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The distinction between discussing human capital (HC) and its actual measurement is the presence of indices and equations to substantiate the belief of measuring intangibles. The chapter makes a concise mention of research precedents, deriving leads for the foundation of HC. The chapter aims to provide clarity on the concept of HC measurement and bring to light the tools that can confer tangibility to intangibles. It argues that the measurement of HC is an achievable idea; furthering that a systematic review into the inter-disciplinary studies can offer viable solutions to the challenge of measuring intangibles. The chapter while discussing the contention makes a vivid mention of Bhutan’s gross national happiness (GNH), Happiness Seismograph, Cobb–Douglas model and others to make an impression on the minds of the reader.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the particularities of the time consumption of transactions performed in an insurance firm and the prospective impact on costing.

This paper uses the results of an archival study conducted on data collected in an insurance firm.

The results suggest that the reasons underlying the heterogeneity of transactions’ time consumption are multiple and rule out a systematic and unique explanation. They lend support to the importance of the “human effect” in explaining the time consumption of service transactions and support the need for more research into the evolution of marketing thought that subordinates the concept of transaction to the concept of relationship. In addition, our results not only suggest that the drivers of time consumption and their importance are contingent on the type of service activity performed within the same firm, but also that inside a generic service activity, deviations in time consumption remain due to the provision of specific services.

Services have their own characteristics which make it difficult to trace their resource consumption. Yet limited research has focused on examining the impact of services’ characteristics on predicting costs. Our findings contribute to our understanding of such impact and cast doubt on the possibility of obtaining accurate costs for very detailed transactions for an acceptable cost-benefit trade-off.

Purpose – To analyze the diffusion of management accounting tools in Italian manufacturing firms and the impact of contingency factors with a particular focus on internationalization.

Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a qualitative statistical analysis and two quantitative data analyses focusing on the effects of contingency factors. In particular, 274 questionnaires were analyzed. A questionnaire-based e-mail survey was used to collect data.

Findings – The results confirm positive relationships between management accounting systems and traditional contingency factors such as company size, organizational structure, and operational complexity. In addition, a positive correlation was found between the internationalization and implementation of activity-based costing and target costing.

Research limitations/implications – In the context of internationalization, this exploratory study considers only the impact of foreign customers. Further research could include other factors such as foreign suppliers, joint ventures, and technological exchanges.

Originality/value of paper – This paper contributes to the analysis of the impact of internationalization, a contingency variable not yet fully investigated in management accounting system research.

We document the relationship between size, the presence of a full-time accountant, strategy, and the adoption of management control systems (MCSs) in small- and medium-sized Canadian manufacturing enterprises (SMEs).

Using survey results from 247 Canadian SMEs, we use partial least squares to holistically test our model and also present data for each MCS.

We find that the presence of a professional accountant is strongly associated with the adoption of MCSs and is a significant explanatory variable more often than either size or strategy.

While the impact of organization and strategy has been extensively studied within large organizations, we investigate these relationships within SMEs. Additionally, we investigate the impact of having a full-time accountant, a constraint unique to SMEs due to their limited resources.

Limitations include the fact that we likely have a significant survivor bias as the average age of our sample firms was 30 years. Our analysis of nonresponse bias does not allow us to conclude that such a bias did not exist. Also, it is possible that some respondents believed they had a certain MCS when others might think they did not.

This study will be of interest to owners/managers of manufacturing SMEs, their advisors, and economic development agencies. Our study also has implications for accounting education as most students will work for SMEs.

Few studies have documented the MCSs adopted by North American SMEs, and none have considered the impact of the presence of a full-time accountant.

Purpose – This article highlights the unintended consequences that resulted from the (abuse/use) use of management accounting information in a large automobile corporation in Zimbabwe.

Methodology – The article uses a case study and draws on Giddens’ structuration theory to help us understand how management accounting practices are produced and reproduced through interactions in organizations.

Findings – It reveals how the use of management accounting information can lead to the domination of other employees in organizations and result in unintended consequences such as redundancies.

