Managerial accounting in France Overview of past tradition and current practice

Michel Lebas

European Accounting Review, 1994, vol. 3, issue 3, 471-488

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.

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638189400000032 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:euract:v:3:y:1994:i:3:p:471-488

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REAR20

DOI: 10.1080/09638189400000032

Access Statistics for this article

European Accounting Review is currently edited by Laurence van Lent

More articles in European Accounting Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().