Examine the reasons service companies are more sensitive to labor and price variances, as compared to material price variances, in the industrial sector and why managing these variances is essential to sustaining profitability.

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D espite claims that it is less relevant than

newer accounting methods, standard cost-

ing is far from obsolete, and, in fact, it is

experiencing common use in countries as

diverse as the United Kingdom, Malaysia,

and the United Arab Emirates. With the advent and

wide use of methods such as activity-based costing

(ABC), Just-in-Time (JIT), the balanced scorecard, and

target costing, a number of researchers had predicted

the demise of standard costing and variance analysis on

the grounds that these tools had become disconnected

from actual practices at the industry level where an

intense competitive environment often requires a

higher level of sophistication in costing systems.

For example, Richard Fleischman and Thomas

Tyson claimed that standard costing cannot provide

adequate assistance in the areas of construction strategy

and operational management.1 Don Hansen and

Maryanne Mowen went so far as to describe it as poten-

tially “dysfunctional.”2 These criticisms have largely

contributed to the dismissal of standard costing,

especially for large companies that employ more

sophisticated methods such as ABC and target costing.

Mike Lucas has even raised questions as to whether it

is still appropriate for college accounting programs to

continue teaching this “outdated” topic.3

GLOBAL ACCEPTANCE OF

STANDARD COSTING

While several academics were busy pointing out the

weaknesses of standard costing, others observed that

this accounting tool continues to be widely used

throughout the world. Studies conducted in developed

countries have shown rates among companies as high as

73% in the U.K. and 86% in Japan.4

More specifically, David Lyall and Carol Graham

stated that more than 90% of 231 companies surveyed

in the U.K. apply standard costing for cost control pur-

poses. Furthermore, they found that 63% of the man-

agers using this technique reported being pleased in

Is Standard Costing Still Relevant? Evidence from Dubai

REPORTS OF THE DEATH OF STANDARD COSTING ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED, SAY THE

RESULTS OF OUR STUDY OF COMPANIES BASED IN DUBAI. BECAUSE OF ITS SIMPLICITY,

FLEXIBILITY, AND AFFORDABILITY, STANDARD COSTING REMAINS A FAVORITE COST

ACCOUNTING METHOD AMONG ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE PROFESSIONALS IN BOTH

INDUSTRIAL AND SERVICE SECTORS IN THIS RAPIDLY EXPANDING PART OF THE GLOBE.

B Y A T T I E A M A R I E , P H . D . ; W A L I D C H E F F I , P H . D . ; R O S M Y J E A N L O U I S , P H . D . ; A N D A N A N T H R A O , P H . D .

Winter 2010

VOL.11 NO.2

Winter 2010

2M A N A G E M E N T A C C O U N T I N G Q U A R T E R L Y W I N T E R 2 0 1 0 , V O L . 1 1 , N O . 2

terms of its decision-making support.5 In another study,

76% of 303 accountants in the U.K. and 73% of 85

finance and accounting specialists in New Zealand use

standard costing.6 The authors also found that accoun-

tants viewed modern costing and production manage-

ment tools as having no impact on how widely standard

costing and variance analysis are used. (The respon-

dents even predicted an increase in the importance of

the older tools.) A study by Maliah Sulaiman, Nik Nazli

Nik Ahmad, and Norhayati Mohd Alwi of companies

doing business in Malaysia found similar widespread

dissemination and persistence of standard costing: 70%

of 66 local firms and 76% of 21 Japanese firms.7

These studies reveal that standard costing does not

overemphasize cost control, and, moreover, it is linked to

quality management. In addition, the Lucas and Sulai-

man studies have shown that companies use past perfor-

mance (“after the fact”) instead of predetermined

engineering standards on actual costs. Instead of em-

ploying newer and costlier systems, companies have cho-

sen to reconfigure existing systems with more rigorous

schemes, implying that firms have adapted standard cost-

ing to their specific needs and have not abandoned it.

A CASE STUDY: DUBAI

In light of conflicting views in the academic research,

we examine how standard costing and variance analysis

are used in one of the world’s fastest-growing

economies: Dubai, one of the seven emirates, or states,

in the United Arab Emirates. A number of events make

our case study appealing, including the steps the Dubai

government has taken to free up prices and wages,

rationalize indirect taxes, deregulate the financial sys-

tem, promote foreign direct investment, and encourage

all companies to use new information and communica-

tion technology. To our knowledge, this study is the

first of its kind to shed light on the level of use of stan-

dard costing tools in Dubai.

