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In this study the extent and nature of organisational problems that are encountered in South Africa in respect of the implementation of activitybased costing are examined and compared with difficulties experienced by companies in the British Isles, United States of America and Australia. The investigation comprised a literature survey as well as an empirical study of the companies listed in South Africa. Contrary to the findings of overseas studies, South African companies experience less difficulty in respect of support from senior management and considere the employee resources allocated to the ABC projects to be adequate and satisfactory. ABC objectives are aligned with organisational goals, culture and company strategy. However, whilst implementers are adequately trained, the insufficient training of users and managers is perceived to be a hindrance to success and in the majority of companies other priorities take precedence to the ABC project.

Purpose – The aim of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of activity-based costing (ABC) implementation systems in the context of a developing country such as Jordan. The main objectives of the study were to determine the extent of ABC implementation within the Jordanian industrial sector and identify the factors that facilitate and motivate the decision to implement ABC. Additional objectives include determining the problems associated with ABC implementation and assessing the degree of success of ABC implementation.

Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey was conducted during 2008 among 88 Jordanian industrial companies that are listed on the Amman stock exchange. Eighty-eight questionnaires were distributed and 61 were returned giving a rate of response of 69.3%.

Findings – The survey findings indicate that ABC implementation among the Jordanian industrial companies is quite satisfactory. The rate of ABC implementation is about 55.7%. The most cited factors that facilitate the decision to implement ABC were that adequate training was provided for designing ABC and operating data in the information system are updated in real time: followed by the fact that adequate training was provided for using ABC. The most influential factors that motivate the process of ABC implementation are among others the increasing proportion of overhead costs, growing costs, including product costs and administrative costs, and currently the increasing number of product variants. Further factors are identified in the paper.

Originality/value – Most previous studies focused only on the implementation of ABC in western developed countries. The results of this study make a contribution to existing knowledge in the area of the implementation of ABC, especially in eastern developing countries such as Jordan. In addition, the current study used a multi-attribute to measure success of ABC implementation within the Jordanian industrial sector. This multi-attribute was composed of satisfaction with ABC implementation, the degree of using ABC in decision making and the success of ABC implementation.

This study explores the implementation of sustainable finance in an Indonesian state-owned bank (“ABC Bank” or “ABC”). A case study approach is employed to deeply analyze the implementation using data collected through interviews and through a review of company documents. The frameworks from Soppe (2004) and Indonesia Regulation POJK 51 were used to examine the sustainable finance implementation. The findings show that ABC Bank exercises a sustainability commitment in implementing sustainable finance long before the government regulation is imposed on several banks as early adopters in Indonesia. The regulation requires selected banks to apply the eight principles of sustainable finance and prepare a sustainable financial action plan and sustainability report. ABC’s commitment is mainly driven by its status as a government-owned bank, thus facilitating the awareness of achieving public welfare while maintaining profitability. Social implication of this study is that developing countries often face more severe consequences of climate change than developed countries. Hence, the sustainable finance implementation can have a significant social impact to reduce the negative effect. This study contributes to the literature by exploring the initial adoption of sustainable finance by a state-owned bank attempting to balance the interests of the public and management. It also provides insights into other financial institutions adopting sustainable finance as mandated by the local obligation POJK 51.

To empirically test for an impact on profit performance when activity-based costing (ABC) is used in companies with customer service and low-price strategies. We also investigate whether the profit impact of ABC usage is affected by higher-quality information systems.

Survey.

We find a positive impact on profit performance when ABC is used by companies with customer service as a strategic priority but not when ABC is used by companies with lower emphasis on customer service. For companies emphasizing low-price strategies, we find a positive impact on profit performance, especially when ABC is used together with high-quality information systems.

This study develops a method of measuring strategic priorities of a firm. It divides firms into strategy groups based on their degree of emphasis on three strategic priorities: low price, flexibility, and customer service.

Identifies certain contexts when ABC is especially beneficial.

If the use of ABC information leads to better strategic and operational decisions, firm performance should improve. However, prior research on the impact of ABC on firm performance has found little to no connection and usually only when it is used with other practices. This is the first study to find an impact on profit performance for firms with customer service and low-price strategies and high-quality information systems.

Product mix and the acquisition of the assets needed for their production are interdependent decisions. However, these decisions are frequently evaluated independently of each other and with conceptually different decision models. This article expands activity-based costing (ABC) to incorporate the cost of capital. The resulting model traces the cost of capital to products and thereby measures the economic value added (EVA) from their production. The discounted value of a product’s EVA over its life is equivalent to its net present value (Hartman, 2000; Shrieves & Wachowicz, 2001). The discounted EVA of a product also equals the net present value of the assets used to manufacture the product. Consequently, evaluating products with an ABC model incorporating the cost of capital enables product mix and capital budgeting decisions to be evaluated simultaneously. The article also examines the role of ABC when product mix decisions are made at the product and portfolio levels of the firm’s operations.

