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As business becomes increasingly global, it is important for managers to appreciate that practices that work well in one country may not work as well in other countries. This article compares cost center practices under Grenzplankostenrechnung (GPK), a common approach to cost accounting in Germany, and typical cost center practices in the United States. Differences between Germany and the United States on Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance dimension and in workforce and management education provide possible explanations for differences in the responsibility assigned to cost center managers between Germany and the United States. Differences in cost center practices concerning classification of costs, measures to use when considering changes in costs, and the size and scope of the cost center between Germany and the United States all support these differences in cost center manager responsibility.

A proposal for a distribution cost and revenue analysis format to provide information for logistics decisions and control.

Value for money, cost effectiveness, enterprise and quality assurance are rapidly becoming the new catchwords in higher education management. Corporate forms of management are considered as polytechnics and universities struggle to find organisational structures to cope with the world of competition. Fundamental issues of management and not just profit centres/cost centres are discussed.

As smart cities flourish amidst rapid urbanization and information and communication technology development, the demand for building more and more data centers is rising. This paper aims to examine the principal issues and considerations of data center facilities from the cost and benefit dimensions, with an aim to illustrate the approaches for maximizing the net benefits and remain “green.”

A comprehensive literature review informs the costs and benefits of data center facilities, and through a case study of a developer in Hong Kong, the significance of real estate costs is demonstrated.

Major corporations, establishments and governments need data centers as a mission critical facility to enable countless electronic transactions to take place any minute of the day. Their functional importance ranges from health, transport, payment, etc., all the way to entertainment activities. Some enterprises own them, whilst others use data center services on a co-location basis, in which case data centers are regarded as an investment asset. Real estate costs affect their success to a great extent, as in the case of a metropolitan where land cost forms a substantial part of the overall development cost for data centers.

As the financial information of data center projects are highly sensitive due to the competitive status of the industry, a full set of numerical data is not available. Instead, the principles for a typical framework are established.

Data centers are very energy intensive, and their construction is usually fast tracked costing much to build, not to mention the high-value equipment contents housed therein. Their site locations need careful selection due to stability and security concerns. As an essential business continuity tool, the return on investment is a complex consideration, but certainly the potential loss caused by any disruption would be a huge amount. The life cycle cost and benefit considerations are revealed for this type of mission-critical facilities. Externalities are expounded, with emphasis on sustainable issues. The impact of land shortage for data center development is also demonstrated through the case of Hong Kong.

The reason of this chapter is to clarify at a conceptual level the phenomenon of shared service centers. The aim of the chapter is to enable managers make better decisions when applying the concept of shared service centers.

This is a conceptual chapter, in which the phenomenon of shared service centers is being rewritten, from an initial cost efficiency level, into a constituting building block in the new nature of the firm.

The findings of this chapter are that especially the combination of financial shared service centers and IT shared service centers are an instrument to organize information outside the structure of the internal organization of the firm, as implied by the changing nature of the firm. Also shared service centers are enablers for new business models, especially those based on human capital.

Executives and managers that have a better conceptual understanding of the application of shared service centers will create more benefits beyond costs savings.

This is the first chapter in which shared service center is reconceptualized in terms of the changing nature of the firm. With that it is also one of the first chapter describing the changing nature of the firm in operational terms. The value of the chapter is that it will help executives to define more efficient change processes. A second value of the chapter is that it opens new avenues of empirical and conceptual research for academia.

Building information modelling (BIM) claims to be spearheading the modern technological revolution in the global construction industry. While scholars have emphasised the cruciality of BIM, associated costs have been identified as one of the major barriers to successful BIM implementation, as is the case in Sri Lanka. Besides, lean principles (LPs) are known for increasing efficiency, quality and eliminating waste, thereby reducing overall costs. Hence, this research aims at addressing the BIM implementation barrier associated with costs by applying suitable LP, enhancing overall value by minimising value-insignificant activities.

The study adopted a qualitative research approach. 10 experts with expertise in both BIM and LP were targeted for the primary data collection through semi-structured interviews. The collected data were analysed using manual content analysis.

Research findings discovered the cost centres that can be applied to the LPs and the effective LPs that can be applied with the cost centres of BIM implementation. The theoretical implication of the study is to provide insights into a potential application of LP for BIM cost centres, whereas practical consequences include the identification of LP's potential to minimise BIM cost centres, ergo, achieving a successful BIM implementation.

This study will be the first of its kind in the Sri Lankan construction industry, intending to apply LP with BIM implementation cost centres to achieve a successful implementation. This research also has paved the way forward for further research on the application of both the BIM and LP concepts for similar construction industries in developing countries across the world and in addressing other BIM implementation barriers.

Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

The current stringent economic climate requires library managers to be more systematic in cost analyses. Allocating costs to cost centers, determining costs per unit of service, and correlating costs to specific categories of users, helps ensure accurate analyses of costs, productivity, and efficiency. Along with cost analysis, assessment of service is a key component in the complete analysis, for cost and efficiency must be related to quality and effectiveness. In addition to discussing the general process of determining costs for specific library services, this article focuses on the cost center model in more detail, with a case study of the cost of a library's support for grant‐sponsored research.

This study aimed to develop the integration of the multiperiod production-distribution model in a closed-loop supply chain involving carbon emission and traceability. The developed model was for agricultural food (agri-food) products, considering the reverse flow of food waste from the disposal center (composting center) to producers.

The results indicate that integrating the production and distribution model considering food waste recycling provides low carbon emissions in lower total costs. The sensitivity analysis also found that there are trade-offs between production and distribution rate and food waste levels on carbon emission and traceability.

This study focuses on the mathematical modeling of a multiperiod production-distribution formulation for a closed-loop supply chain.

The model of the agri-food closed-loop supply chain in this study that considers food recycling and carbon emissions would help stakeholders involved in the agri-food supply chain to reduce food waste and carbon emissions.

Concern over the rising cost of medical care has caused many countries to investigate and implement different methods of cost containment, particularly for hospital services. In the United States, Medicare replaced its ‘cost‐based’ reimbursement system, in which hospital payments were based on the actual costs incurred in treating patients, with a system that pays hospitals a fixed price per case. Under this new system, all hospital discharges are classified into 467 Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) or types of cases based on the patient's age, sex, principal diagnosis, additional diagnoses (comorbidities and complications), surgical procedures performed, and the discharge status. During the first three years of the programme, the payment rate for each DRG is a function of a DRG weight (reflecting relative resource consumption), the hospital's historic costs of treating patients in that DRG, and a federally established rate adjusted for urban/rural differences and census region. In the fourth year the price will be based only on the DRG weight and the federally established rate.