Our study differs from the earlier study by Sulaiman,

et al., in that, while they split their sample on the basis

of ownership (Japanese vs. local), we disaggregated the

companies by sectors: industrial vs. service. We did this

for two reasons. The first is contextual: By law, foreign-

ers in Dubai cannot own 50% or more of a company

unless that company is located in the free zones.8 Thus

it is just not possible to differentiate between nonlocal

and local companies in Dubai. Second, by studying the

service sector separately, we capture its importance in

terms of its contribution to Dubai’s gross domestic

product (GDP). The reason also relates to the fact that

the service sector has been studied less than the indus-

trial sector when it comes to the use of standard costing.

A plausible explanation for this might be the perception

that standard costing is not appropriate for the service

sector and the claim that service companies distance

themselves from it. Therefore, we address the following

questions:

a. Is standard costing used in Dubai?

b. How important are various functions in standard

costing?

c. How frequently are various techniques and cost

standards used in standard costing?

d. How important is the analysis of variance for con-

trol purposes?

COLLECTING THE DATA

We collected the data presented here through a survey

questionnaire, and we had a reasonably good response

rate. We chose the companies randomly, covering all

subcomponents of the industrial sector and the service

and trading (retail) sector, which together constitute the

“private sector” in Dubai.9

To design our questionnaire, we modified those of

Colin Drury, Chris Guilding, and Sulaiman to allow us

to compare our study findings with those that looked at

U.K. and Malaysian companies.10 We created the ques-

tionnaire, which consists of demographics, characteris-

tics of cost accounting tools, and standard costing

practices in Dubai, to answer the following questions:

1. Do accounting and finance professionals in Dubai

use standard costing or some other method to make

management decisions?

2. Which techniques are used in standard costing in

relation to standards based on design/engineering

studies, observations based on trial runs, work/study

techniques, or average historic usage?

3. How are various types of costing standards practiced

by Dubai companies with respect to maximum effi-

ciency standards that are achievable but difficult to

3M A N A G E M E N T A C C O U N T I N G Q U A R T E R L Y W I N T E R 2 0 1 0 , V O L . 1 1 , N O . 2

attain, average performance standards, or average his-

toric usage?

4. How frequently—monthly, quarterly, semiannually,

annually, continuously, or when the variances imply

that standards have changed—do companies in

Dubai use costing tools for management control?

5. Which methods are employed to investigate a partic-

ular variance? For example, are decisions based on

managerial judgment, a calculated variance exceed-

ing a specific monetary amount or a given percentage

of standards, or through the use of control charts?

6. How important is the analysis of variances (for exam-

ple, materials prices and sales prices) for control

purposes?11

WHAT OUR STUDY FOUND

The largest segment of respondents in Dubai’s industrial

sector (21%) was engaged in construction activities (see

Table1). The rest were fairly evenly distributed among

chemicals/plastics and food (14% each) and engineering

and paper/packaging (12% each). Textiles and electron-

ics constituted 11% apiece. As expected, oil and gas

companies constituted the least at 5%, which is consis-

tent with Dubai’s strategy of diversifying from oil-based

activities to nonoil-based activities because of shrinking

oil resources.

Most of the respondents under the service and trad-

ing (retail) sector were from nonfinancial companies

(58%) vs. 42% of respondents from financial firms.

We found a slightly higher percentage of large indus-

trial companies compared to large service companies, as

shown in Table 2. Most companies had assets in the

range of 10 million dirham to 500 million dirham

(MDhs): 75% in the industrial sector and 81% in the

service sector, indicating that most respondents were

small to medium-size companies (SMEs).12

Table 3 reveals that the majority of companies sur-

veyed (68% in the industrial sector and 77% in the ser-

vice sector) had fewer than 500 employees. Only 25%

of industrial companies and 21% of service companies

had more than 500.

