The study model consists of six main variables were (The participation of accountants in the planning and analysis stage, the participation of accountants in the design phase, and the participation of accountants in the implementation phase) as variables that measure the participation of accountants in the Development of computerized accounting information systems [independent variables], and (System quality, accountant satisfaction, and system use) as variables used to measure The success of the Performance of Computerized Accounting Systems [dependent variables], as shown in Figure 1.

Based on the theoretical framework of the study, based on the study’s questions and objectives, and by reviewing the previous scientific studies, the hypotheses of the study can be formulated as follows:

H1: There is no statistically significant correlation between the participation of accountants in the planning and analysis phase of the computerized accounting information system and the success of the performance of these systems in Libyan Commercial Banks.

H2: There is no statistically significant correlation between the participation of accountants in the design stage of the computerized accounting information systems and the success of the performance of these systems in Libyan Commercial Banks.

H3: There is no statistically significant correlation between the participation of accountants in the application stage of the computerized accounting information systems and the success of the performance of these systems in Libyan Commercial Banks.

These hypotheses will be verified using the multiple regression analysis test as we will see later in Paragraph (6.2).

The study population represented in the Libyan commercial banks, and how they are affected by the subject matter of the study. As a result of the fact, the banking system in Libya is a central system of its subordination to the Central Bank of Libya [9] , in which banks follow the same procedures and regulations. Therefore, the study sample was taken from the banks that work in Benghazi-Libya. And the distribution of the questionnaire to heads of accounting and auditing departments and accountants who works in the headquarter of the General Administration, main branch, branches, and agencies these Banks.

Based on the relevant articles, in order to gather the data, was used the same questionnaire used in the study (Naash and Khamis, 2009) with some modifications to test the three hypotheses of this study and meet the study purpose. So, the questionnaire was divided into three sections as the first section include general questions, the second one cover all factors of independent variables, finally, the third one involves factors of the dependent variable as shown in Table 1.

Moreover, the study tool was distributed to 225 banks and branches, of which 207 were retrieved with a response rate of 92% and 27 questionnaires were excluded (by 12%) because they were not valid for analysis, hence the questionnaires analyzed were 180 questionnaires (by 80%) as shown in Table 2.

・ The stability of the questionnaire

As per many studies, constructs are considered to have internal consistency reliability when the Cronbach Alpha value exceeds (0.70). In this study, the reliability assessment was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) (IBM 22).

The stability of the study instrument was verified. Where the α-Cronbach coefficient was computed for each set of questionnaire questions, where all measures in this study show a high level of reliability, ranging from (0.815 to 0.947). All scales exceeded 0.70, therefore the survey is considered reliable as shown in Table 3.

In the beginning, it is required to indicate the percentage of demographic information for Libyan accountants who was involved in this study. Table 4 covers demographic information including gender, qualification, years of experience, specialization, and system used at the bank. The results indicate that 83.3% of participants were males and over 72% of the participants were college graduates with about 43.4% Bachelor and 28.9% having a master degree. Table 4 also shows that 40% of respondents have a 5 years―less than 15 years of experience, and about 64% of them work as accountants in the banks surveyed, and finally about 52% of the banks surveyed use the Flex Cube system, 24.1% use a traditional system, 18.5% use Microsoft excel and about 6% use Islamic system (some banks use a mix of systems).

All of these gives the impression that their answers of respondents to the

*More than one answer selected.

questions of the questionnaire were more realistic and objective, and the experience in this area an important character, especially as this study has a role in the study of the participation of these accountants in the development of accounting systems applied in banks, indicating that the highest percentage of respondents in this. The study was present during the stages of systems development in their banks, which increases the objectivity of this study.

The second section of the study tool covered the variables that measure the participation of accountants in each stage of the development of the computerized accounting information system, as follows.

Table 5 shows a relatively high percentage of the participation of these accountants in the planning and analysis stage. The results showed that the lowest participation of users at this stage is the participation in developing the system development policy in the bank before its implementation followed by the participation in the presence of these accountants for meetings of that stage by the analysts of the system, followed by the participation in the identification of the most important benefits and expected needs of the application of the system.

