Measures for Activity Based Costing Success: A Review

Abstract

Activity Based Costing (ABC), a powerful tool in Management Accounting, provides accurate information on the costs of activities and processes, which helps the managers to take decisions that have positive impact on the organization’s production. Earlier, management accountants depended on traditional cost accounting methods to obtain information on product and service costs for these decisions. ABC, now argued to be remarkably better than traditional volume based costing system, has elicited the attention of both researchers and practitioners for its involvement in decision making. Several empirical studies have been conducted to examine the importance, adoption and successful implementation of ABC, reasons for implementing, issues related to its adoption, critical success factors of ABC. An in-depth insight of cost structure of an organization, cost modelling and targeting vis-à-vis its performance is essential for the successful implementation of ABC system. Many studies have attempted to establish the variables that could measure success of ABC system. Before determining the success rate of ABC, it is crucial to address what constitutes ABC success. This paper reviews the research carried out on ABC success factors pertaining to the extent to which it is used in an organization, the variables used to measure success and its operational definitions. The review reveals that the past research has focused on the perception of the users, the frequency of usage, the use of ABC in decision making as the determinants of ABC system success. However, multiitem measures are able to measure and analyse the complex nature of the success factors better than the single-item measures.

Keywords: Activity Based Costing, ABC Success, Approach for Measuring the ABC Success

JEL Classification: M41