Tables 4 and 5 provide a snapshot of the use of stan-

dard costing tools in Dubai. The results of the earlier

studies by Sulaiman, Guilding, and Drury, which

focused on industrial firms, are also reported for com-

parison purposes. We found that the results for the

industrial-sector companies in Dubai (77%) is consis-

tent with those of the other countries studied (73%-

Table 1: Dubai Company Characteristics (Subsector Type) Activities of Dubai Respondents Percentage

A. Industrial Sector (57 companies)

1. Chemicals & Plastics 14

2. Engineering 12

3. Textiles 11

4. Food 14

5. Construction 21

6. Paper & Packaging 12

7. Electronics 11

8. Oil & Gas 5

100

B. Service & Trading Sector (43 companies)

1. Financial * 42

2. Nonfinancial** 58

100

*Banks, insurance, financing **Real estate, hotels, trading (retail), consultancy, education, hospitality

4M A N A G E M E N T A C C O U N T I N G Q U A R T E R L Y W I N T E R 2 0 1 0 , V O L . 1 1 , N O . 2

76%) but is moderate in contrast with our results for the

service sector, implying that standard costing has not

become obsolete among either industrial or service

companies in Dubai.

Table 5 shows the importance of various standard

costing functions in Dubai companies using a seven-

point Likert scale, with responses of four or higher evi-

dencing importance and those less than four reflecting

less importance.

The cost functions—cost control and performance

evaluation, costing inventories, and computing product

cost for decision making—were of relatively greater

importance to Dubai industrial-sector companies than

to their counterparts in Malaysia and the U.K. More-

over, these standard costing functions were of much

lower importance in Dubai’s service sector. In terms of

significance, inventory costing is the key function of

standard costing for industries in Dubai, Malaysia, and

Table 2: Dubai Company Characteristics (Total Assets in MDhs) Total Assets Industrial Sector Service Sector

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage

10 million-100 million 19 33 14 32

101 millioin-500 million 24 42 21 49

>500 million 9 16 6 14

Missing 5 9 2 5

Total 57 100 43 100

Table 3: Dubai Company Characteristics (Number of Employees) Number of Employees Industrial Sector Service Sector

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage

<100 12 21 11 26

100-500 27 47 22 51

>500 14 25 9 21

Missing 4 7 1 2

Total 57 100 43 100

Table 4: Extent to Which Companies Use Standard Costing Dubai Malaysia New Zealand U.K.

Industrial Service Japanese Local % % % %

Yes 77 39 76 70 73 76

No 23 61 24 30 27 24

Total 100 100 100 100 100 100

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the U.K., and, for the service sector, budgeting is the

most significant function. Mann-Whitney U test results

reject the null hypothesis of response bias, suggesting

that the industrial-sector companies in Dubai use stan-

dard costing to a greater extent than the service sector

for the first three functions of standard costing listed in

Table 5. Again, in only one instance has this pattern

reverted toward the service sector: the use of standard

costing as an aid to budgeting. These findings, on aver-

age, are consistent with those of other studies of

Table 5: Importance of Standard Costing Functions Dubai Malaysia U.K.

Industrial Service Japanese Local Function % % % % %

1. Cost control and performance evaluation 90** 71 83 82* 72

2. Costing inventories 94* 40 89* 68 80*

3. Computing product cost for 88* 46 83 78 62 decision making

4. As an aid to budgeting 78 83* 88 67 69

5. Data processing economies 42 33 75 56 43

Mann-Whitney U test statistic13: *significant at 5% **significant at 10%

Table 6: Methods Used to Set Labor and Material Standards Dubai Malaysia U.K.

Industrial Service Japanese Local Method % % % % %

1. Standards based on design/engineering 89** 48 81* 46 51* studies

2. Observations based on trial runs 57 39 53 42 30

3. Work study techniques 44 54 25 26 42

4. Average of historic usage 54 76* 44 63* 44

Mann-Whitney U test statistic: *significant at 5% **significant at 10%

Table 7: Type of Standards Employed Dubai Malaysia U.K.

Industrial Service Japanese Local Type % % % % %

1. Maximum-efficiency standards 15 19 33 17 5

2. Achievable but difficult-to-attain 30 25 22 31 44 standards

3. Average past performance standards 47 50 39 37 46

4. Other 8 6 6 15 5

Total 100 100 100 100 100

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industrial-sector companies in Malaysia and the U.K.

LABOR AND MATERIAL STANDARDS

The mechanisms of setting labor and material standards

are reported in Table 6. Nearly nine out of 10 industrial-

sector respondents in Dubai employed standards based

on design/engineering studies, which is comparable to

Japanese companies in Malaysia (81%). These firms

appear to be significantly more scientific in their

approach to standards setting compared to the service

sector in Dubai (48%), local Malaysian companies

(46%), and U.K.-based companies (51%). Service-sector

companies in Dubai predominantly used “average of

historic usage method” (76%).