As for the highest participation of accountants at this stage, it was in determining the accountants of financial and accounting reports to be extracted from the system and in the same proportion involved in determining the mechanism for implementing the introduction of accounting through the system, as this result was expected, especially that the most important characteristic of this stage for the participation of users in the System development, is to have a direct impact on the work of accountants.

Table 6 shows that the participation of accountants in the design stage is relatively low, which is the lowest proportion of accountants in the system development stages as a whole. The design phase of accounting information systems takes on a technical character such as system programming. The highest participation in this design phase was to contribute to the identification of the internal control procedures of the system. That is because that the development and definition of the internal controls of the system are usually more of an accountant’s activities than analysts or programmers.

The stage of implementation is one of the late stages of the process of developing the accounting information systems. This stage comes as a summary of what has been planned, analyzed and then designed. This stage includes many activities that have direct contact with accountants in the company, can be verified through the statistical results of the participation of accountants at this stage, which appears in Table 7, where the results of this statistical analysis showed that the participation rate of accountants at this stage is higher than that which appeared in the two phases: planning and analysis stage and design stage.

Table 7 shows the highest participation in this phase, which is concerned with the training process for accountants on the system after the completion of development, and these are the results that can be expected, especially as the training process for users of systems is one of the most important activities that must

be conducted at this stage, the system was better evaluated and dealt with. As for the lowest participation rate for this phase, it was concerned with the participation of accountants in developing the implementation plan for the system, where it is noted that the process of developing plans for the application takes an administrative rather than an activity to be shared by accountants using the system.

After reviewing the rates of participation in the various phases of the development of accounting information systems, we noticed in Table 8, that they varied from one stage to the next. The reason for this discrepancy is that there are differences in the nature of the activities and procedures contained in each of these stages. The participation rate among the different stages of the development process, followed by the planning and analysis stage, and finally the design phase, and this result is identical to that reached by Naash and Khamis [2] .

The descriptive statistics related to measuring the success of the performance of the system have been measured from the Third section of the study tool, and it was as follows.

Table 9 shows the quality of the financial information and accounting reports provided by the computer-based accounting information system was measured in the first paragraph of the second section of the study tool. This paragraph contains six questions to measure this. Table 9 shows that the response rate to the question of how quickly the system meets the requirements of the accountant. And the response rate to the question how far to control accounting problems and errors, was less than the other paragraphs of this variable, as this can be explained that the provision of the system for ways to control accounting problems and errors, need a high degree of development and techniques that must be employed in those systems, and the diversity of the problems of accounting errors and multiple, may limit the ability to easily develop a comprehensive system to contain these problems and accounting errors fully. The same table shows that accounting information systems are flexible, easy to understand, learn and use, and its compliance with the expectations of accountants.

Table 10 determines that the level of satisfaction of users of accounting information systems in Libyan commercial banks represents a very good proportion (81%), as they believe that it helps to achieve the work better and it is easy to deal with the system display language, and they see that the outputs of the system is convenient and accurate and improves productivity. Finally, they showed that training and support for the system were appropriate.

As for the measurement of the extent to which the computer-based accounting information system is used, Table 10 also shows that the rate of use of computer-based accounting information systems was very good (81%).

So, Table 11 confirms that there is a significant dependence on system use in accounting in those companies. It is noted that the rate of response to users in relation to accounting procedures and treatments was somewhat high, and this confirms that the process of use and reliance on these systems was high and useful for those companies.

Table 11 also shows the widespread use of the system and the reliance on it in the accounting treatments and the preparation of financial statements and budgets of the bank and in the preparation of the restrictions of settlement and closure and the work of the balance of the audit.

Table 12 shows that computer-based accounting information systems used in Libyan commercial banks have a high performance. It is noted from the table

that all elements of measuring the success of performance of computerized accounting information system (system quality, level of satisfaction of accountants, the extent of use of these systems). All are with a high rate of (81.0%).

