A survey of determinants of data quality in accounting information system in tourism industry in Kenya

Abstract

Organizations within the Tourism industry in Kenya have executed or have adopted an accounting system that implementation is in progress in order to provide valuable information to the stakeholders including the policy makers i.e the board of Directors. This improves the performance of the organization and increase revenue from the tourism sector which leads to the growth of the Kenyan Economy. The study has been conducted so that it can establish the determinants of data quality in accounting information system. The literature review did an evaluation of prior studies done in data quality from different perspectives, quality management as far are company is concern and accounting information systems adopted by the various entities. It was established there was a clear lack of enough literature about determinants of DQ in AIS. Since there was a gap in the literature and the findings of the exploratory stage of the research, a framework for understanding relationships between staff training and education, information infrastructure and internal controls on data quality in accounting information systems was also developed. The major stakeholders are information producers, information custodians, information managers, information users, and internal auditors. The target population were the senior staff in charge of accounting information system and other ICT officers in the department in the selected parastatals. A preliminary survey had been conducted by making phone calls to those parastatals to inquire the number of staff members in the ICT department and indicated that there is a total of thirty one such staff members. Since the number is small a complete census was done. The study used questionnaire to gather the primary data. The questionnaires were administered using drop-andpick later method. The received questionnaires were first checked for completeness. The researcher then coded the respective responses as per the research questions using the statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) to derive the desired output on the adopted linkert scale. The collected data was analyzed using the descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics. From this research, in order to attain success in AIS, the entity that is implementing the system should ensure that proper measures are in place for both the organizational and system factors that may influence the system in one way or another. Further there should exist a synergy within the stakeholders who are involved in the system and data quality controls to ensure that data quality in AIS is achieved. In summary, Strong internal controls, Training and education and information technology infrastructure are fundamental variables that need to be present for any implementation of accounting information systems programs to be successful.