Dubai companies—both industrial and service-

oriented—favored “average past performance” as the

type of standard employed in their costing—47% and

50%, respectively. To be realistic and attainable, howev-

er, cost standards should reflect both “past perfor-

mance” and “expected future performance.” This is

supported in our study because companies favored both

past performance and expected future performance

through design and engineering studies (Table 6).

Dubai industries have become more international in

their operations and hence are facing greater competi-

tion in global markets. Thus one would expect these

companies to review their costing standards frequently

to cope with a changing environment where new prod-

ucts are introduced daily. We found that slightly more

than half of them (52%) conduct reviews semiannually,

Table 8: Frequency of Reviewing Standards Dubai Malaysia U.K.

Industrial Service Japanese Local Frequency % % % % %

1. Monthly or quarterly 17 33 17 24 14

2. Semiannually 52 40 55 18 9

3. Annually 24 27 11 35 68

4. Continuously 5 0 17 15 6

5. When the variances imply that the 2 0 0 8 3 standards have changed

Total 100 100 100 100 100

Table 9: Approaches for Investing Variances Dubai Malaysia U.K.

Industrial Service Japanese Local Approach % % % % %

1. No formal method used (decision 39 50 26 22 48 based on managerial judgment)

2. Where the variance exceeds a specific 19 21 28 33 26 monetary amount

3. Where the variance exceeds a given 35 29 32 33 23 percentage of standard

4. Statistical basis using control charts 7 0 14 12 2 or other statistical method

Total 100 100 100 100 100

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consistent with Japanese respondents in Malaysia

(55%). On the other hand, domestic Malaysian firms

and companies in the U.K. were more apt to review

their costing standards annually at a rate of 35% and

68%, respectively.14

When considered together, the results from Tables 4

through 8 signify that companies in Dubai have not

abandoned standard costing in their management control

decisions. In fact, they have reconfigured existing cost

accounting systems to suit their dynamic needs and objec-

tives. These findings are consistent with those from stud-

ies of Malaysian companies by Sulaiman and colleagues.

AN EXAMINATION OF VARIANCES

Generally, managers are concerned about variations in

costs, materials usage, and sales—especially those out-

side acceptable ranges. Table 9 shows how companies

approach investigating such variances. In Dubai, 39% of

industrial companies and 50% of service companies

base their costing decisions on “managerial judgment,”

compared to roughly half of U.K. companies and one-

fourth of local and Japanese companies in Malaysia. On

the other hand, 35% of firms in Dubai’s industrial sector

and 29% in its service sector dug deeper for answers

when the variance exceeded a given percentage of stan-

dard, which is similar to the rates found in the

Malaysian and U.K. studies.

Table 10 shows the importance of variances for con-

trol purposes. Some 95% of industrial companies in

Dubai were extremely sensitive to variances in sales

volume, 90% to variances in materials prices, and 87%

to variances in sales price. These responses were similar

to those in the Malaysian studies. Also, the service sec-

tor in Dubai emphasized monitoring variances in sales

volume but with wage rates and labor efficiency consid-

ered very important as well.

STANDARD COSTING IS ALIVE AND WELL

Our study enables us to add to the existing costing liter-

ature in general, and the United Arab Emirates in par-

ticular, and to compare our findings with those of

previous studies about the manufacturing sector. Our

key findings are as follows:

◆ Seventy-seven percent of the companies in

Table 10: Importance of Particular Variances for Control Purposes

Dubai Malaysia U.K.

Industrial Service Japanese Local Approach % % % % %

1. Material price 90** 80 94 92 69

2. Material usage 81 31 82 93 66

3. Material mix 66 36 46 52 35

4. Material yield 76 33 60 55 52

5. Wage rate 48 67** 82 70 36

6. Labor efficiency 58 67 88 69 65

7. Variable overhead efficiency 74 40 59 71 32

8. Overhead expenditure 83 25 69 73 69

9. Fixed overhead volume 61 23 50 54 28

10. Fixed overhead volume efficiency 42 21 39 52 18

11. Fixed overhead volume capacity 68 31 54 69 18

12. Sales volume 95 81* 100 90 70

13. Sales price 87** 74 92 91 69

Mann-Whitney U test statistic: *significant at 5% **significant at 10%

8M A N A G E M E N T A C C O U N T I N G Q U A R T E R L Y W I N T E R 2 0 1 0 , V O L . 1 1 , N O . 2

Dubai’s industrial sector use standard costing

compared to 39% in the service sector.

