Judgment and decision-making by accountants in the Public Sector

This research aimed to analyze how the Judgment and Decision Making of accountants in public sector entities is influenced by aspects of the individual, the task, and institutional pressures in the implementation of rules related to the procedures of incorporation, depreciation, and write-off of movable and immovable assets. The research is characterized as qualitative and descriptive. Two focus groups and 20 interviews were conducted with accountants who work in public sector entities in the municipal, state and federal spheres, considering as themes the aspects of the individual, the task and institutional pressures. The data from this research were analyzed with the help of the on-line software happyscribe and the software IRAMUTEC. After grouping them into categories according to the theoretical assumptions of the Institutional Theory and Bounded Rationality, the word cloud method and the similarity analysis were used, which groups the words and organizes them graphically according to their frequency. The results pointed out as influences the knowledge and experience; presentation form, complexity and risk; and the coercive, normative and mimetic institutional pressures on the JDM of accountants in the implementation of the procedures of incorporation, depreciation and write-off of movable assets.