The motivation of this research lies in the relevance of information availability for internal and external users, and in the fundamental role of accounting information in the registry of firm operations. The goal of the present work is to analyze the determinants of the outsourcing of accounting information in small and medium enterprises (SME) from two perspectives: the theory of transaction costs (TCT) and the resource based vision (RBV). Both approaches conclude that those roles and duties which are not specific or critical within a company shall be outsourced in order to improve their competiveness. The hypotheses formulated for the present work are the following: the size of the clients and/or suppliers of the company, the specific use of the accounting information within the decision making process, the use of information technologies, the legal structure, the size of the company, and the years in the business have a significant connection with the level and scope of accounting information outsourcing. To test our hypothesis, we used data collected through a field research on 159 SME of the city of Bahía Blanca, Argentina, during the period of July-October of 2010. The results, obtained through probit regressions and ordinal probit regressions, support the hypotheses formulated, except for the clauses referred to the size of the company and the type of clients and suppliers. These results highlight the relevance of the specificity of assets as a determining variable in the process of deciding to outsource, concurring with the results expected within the frame of TCT and RBV, and resulting similar to the ones observed in previous empirical studies performed in different countries. The auditor's independence role in the outsourcing of accounting services, which is so frequent in small and medium enterprises, arises as a future research line.
Outsourcing; Accounting services; Theory of transaction costs (TCT); Resource based approach (RBV); Probit
