about financial reporting and its development paths; and (3) his/her perceived relationship between FA and MA.
The final sample of Italian managers for the second research phase (the survey) was composed of 200 Italian managers from listed and non-listed firms.16Partic- ipants were randomly selected from the LinkedIn social network database, as some scholars have recently stressed the relevance and widespread use amongst people of this social media applications (Albrecht2011). Furthermore, the growing relevance of interest in LinkedIn by practitioners has also been documented by the Associa- tion of Accounting Marketing (AAM2011).
The survey questions, like the interviews, were sent to those managers who showed they were particularly willing to collaborate in the current research project.
The main aim of the survey was to test the research design, previously determined by the pilot interviews, and to generalize the empirical results in order to enrich the current literature on this topic (Gable1994). The survey17was split into six sections
15See Sect.5.4.
16Following the recommendations of Dillman, the questionnaires were first tested on three Italian managers and three academic researchers (Dillman2008).
17The survey was sent through an e-mail, which included a cover letter explaining the research aim and a web-link where participants could anonymously answer the questionnaire.
as follows: (1) personal data of the interviewee; (2) features of the firm; (3) conver- gence between FA and MA; (4) IAS/IFRS; (5) ERP; and (6) final section and suggestions.