Reasons for not changing to activity-based costing: a survey of Irish firms

Martin Quinn, Otman Elafi and Mark Mulgrew

PSU Research Review, 2017, vol. 1, issue 1, 63-70

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to report on a survey of medium and large Irish firms to ascertain reasons for not changing to more advanced costing techniques, namely, activity-based costing (ABC). Developments in technology and recent poor economic conditions would suggest that the technique could be adopted more by firms, as they make increased efforts to keep costs under control. Design/methodology/approach - A survey instrument was used to gather data drawing from the top 1,000 Irish firms. From a useable population of 821 organisations, a response rate of 20.75 per cent was achieved. Findings - Findings show a rate of adoption of ABC of 18.7 per cent, which is lower than previous studies in an Irish context. The level of information technology in firms is not a key factor for non-adoption. Instead, the main reasoning for non-adoption revolve around stable existing costing methods, which firms expressed satisfaction with. Originality/value - This research suggests the adoption of ABC is not necessarily driven by external factors such as technology and economic shocks, at least in the context of Ireland. It also suggests that costing techniques may be deeply embedded within organisations and are less likely to be subject to change.

Keywords: Management accounting; Activity-based costing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:prrpps:prr-12-2016-0017

DOI: 10.1108/PRR-12-2016-0017

Access Statistics for this article

PSU Research Review is currently edited by Dr Mohammad Nurunnabi

More articles in PSU Research Review from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().