An analysis of the complementarities between interorganizational cost management and Open-Book Accounting

Abstract

In an uncertain and competitive environment companies need to establish strategies to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage throughout their life-cycle. The strategic positioning of the organization is one of the alternatives to obtain competitive advantage by defining strategic priorities: differentiation, cost leadership and focus. The value chain can be segregated in two interdependent dimensions: upstream and downstream. In the upstream dimension the recent literature on accounting has developed the approach called Interorganizational Cost Management (ICM). At the same time, it has explored the role of accounting in the value chain, specifically the exchange of information between different links of the value chain, which is known as open-book accounting. This article analyzes the relation between the theoretical framework of the ICM approach proposed by Cooper and Slagmulder (1999) and the open-book accounting. It employs a critical-dialectic approach and a bibliographical analysis. The analysis indicates that the effective implementation of an ICM approach is moderated by the presence of open-book accounting . Key words: value chain, upstream, interorganizational cost management, open-book accounting.