The Icelandic CFO: Characteristics, environment and tasks

Abstract

This article is based on a research that was conducted in 2008 and 2014 focusing e.g. on the characteristics and roles of chief financial officers (CFO) of the 300 largest firms in Iceland. In both research a response rate of over 60% was achieved, which is quite good in management studies. The results showed that Icelandic CFOs in general are following a similar development in their task emphasis and roles as in other countries with more emphasis on analysis, support for decision making and internal advice than on bookkeeping and financial reporting. Other results show that proportionally more women are CFOs in Icelandic companies than in the other Nordic countries, little less than half of the CFOs of the largest firms have been hired in the last five years and there is a lack of knowledge among CFOs of several management accounting methods and frameworks.