GECON’s Responses to the Critiques of Relevance Lost

Abstract

Management Accounting must be able to provide the users with information that allows them to make decisions in an efficient and effective manner. In a given moment in history, Johnson e Kaplan (1987) questioned the usefulness of management accounting in their thesis of loss of relevance, being based on the following components: the change in organizational patterns; accounting information aimed at the external user; emphasis in cost accounting; automation of outdated information systems, without any innovation; the scarce participation of academic people and insufficient disclosure by professionals of new techniques of that time. Thus, this article intends to identify the responses to the critiques of Relevance Lost given by GECON, a management accounting tool developed by Catelli (2001), a researcher of University de São Paulo. By means of a bibliographical study, this theoretical essay argues that GECON offers responses that defeat the arguments in the thesis of loss of relevance, using a holistic view of management accounting.