The Accounting Information System and its
Environment
The accounting information system is the frame of practical
accounting activity, as it tracks the events of the enterprise,
supplies data for the managers’ decisions, and organically
contributes to the reports for the managers, to the financial
statements, to compiling the expense management systems and
last but not least to the controlling reports. The processes in the
environment of the enterprise influence the elements of the
accounting information system, too. Among the constituents of
the accounting information system the human factor has an
outstanding role (nowadays there are great demands concerning
the employees’ competence, expertness and experience) and
those activities which belong to accounting (in brief, bookkeeping
and reporting). The analysis of the system means the
analysis of the system and also its environment for the sake of
better and more complete knowledge.
Different models have been formed to illustrate the
constituents of accounting information systems and the external
effects influencing the system. The contingentalist attitude has
been prevailing since the 1970s in the research of accounting
and management control, as it was thought that an effort to form
a situational explanation – starting from the analysis of the
environment – can be useful in the research of these systems.
The early contingentialist model of the formation of
accounting information systems was based on corporatetheory: