Explicating the design of overhead absorption procedures in UK organizations

Colin Drury and Mike Tayles

The British Accounting Review, 2005, vol. 37, issue 1, 47-84

Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a postal questionnaire survey that examines the extent to which potential explanatory factors influence the level of complexity of product costing system design choices in UK companies. It is argued that because previous surveys have sought to classify costing systems by two discrete alternatives, either traditional or ABC systems, they do not adequately capture the diversity of practices that exist. The distinguishing feature of this paper is that it adopts a broader perspective and examines cost system design choices that vary along a continuum ranging from very simplistic to highly complex costing systems.

Keywords: Cost system design; Product costing; Activity-based costing; Cost system complexity/sophistication; Traditional costing systems; Contingent factors; Cost pools; Cost drivers; Cost structure; Product diversity; Competitive environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838904000733
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:bracre:v:37:y:2005:i:1:p:47-84

DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2004.08.003

Access Statistics for this article

The British Accounting Review is currently edited by Nathan Lael Joseph and Alan Lowe

More articles in The British Accounting Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().