FöRFATTARE
Andersson, Johan; Sandlund, Jesper

INSTITUTION
Industriell ekonomi och samhällsvetenskap / Redovisning och styrning

SAMMANFATTNING
The main purpose of financial information is to provide a basis for decision making. One way to gather financial information is to use a Decision Support System (DSS). A DSS supports every phase of the decision making process and can integrate a decision maker’s own insights into the decision support data.

The main objective of our thesis was to conduct a pre-study for the development of a piece of software, designed as an application to an existing financial information system. In order to function as a pre-study our thesis had to be able to answer the general research problem:

How can decision makers’ decisions in small firms made with the use of financial information from decision support systems be described?

In order to study the general research problem mentioned above we divided it into three separate research questions:

1. How can decision makers’ usage of existing DSS be described?

2. How can decision makers’ use of financial information be described?

3. How can decision makers’ decision making with financial information be described?

This thesis has been conducted using a qualitative research methodology with an actor perspective. The research approach used is deduction and the research strategy in this thesis consists of five case studies.

The results and conclusions show thatCEO A, B, D and E consider financial information very useful when making decisions. Financial information isconsidered beingespecially useful for decisions that havecrucial financial consequences.

The results and conclusions further show that CEO A, B, D and E in this study are using Microsoft Excel as a DSS in order to make decisions, and not their financial information systems. Furthermore, neither CEO A, B, C, D nor Eused a DSS for decisions concerning the daily running operations.

Finally, our thesis shows that a DSS is most useful in a small firm when the decision maker has a lot of time available making the decision. The thesis further indicates that a DSS will be most useful in a small firm where the decision maker is faced with familiar situations or problemsand not where he or she faces never before experienced situations or problems.

ISSN 1402-1773 / ISRN LTU-CUPP--10/162--SE / NR 2010:162