Decision-making behavior analysis of accounting and financial analysts: a study based on the bounded rationality theory

Abstract

This study seeks for analyze the impact of bounded rationality in decision-making process. The main idea is to search for the understanding of cognitive biases that influence on the judgment, in order to change the decision-making procedures in order to reduce them. In this way, it is aimed to discuss the issue of decision-making process and its cognitive aspects in a environment of accounting and financial analysis. The focus of this paper is, then, through a decision-making behavior analysis of accounting and financial analysts, create the discussion and the recognizing that systematically mislead the decision themselves from a strictly rational behavior, because of the use of judgment heuristics and the prospective theory, which in many cases lead us to decision bias. For that, a questionnaire was applied to 91 analysts, which were invited to take a decision or issue an opinion related to the aspects of each question. The results show that, in a general way, related to the analysts from the sample, the use of judgment heuristics, as well the prospective theory, take to biases, which diverted the choice from a purely rational alternative.