This study explores the effect of religion as one of the main components of culture on the adoption of accounting information systems (AIS) as well as strategic management tools (SMT). SMT in this paper are as follows: activity-based costing-ABC, activity-based management, balanced scorecard, benchmarking, target costing and strategic management accounting as well as on designing of accounting information systems in organisations.

 

A survey questionnaire was mailed to 740 organisations in the Sultanate of Oman. The final number of useable survey responses was 116. The findings of the current study show that religious values and beliefs do not influence the decision to implement AIS or SMT. Exploring the level of association between organisations’ satisfaction and the implemented AIS in organisation, the results show that a high percentage of organisations believe that their AIS need further improvement. The findings may imply that there is a need to re-examine the relevance of their implemented AIS to the current ever-changing environment.

 

The findings suggest that cultural values such as religious beliefs and practices are less likely to impose any barrier/s on the adoption of AIS or SMT in organisations. So, AIS and SMT developers need no modification for introducing their products to religious countries.This study is the first to empirically examine the association between religion and the adoption of AIS and SMT in organisations in a religious country.