The impact of CFOs' characteristics and information technology on cost management systems

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing the use of cost management systems (CMS) for decision‐making, control and performance evaluation.

An empirical survey via questionnaires was conducted on a sample of 100 leading hotels enterprises in Greece.

Results indicate that the extent of the use of CMS for decision‐making, control and performance evaluation is significantly positively associated with the quality of information technology, the chief financial officer (CFO) educational background and significantly negatively associated with CFO age. No association was found between CMS design, age of firm, and CFO tenure in the organization.

Cross‐sectional studies, as this work presented here, can establish associations, but not causality. Furthermore, the goal of the research was to examine the main effects and not the interactions between the various independent variables that affect the scope of CMS.

The results provide the first empirical evidence of the relation between cost system design, quality of information technology and CFOs’ characteristics in the hospitality industry. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the role of the CFO in CMS design.