Management accounting practices, quality, and performance in the context of a natural monopoly

Abstract

Objective: This paper aims to analyze the relationship between the use of management accounting artefacts and size, performance, and perceived service quality provided by Brazilian electric power distribution public utility concessionaires, a sector configured as a natural monopoly, marked by a large number of regulations and restricted to a limited number of performance strategies.Method: The research involved 22 concessionaires from a universe of 63; for the relationship analyses, the non-parametric chi-squared, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U, and Kendall’s τ tests were used.Results: Results show a higher frequency in the use of traditional artifacts and suggest that the use of artifacts is related with the company size. No relationship could be verified though between the use of these artifacts and performance, nor with service quality. It may be concluded that in this context of natural monopoly, information obtained through artifacts do not lend themselves to the improvement of operations, even if a small number of organizations have taken initiatives in this sense.Contribution: Various studies have investigated the relationship between management accounting practice (artifacts) and organizational performance in different contexts, however, very little is known about this relationship in highly regulated sectors.