Activity Based Costing Method Research Articles

Survey research on activity-based costing: a reply to Dugdale and Jones

In January 1996 we responded positively to a request by David Dugdale for assistance in accessing 14 respondents to our postal questionnaire survey of activity-based costing (ABC) in the U.K.'s largest companies (Innes and Mitchell, 1995). While the survey covered a broad range of ABC applications these respondents were the only ones who had stated that their firms had used ABC to value stock. Dugdale and Jones (1997) made contact by telephone (and subsequently by post) with individuals in 12 of the 14 cases (however only seven of the individuals contacted were the original respondents to our questionnaire). Eight of the 12 confirmed using ABC methods to value stock (five of these using what Dugdale and Jones term a ‘weak form’ of ABC) while the remaining four suggested that the original questionnaire must have been completed incorrectly due to ‘error or misunderstanding’.