Organisations CAiSE ’ 04 WORKSHOPS

An empirical study concerning management accounting information on corporate pricing decisions is presented. The study reveals insufficient information quality in organizations. The lack of information quality concerns the relevance of information available to the decision-making sales departments. In particular, too much irrelevant information is supplied by the controlling departments, as well as too much irrelevant information is demanded and employed in the decision-making processes by sales departments. The paper analyzes this mismatch of objectively relevant information and the information exchange between the controlling and sales departments prior to the decisions. An economic explanation of the empirical observation is presented. In particular, the important factors are identified that create situations in which the informational mismatch is either very big or considerably small. Furthermore, understanding the factors that create situations of insufficient information quality enables us to derive and discuss potential management implications to improve information quality.