Financial management practices and its relationship with organizational performance: a study of 200 companies in the central-western region of Minas Gerais

Abstract

The present study aims to assess the practices related to financial management and accounting practices used by managers in the Central-western region of Minas Gerais, seeking to figure out the relationship of this behavior to organizational performance. The research presented here is classified as descriptive with quantitative approach. The sample consisted of 200 companies chosen by accessibility, that is, a non-probabilistic sample. Data were collected by the means of a field survey carried out in 2009, made directly with business leaders in their workplace. The questionnaire applied consists of questions present in other studies and questions prepared by the authors of this study. To tabulation and data analysis the software SPSS (Statistical Package For The Social Sciences) was used. The techniques used were descriptive statistics and cluster analysis, the latter was used in order to separate the companies into two groups. The cluster analyses indicate that companies may be separated by their level of knowledge and application of financial management. Moreover, the group with companies that have greater knowledge and application of financial management was the group with better average performance.