THE IMPACT OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY ON ACCOUNTING SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE A CASE STUDY OF A.G. LEVENTIS PLC AND PAK-MICRO COMPUTERS INTERNATIONAL LTD.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Days are when most accounting operations and decisions that have to be made on or from them are on first hand basis. This is because accounting operators and decision makers are in close contact with such accounting operations and as such, collected, analysed and interpreted data from such operations for decision making. Today, as company and educational operations expand in size and complexity, company executives grow further removed from first hand contact with business scenes. They are to rely increasingly on second hand information about what is happening at the various stages of business operations 2, vis-à-vis research and development, production, marketing and consumption of goods and services. Since decisions that have to be made by executives are of profound consequences and have to be based on highly fragmented and typically tenuous information, then it is of great importance that such second-hand information is from a very accurate and reliable sources 3. According to A.$. fapohunda, to remedy these accurate information difficulties in 1963, sears began establishing their twenty – two regional computer centres covering the entire united states of America. initially, the regional computer systems processed customers credit accounts and general accounting data.

Later, merchandising and inventory information from system were established to provide information that the business accounting world and business operations are also busy expanding their technological and industrial bases 6 by breaking into new grounds and improving in existing ones through the use of computers. With the introduction of computer to many business applications, those business areas that involve repeated tasks which are often monotonous and fallible to human errors (cash, inventory control, payroll and etc) are increasingly being simplified accurately by combining the cost, effectiveness, simplicity of use, efficiency, reliability and accuracy of the computer to obtain, analyze and interpret data information for efficient business decisions. Nigerian business organizations being to grow in size, business operations and processes become increasingly complex, hence computers are being rapidly introduced to cope with the overwhelming demands of business and growth. Though the introduction of computer to many facets of business operations is a welcome idea, its use is further implicated on accounting system and as such organizations need to strike a balance between accounting areas to be manually operated so as to control or limit the menace associated with unemployment.