After validating the search variables, the next step involved conducting multiple regression analysis to determine the effect of the independent variables (planning and analysis stage, design phase, application stage) on the dependent variable (the success of the computerized accounting information system). This analysis used to verify that the first three hypotheses (accepted or rejected), where the multiple regression formulated as shown in Equation (1).

AISPS = β 0 + β 1 PAS + β 2 DS + β 3 AS + ε (1)

where Equation (1) is:

・ AISPS = The success of performance of computerized AISs;

・ β₀ = Intercept;

・ β₁ to β₃ = Coefficient of slope parameters;

・ PAS = Planning and analysis stage;

・ DS = Design stage;

・ AS = Application stage;

・ ε = Error term.

This model firstly requires that the overall scale for each variable (PAS, DS, AS, and AISPS) is calculated. Given that each variable is measured by a set of questions (items) and each respondent gives a score for each question, these scores are added together to form an overall score for each variable. The overall scale for each variable is simply the average of this total score. Using the overall scales for each variable and for each participant, the unknown parameters, β₁ to β₃, of the multivariate regression model was then evaluated using the Regular Least Squares method.

The linear regression was run. Where uses the success of the performance of computerized accounting information system (AISPS) measured by the averages of (system quality, level of satisfaction of accountants, the extent of use of these systems) as the dependent variable and Planning and analysis stage (PAS), Design stage (DS), Application stage (AS) as the independent variables. The overall results of this regression are displayed in Table 13.

At first, the regression statistics presented in this table display that this regression model is statistically significant with F of 14.153, implying that the main null hypothesis of no statistical relation among the dependent and independent variables was refused at the 0.000 level.

But, when examining the variables of the sub-hypotheses we find that the first and second hypotheses that there is no relationship between the participation of the Libyan accountants in (the planning and analysis phase and the design phase) and the success of these systems (were accepted).

On the other hand, the third sub-hypothesis was rejected, which states that there is no relationship between the participation of Libyan accountants in the implementation phase and the success of these systems at the level of (0.000). Thus, was designated there is a relationship between the participation of accountants in the application phase and the success of these systems. Thus, the new regression Equation (2) that represents this relationship will be as follows:

AISPS = 2.917 + 0.22 ( AS ) (2)

Based on the analysis of the answers to the questionnaire and the test of the hypotheses of the study, the results obtained can be epitomized as follows:

1) There is a firm belief among accountants working in commercial banks that the use of their accounting system is what helped them to do the job better.

2) The computerized accounting information systems achieved high success rates according to the three criteria identified (System Quality 81%, Satisfaction of Accountants 81%, System Use 81%).

3) The participation of accountants in the application phase is the only participation that has an impact on the successful performance of computerized accounting information systems.

4) The planning, analysis, and design phases are technical matters for programmers and designers more than accountants and do not involve any variables that have a significant relative impact on the success of performance of the computerized accounting information systems.

This study examined the scope of accountants’ participation in the development of computerized accounting information systems, and the impact of such participation on the successful performance of these systems within the following limits:

・ Time limit: The study time limit represents the period from 01/06/2018 to 30/08/2018.

・ Spatial limit: The spatial limit is represented in the banks that work in the city of Benghazi Libya.

・ Human limit: The study is limited to financial administration staff and accounting departments who have financial and supervisory functions directly related to computerized accounting information systems, which means that the study will not include all employees working in this bank.

After reviewing the results of the study, a set of recommendations were issued:

1) The need to take account of the participation of accountants in the development of accounting information systems for all stages related to the development of these systems.

2) Programmers and analysts should focus on the design phase, where the results of this study found that the participation of accountants at that stage was less than in the planning and analysis stage and the application stage.

3) To establish training programs for accountants in the development of accounting information systems, so that accountants can participate positively in the development of the system where necessary.

4) In cases where the system development task is entrusted to specialized offices, the contract must include the requirement that accountants participate in the development process as a form of training.