Developments Around the Activity-Based Costing Method: A State-of-the Art Literature Review

Abstract

This paper analyzes the management accounting applications which try to improve the Activity-based Costing method. In the first part, we describe them using the Strategic Management Accounting stream. Then, we present the main features of these applications. In the second part, we examine in detail two of these features: The widening of the analysis perimeter and the relevant level of details to analyze the costs. Finally, we analyze several proposals: Customer-driven ABC, Inter-organizational Cost Management, Resource Consumption Accounting and Time-driven ABC.