Análisis financiero: enfoques en su evolución

The objective of this article is to analyze the theoretical advances of fi nancial analysis, after carrying out a detailed, selective, and critical review of the literature published on the subject. For this, search criteria were set for the research of bibliographic sources of an international trajectory (pertinence, originality, and citation index), by which books from arbitrated publishers and articles from journals indexed in well-known databases such as WEB OF SCIENCE, SCOPUS, SCIENCE DIRECT and EBSCO were identifi ed. With this, categories of analysis and synthesis related to deductive-inductive processes were formed to make way for the global theoretical interpretation. The results show that fi nancial analysis is an issue addressed by many authors from different approaches. Among them, the traditional or common one stands out, being widely studied in the main business schools and academicians of Universities worldwide. Other authors support the idea that fi nancial analysis should be complemented with qualitative data with equal importance to quantitative data -generally extracted from fi nancial statements and related information-. The authors have called this approach Synergistic. It is concluded that the fi nancial analysis, regardless the approach where it is studied, is currently an important tool for business management and strategic decision-making.