مدل برنامه ریزی هدف برای حسابداری مدیریت و حسابرسی: توپولوژی جدید Goal programming model for management accounting and auditing: a new typology

1 Introduction The goal programming (GP) is a multi-criteria decision aid model that allows decision makers to consider simultaneously several conflicting and incommensurable objectives. This model is based on the satisfactory and sufficient philosophy (Martel and Aouni 1990, 1998; Romero 2004). With the aid of GP, the decision-maker (DM) searches for the solution that represents the best compromise rather than one that is deemed to be optimal. The standard version of GP was introduced by Charnes and Cooper (1961). This version is a special case of the ‘distance function model’ (DFM) where the formulation of GP seeks to minimize the unwanted deviations between the achievement and aspiration levels of the DM’s aspiration levels (goals). This multi-criteria decision aid has been applied to a wide variety of decisionmaking situations within different fields, including accounting. In fact, early seventies, the GP model has been applied to the field of accounting and particularly to management accounting and auditing. Our literature review reveals an increase interest in theoretical developments and applications in different fields. One field of these applications is Management Accounting that focusses on collecting financial information and establishing some measures required for analysis and decision-making related to the organization’s objectives and mission. These objectives are aligned the priorities of the company’s shareholders and creditors. The DMs’ objectives can be conflicting and incommensurable. Their simultaneously aggregation requires some compromises from the DM. The aim of this paper is to provide a literature review of the application of GP in the context of accounting decision-making, in order to construct a typology, which will serve as a guideline to identify the most appropriate variant of GP to deal with specific accounting decision-making situations. In fact, this typology provides useful insights and it will demystify the use of GP model within the field of accounting. The structure of the manuscript is as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of GP model and describes the two main variants, namely weighted and lexicographic goal programming. Section 3 is devoted to an overview of the literature involving the decision-making context of the accounting decisions where different GP variants are suggested as decision-making tools. Section 4 outlines a proposed typology based on the type of GP variant used for different types of accounting decisions. The final section of this paper provides summary and some concluding remarks.