The accounting information system is the information system par excellence, since it can be designed to obtain objective (Hopwood, 1972) and quantifiable information (Emmanuel et al., 1985) at all organisational levels. Out of all the accounting control systems, management control research has progressively focused on budgeting as the key system (Birnberg et al. 1983) and because it is the most regularly used for organisational management control (Caplan, 1971). Today, however, budgeting is regarded not as the only control system but rather as one that must be complemented by other control mechanisms, both formal and informal. This is because of.
