Managerial accounting in France Overview of past tradition and current practice

Abstract

Managerial accounting in France is rooted in two contradictory, yet complement-tary, approaches: (1) a normative cost analysis approach focusing on productcosting for valuation purposes and (2) an ad hoc, physically based, information-for-decision-making approach called the Tableau de Bord. This paper briefly reviews some of the historical origins of these approachesbefore describing them. The cost analysis approach is well codified and has beenjointly defined by businesses and government authorities. It offers a quasi-normativeframework for cost calculation that has been widely accepted and implemented sincethe end of World War 11. Its primary focus, until about fifteen years ago, was thecalculation of product cost and the valuation of inventory. Recent evolutions haveopened the system to cost analysis for decision making. The Tableau de Bordapproach, a managerial ‘instrument panel’ approach to management of the firm, has emerged spontaneously from the needs of manufac-turing engineers and managers. It has evolved over the years (mainly since the early 1960s) from a loosely defined tool into a formally structured instrument with well-defined purpose, content and form The concluding section shows how the evolution of both approaches leads to a synthesis which is very similar to activity-based management and activity-based cost management.