A influência dos vieses heurísticos e pensamento cognitivo nas decisões orçamentárias

Abstract

This study aimed to find the factors related to professional profile and cognitive thinking that affect the occurrence of heuristics among graduated professionals in accounting in budget decisions. The results were obtained from the application of Prospects and Safety, Potential and Aspiration Theories, the Need for Cognition (NFC) test, and professional and budgetary scenarios and profiles, as well as the characteristics of the professionals who graduated from the Accounting Science course. It is noteworthy that the budget process has been the object of research and studies of other fields, such as Behavioral Accounting, which has sought its development in relation to the knowledge production in an interface with other sciences, sucj as Psychology, Economics and Administration, and the improvement of their understanding of heuristic bias, allowing managers to improve their decision making. Therefore, four blocks of study with questions were stablished: heuristics, levels of cognition, budgetary practices and graduates’ profiles, analyzing how the independent variabilities of this study clarified the occurrence of these phenomena: the presence of heuristics and the existence of cognitive bias. The methodology used was achieved by means of the heuristic counting inserted in scenarios, descriptive analysis of the data to characterize graduates’ profiles, calculation of average of the notions about budget, factorial analysis, Pearson correlation and logistic regression. Thus, the following variables were evidenced: level of cognition, involvement with budgetary practices and covariables: level of education, professional experience and gender. The results obtained proved the occurrence of heuristics in the involved individuals with budgetary practices. It was also found that the professional profile does not affect the presence of heuristics, but it does only on the cognitive thinking, and the profile guides managers in achieving easy budgets, with easy goals and the lowest possibility of risk. These results also corroborate the studies of Sprinkle, Williamson and Upton (2008) and Lima Filho (2010). This study contributed to the recognition of the elements capable of generating benefits or fulfillment that minimize mistakes in the decision-making process in the corporate budget management, for better financial and economic results, through the evolution of Behavioral Finance and the development of the fundamental assumptions of Cognitive Psychology and Decision Theories and Prospects, as well as a better comprehension and understanding of these theories for behavior change of managers in relation to finance, cooperating with the identification of factors that influence heuristics and cognitive bias in the effort and risk assumed on budget management.