This study uses structural equation modeling to investigate the impact of ABC implementation factors (management support, clarity and consensus of ABC objectives, non-accounting ownership, and training) on quality, cost, and cycle time improvements, the relations among quality, cost, and cycle time improvements and, the influence of quality, cost, and cycle time improvement on financial performance at the business unit level. Overall, the results of the structural analyses support the theoretical model indicating that ABC implementation factors influence quality, cost, and cycle time, and partial support for the relations among quality, cost, and cycle time improvement and their effect on financial performance. When these relationships are further analyzed within the context of ABC implementation stage, adoption of advanced manufacturing practices, industry characteristics and plant size to determine if these contextual factors impact the model constructs and the relationships between the variables in the theoretical model, the results show that these contextual factors do not affect the model constructs, however, they affect the model relations.

Accounting for quality and improved organizational performance has recently received attention in management control research. However, the extent to which process innovation changes have been integrated into management control research is limited. This paper contributes to that integration by drawing from institutional adaptive theory of organizational change and process innovation strategies. The paper utilizes a 2 by 2 contingency table that uses two factors: environmental conditions and organizational change/learning strategies, to build a process innovation framework. A combination of these two factors yields four process innovation strategies: mechanistic, organic, organizational development (OD) and organizational transformation (OT).

The four process innovation typologies are applied to characterize innovations in accounting such as activity based costing (ABC). ABC has been discussed as a multi-phased innovation process that provides an environment where both the initiation and the implementation of accounting change can occur. Technical innovation can be successfully initiated as organic innovation that unfolds in a decentralized organization and requires radical change and double loop learning. Implementation occurs best as a mechanistic innovation in a hierarchical organization and involving incremental change and single loop learning. The paper concludes that if ABC is integrated into an OD or OT intervention strategy, the technical and administrative innovation aspects of ABC can be utilized to manage the organization’s operating activities.

This study extends the theoretical analyses of Duration-Based Costing (DBC), an alternative cost measurement system to Activity-Based Costing (ABC). DBC is simpler than ABC and uses the production cycle time to assign costs. This simplicity should allow DBC to be a better costing method for multiproduct firms that exhibit nonconstant returns to scale.

Data simulations for 1,000 cases and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) are used to analyze the production functions inside DBC and ABC models to determine their relative technical efficiency.

The results show that, for a given set of simulations, DBC shows more nonconstant returns to scale than does ABC. This corroborates prior research and suggests that a more complex costing system, such as ABC, may not always match the production technology of a multiproduct firm. Thus, DBC may have a higher level of accuracy than does ABC for firms that exhibit nonconstant returns to scale.

Since DBC has only recently been theoretically developed, this study is the first to analyze the relative technical efficiency of DBC compared to ABC.

This study should bring some further awareness of the implications of alternative costing methods. The limitation of DBC is that it does not capture other factors not driven by the production cycle time that could be necessary for management decision making. However, DBC is better for multiproduct firms than a more complicated costing system and does help decision makers determine whether the production process is operating efficiently. It is imperative that firms choose which costing methods fit the firm’s needs and economic structure.

Despite the many proposed benefits of activity-based costing (ABC), many managers oppose implementing it. One important reason for this resistance that has generally not been addressed in the literature is the effect of cost reallocations on managers’ evaluations and compensation. This study examines how the impact of installing an ABC system on managers’ bonuses affects their support for ABC implementation. Because ABC systems usually allocate costs in different proportions than traditional systems, some products may appear to be more profitable while others may appear less so. This, in turn, causes the business units responsible for the products to appear to be more or less profitable.

Based on prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky (1979). Econometrica, 47, 263–291; Tversky & Kahneman (1992). Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297–323), we predict that the negative effect on managers’ support for ABC in business units reporting less profit is greater than the positive effect on managers’ support in the more profitable units. The results of an experiment support this prediction. Since management support is critical to successful system implementation, this asymmetric effect has implications for cost management system changes.

Theeuwes and Adriaansen (1994), among others, have asserted that activity-based costing (ABC) is inappropriate for operational decision-making. In this article, ABC is modified to reflect separate flexible and committed cost driver rates for an activity. This enables the model to reflect the difference in the behavior of an activity’s flexible and committed costs needed for operational planning decisions. The modified ABC facilitates determining the resources required to produce the product mix developed from the firm’s strategic plan and the excess capacity that will result. The modifications made to ABC aid in determining an optimal product mix when the firm has excess capacity, while the traditional ABC may not. Equally important, it facilitates measuring the financial implications of the resource allocation decisions that comprise the firm’s operational plan. As the operational plan is implemented, operational control is used to ensure that it is performed in an efficient and effective manner. The modified ABC enables the firm’s managers to compute the different types of deviations that arise from using flexible and committed resources at the unit, batch, and product levels of the firm’s operations. This aids in understanding problematic aspects of the firm’s operations and identifying where management resources are needed to improve operational efficiency.