Da contabilidade à controladoria: a evolução necessária

Abstract

Science cannot exist without an adequate model for perceiving and representing reality. In the beginning of this 21st century, it has already become obvious that, in the modern business environment, a management accounting system based on an exclusively financial model does no longer manage to provide the necessary information for supporting company management in its most important decisions. In order to maintain its relevance for decision-making, the financial accounting model must be extended and made more flexible, incorporating and integrating new dimensions and new research and evaluation instruments. Management accounting can make this profound transformation, which would lead to modern Controllership, by integrating into its basic explanatory model, which is an accounting model, the identification and evaluation of variables with an elevated impact on company results, such as product value, environmental factors characteristic of the economic sector and system, the working process and the tangible and intangible assets that are mobilized. These new dimensions of Controllership, when associated to the financial accounting model, constitute a general frame for performance evaluation, which not only has the power to explain the company's current situation, but also allows for projections and simulations of future scenarios, making room for the exploration of opportunities and the protection or hedge against risks, both of which are of vital importance for any company's stakeholders. Finally, we seek to demonstrate new dispositions, attitudes and perceptions which, together with new techniques and working instruments, must be adopted by the accountant that wants to turn himself into a modern Controller.