Digital transformation

: impact in management control practices: portuguese companies: survey analysis

Abstract

The organizational environment nowadays is quite volatile and information technologies have shown an important development (Hock-Doepgen et al., 2021). These technological innovations have changed the business environment and created new ways of doing business, discovering opportunities and exploring them (Amit & Han, 2017). In the areas of management control and accounting, the main functions performed have changed significantly. According to Appelbaum et al. (2017), tasks are now more strategic and less repetitive, due to the impact of digitalization on companies. The developments in digitization and the explosion of data that is felt these days create significant changes and new opportunities for organizations and above all for functions in the financial, accounting and management control areas. There is still little international empirical evidence regarding the impact of digitalization on processes and activities and in the context of the Management Control function in the Portuguese business universe. In Portugal, there is no known empirical study that addresses this issue. In this sense, the objective of this dissertation is to answer the following research question: “What is the impact of digitalization processes on the activities of the Control function of Portuguese companies?”. To try to answer this research question, a survey was carried out aimed at companies that are operating in our country. The analysis of the data obtained in this survey aims to understand what type of companies include the various technologies in their processes, having concluded that process automation, through RPA, is the most accessible technology for smaller companies, with few financial resources. Meanwhile, Business Analytics proves to be the technology most accessible to larger companies. It should also be noted that Machine Learning is very little inserted in the companies surveyed. The question will be answered through the analysis of a survey aimed at companies that are currently operating in our country.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Luís Marques (Supervisor)