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The implementation of modern managerial accounting systems has its benefits, but needs certain facilities to be made available. Activity Based Budgeting (ABB) is a system that could be useful in managing shared service departments by providing deeper insights to their capacity utilization and resource allocation than a traditional budgeting system. This paper studies the possibilities, benefits, and difficulties that may face the implementation of an ABB system in an environment that lacks sophisticated IT based accounting information system. This study used an application experiment to implement the ABB in two shared service departments (Accounts and Transportation) in two different companies. In addition, a simple survey of the two companies’ employees was adopted to acquire their reaction and feedback about the proposed budgeting system. Results show that benefits can be gained and difficulties resulting from lack of IT support can be overcome but with considerable human effort. When labor force is not a constraint, this provides the solution. However, measuring human labor’s capacity is a factor that needs more consideration from accounting researchers.

Most studies on activity‐based management (ABM) focus on applications in manufacturing environments. Instead, little attention has been given to the potentialities of ABM for support units, although these are widely considered to be one of the most relevant sources of inefficiencies, especially in large firms. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate how the ABM methodology can be applied to R&D activities, with particular regard to the product development process. As a matter of fact, when implementing an ABM system for R&D operations, some relevant theoretical problems arise, essentially due to the high percentage of non‐routine, hardly standardisable activities. However, if adequately adapted to the characteristics of this function, ABM can be of great help in a number of issues, such as: improvement of the efficiency of the activities that constitute the process; evaluation of the economic benefits that can be gained through a redesign of processes; improvement of the effectiveness of links between product development activities; evaluation of product life‐cycle costs and budgeting and control of product development activities.

The aim of the paper is to present and illustrate a new approach for long‐range planning.

Building on well‐tested frameworks such as activity‐based costing (ABC), life‐cycle costing (LCC) and Monte Carlo methods as well as earlier case studies, an approach is developed further and tested using a real‐life case.

The effectiveness of the approach is confirmed using a process‐oriented framework (ABC) and introducing an LCC perspective. Monte Carlo methods are used to handle uncertainty and identify risks and critical success factors.

The presented research is a starting‐point for developing a simple approach for budgeting that overcomes many of the problems with traditional budgeting.

The paper shows how long‐range planning can be performed in a realistic fashion without ending up in many of the traps of traditional budgeting.

The paper presents an approach that can help corporations anticipate the future much more realistically than before.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a medium‐sized university library implemented activity‐based costing (ABC) and other broad‐based decision‐making strategies to make the necessary budgetary cuts and refocus library services accordingly.

The paper uses ABC to quantify the cost‐drive of services in the library.

Given the current budgetary cuts academic libraries are facing, a rational, data‐driven, ABC approach can lead to constructive organizational decision making and outcomes.

The paper demonstrates the value of activity‐based costing in assessing services and addressing issues on how libraries can do more with less.

The purpose of this paper is to report the level of adoption and the benefits derived from traditional and contemporary management accounting practices in the Greek hospitality industry.

An empirical survey via questionnaires was conducted on a sample of 85 leading hotels in Greece. Descriptive statistics on the adoption level, the relative benefits and future emphasis of individual practices provide the basis for discussion.

The adoption rates for many recently developed practices were very satisfactory. Overall, traditional management accounting techniques (e.g. budgeting practices, profitability measures, product profitability analysis, customer profitability analysis absorption costing, and nonfinancial measures for performance evaluation) were found to be more widely adopted than recently developed tools. It is concluded that traditional management accounting is very much alive and well. Many hotels intended to place greater emphasis on more recently developed techniques in the future, particularly activity based costing techniques (activity based costing, activity based budgeting, and activity based management), balanced scorecard and benchmarking.

The study, examined a large array of items since, as with all surveys, it is possible that respondents may have misinterpreted some elements. Second, the findings of this study should be interpreted bearing in mind that the survey included the largest Greek hotels and not the general population of hotel enterprises. Finally, this research was limited to the Greek hotel sector.

The survey provides a unique detailed examination of the management accounting practices and an indication of future trends.

Budgeting is used to assist in strategic planning. It is the process of allocating resources to selected activities or programmes. The search for better methods of allocating and controlling the expenditure of funds has always been very important to managers. With corporations realising decreasing revenues and governments confronted by huge deficits, budgeting is more difficult than ever. The old methods no longer are suitable for most organisations [p. 104]. This article addresses the newest forms of budgeting‐Zero‐Base Budgeting (ZBB) and Activity‐Based Budgeting (ABB).

Activity‐based costing (ABC) data have the potential to inform a wide range of management decisions. Recently the term Activity‐based management (ABM) has emerged to describe any application of ABC data, but there is currently no framework which pulls together the disparate strands of potential uses. We have conducted a systematic review of internationally reported ABC applications to produce an integrated and comprehensive ABM framework for management decision making. Traditional methods of costing are critically evaluated as a precursor to explaining the ABC model. We go on to illustrate our ABM framework with case examples.

The purpose of this study is to examine the design, development and implementation of responsibility centre management at a mid-sized Canadian university, within the context of decentralized decision-making. More specifically our study focused on the design, development and implementation of a revenue and cost allocation process known as transparent activity–based budgeting system (TABBS).

The authors conducted this study using a qualitative case study methodology, rooted in grounded theory, as the primary approach to collect and analyse data, and report the findings. Primary data were collected from ten participants using semi-structured interviews.

The main takeaways from our research are that (1) such systems take time to design, develop and implement, (2) consultation, communication and information sharing and model adjustment and refinement are important enabling mechanisms, (3) internal and external events posed significant challenges, (4) although such systems are often designed keeping in mind several intended outcomes, there exists the possibility of experiencing some unintended consequences and (5) the juxtaposition of the above has the potential to negatively or positively impact organizational performance.

The research demonstrates that the design, development and implementation of a complex resource allocation model is an important element of a responsibility-centred approach to planning and decision-making. It highlights the importance and contribution of enabling mechanisms as well as the challenges that large, complex organizations may confront when introducing change.

Any measure of eco‐efficiency requires financial information, for calculating the numerator, and physical information about the environment, for calculating the denominator. Accounting and finance staff provide key financial information about the numerator in eco‐efficiency calculations. Hence, for eco‐efficiency measures to be calculated and for the measures to add value it is essential for them to be integrated with accounting and financial management processes such as budgetary control. Calculating measures of eco‐efficiency is not enough on its own to ensure corporate value is added. Accounting and finance staff have to be involved in the planning of future long‐term eco‐efficiency improvement. If value added from continuous improvement in eco‐efficiency activities is to be anticipated it is necessary for eco‐efficiency and budgeting to be integrated. The paper provides some conceptual and practical guidance to help managers achieve this integration. Recently a number of companies have suggested that corporate budgeting no longer serves a purpose in their organizations (e.g. in network organizations). By demonstrating that, if information related to the neglect of potential environmental protection activities is ignored, the costs to business can be very high, this suggested change in practice is considered. It is concluded that a set of contingent guidelines need to be developed for budgeted eco‐efficiency situations to help management and regulators assess value‐added opportunities from using this new environmental management tool.

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.