Originality – The article lays emphasis on the unintended consequences resulting from actions of different players in the motor industry and their impact on workers and wider society. It also brings to the fore the dialectic of control which allows subordinates to mobilize resources and act otherwise. It concludes that management accounting practices are “situated practices” which reflect the dominant discourses and can be harnessed to liberate or enslave other players in organizations. The article suggests that adopting structuration theory helps us analyze the role(s) of accounting information and illuminate possible unintended consequences associated with accounting-based decisions.

Practical implications – Accountants should guard against misuse of accounting information, to justify political decisions made by managers.

Research limitations – The political and economic volatility of the environment obscured the interactions between engineers and accountants because the central focus shifted to survival beyond the crisis.

Compare and contrast how the accounting, organizational behavior and other literatures analyze sunk costs. Sunk costs form a key part of the decision-making component of the management accounting literature, which generally include previously incurred and unrecoverable costs. Management accountants believe, since current or future actions cannot change sunk costs, decision makers should ignore them. Thus, ongoing fixed costs or previously incurred sunk costs, while relevant for matters of accountability such as costing, income determination, and performance evaluation are irrelevant for most short- and long-term decisions. However, the organizational behavior literature indicates that sunk costs affect decision makers’ actions – especially their emotional attachments to the related project and the asymmetry of attitudes regarding the recognizing of losses and gains. Called the “sunk cost effect” or “sunk cost fallacy,” this conflict in sunk costs’ underlying nature reflects one element of incoherence in contemporary accounting discourse. We discuss this sunk cost conflict from an accounting and a philosophical perspective to denote some ambiguities that decision usefulness and accountability introduces into accounting discourse.

Review, summarize and analyze the above literatures

Managerial accountants can apply many lessons from the various literature sources.

We also show how differing opinions on how to treat sunk costs impact a firm’s decision-making process both economically and socially.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework which sheds new light on how sustainability control systems (SCS) can be used in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Corporate sustainability pressures are identified using insights from institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm.

Findings – The paper presents an integrated framework showing the corporate sustainability pressures, proactive strategic responses to these pressures, and how organizations might use SCS in their responses to the corporate sustainability pressures they face.

Practical Implications – The proposed framework shows how organizations can use SCS in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Originality/Value – The paper suggests that instead of using traditional financial-oriented management control systems, organizations need more focus on emerging SCS as a means of achieving sustainability objectives. In particular, the paper proposes different SCS tools that can be used in proactive strategic responses to sustainability pressures in terms of (i) specifying and communicating sustainability objectives, (ii) monitoring sustainability performance, and (iii) providing motivation by linking sustainability rewards to performance.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the main and interaction effects of activity-based costing (ABC), internal information systems integration (IISI), and external information systems integration (EISI) on manufacturing plant operational performance, controlling for plant characteristics.

Methodology/approach: The study uses survey data from a cross-section of 369 U.S. manufacturing plants. Data were analyzed using hierarchical regression model.

Findings and implications: The results indicate partial support for the main and two-way interaction effects on plant operational performance. The three-way interaction effects are significant and positive, suggesting that deploying all three resources (i.e., ABC, IISI, and EISI) leads to the higher plant operational performance.

Originality/value: The paper significantly extends prior research and contributes to the understanding of the main and interaction effects of ABC, IISI, and EISI on manufacturing plant operational performance. The paper would also be of interest to practitioners interested in keeping up with academic literature.

This study examines the impact of environmental activity management (EAM) on triple bottom line (TBL) performance and the role that sustainability strategies play in mediating these relationships. Data were collected using a survey of Australian managers and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings indicate that each of the three levels of EAM – Environmental Activity Analysis, Environmental Activity Cost Analysis, and Environmental Activity Based Costing – influence-specific aspects of performance, either directly and/or indirectly through environmental and social sustainability strategies. The findings suggest that managers could enhance their use of EAM practices through the use of sustainability strategies in order to enhance performance. This study provides empirical insight into the impact that EAM practices and environmental and social sustainability strategies have on all three aspects of TBL performance.