◆ “Inventory costing” is the most important func-

tion of standard costing for the industrial sector,

while “aid to budgeting” is the most prevalent

costing function for the service sector.

◆ The industrial-sector companies prefer standards

based on design/engineering studies, but the ser-

vice sector favors average historic usage.

◆ Forty-five percent of the industrial companies and

44% of service companies in Dubai use “maxi-

mum efficiency standards” and “achievable but

difficult to attain standards” in practice.

◆ Industries in Dubai are most significantly sensi-

tive to variances in materials prices (90%) and

sales prices (87%). Although service-sector compa-

nies are also sensitive to costs of materials (80%),

they are focused on variances in sales volume

(81%) and wage rates (67%) as well.

In light of our robust results, we surmise that new

costing techniques such as ABC, JIT, the balanced

scorecard, and target costing have not made standard

costing obsolete, which is consistent with findings of

studies conducted in various countries. Companies

probably will continue to be attracted to standard cost-

ing and variance analysis, regardless of their size, geo-

graphical location, and sector. Standard costing’s

simplicity and affordability, in addition to its flexibility

in accommodating state-of-the-art technology, may

explain its persistence. Another plausible explanation is

that companies use two or more cost accounting meth-

ods to build more powerful integrated information sys-

tems according to various criteria and different

categories.

Also, what about best practices? Even though the

majority of chief cost accountants in Dubai earned

diplomas from schools in developed countries, it seems

that management accounting practices in Dubai have

not reached stages 3 (reduction of waste in resources)

and 4 (creation of company value) of the International

Federation of Accountants’ (IFAC) Sustainability

Framework. As in Malaysia, the focus in Dubai remains

primarily on a mix of cost determination (stage 1) and

management planning and control (stage 2). (The Sus-

tainability Framework addresses four perspectives in

bringing together all critical areas required to manage a

sustainable organization successfully: business strategy,

internal management, financial investors, and other

stakeholders. The Professional Accountants in Business

Committee developed the Framework because it

believes that professional accountants need to adapt to

a world in which sustainability is the key to long-term

business performance and need to understand how, in

their diverse functions in organizations, they play a sig-

nificant role. IFAC notes that, in clearly defining the

different facets of sustainability, the Sustainability

Framework can help professional accountants grasp

all the important aspects of sustainability that they

may encounter, directly or indirectly, and that will be

important to their organizations. All pertinent

information about the Framework can be found at

www.ifac.org/PAIB under Sustainability Framework.)

Care must be exercised in generalizing our findings,

however. Although the survey was sent to companies of

all sizes—measured in terms of total assets or number

of employees—the majority of responses were from

small and medium-size firms. Thus we cannot expand

our findings to large companies. At the academic level,

this research shows that standard costing is still a valu-

able tool for management accounting curricula, at least

for the UAE. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to

determine whether our findings hold for other Gulf

Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This, along with

the identification of contingent factors underlying the

persistence of standard costing, is the objective of our

future research. ■

Attiea Marie, Ph.D., is associate professor and chair of the

department of accounting in the College of Business Adminis-

tration at the University of Dubai. Dr. Marie can be reached

at (+97) 1422-42-472, ext. 608, or amarie@ud.ac.ae.

Walid Cheffi, Ph.D., is assistant professor, Rouen Business

School, Rouen, Normandy, France. You can reach Dr. Cheffi

at walid.cheffi@rouenbs.fr.

Rosmy Jean Louis, Ph.D., is assistant professor in the

Department of Economics and Finance, Vancouver Island

University, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. You can

9M A N A G E M E N T A C C O U N T I N G Q U A R T E R L Y W I N T E R 2 0 1 0 , V O L . 1 1 , N O . 2

reach Dr. Jean Louis at (250) 753-3245 or

Rosmy.JeanLouis@viu.ca.

Ananth Rao, Ph.D., is associate professor and dean of the

College of Business Administration at the University of

Dubai. You can contact Dr. Rao at (+97) 1420-72-618 or

arao@ud.ac.ae.

ENDNOTES 1 Richard K. Fleischman and Thomas N. Tyson, “The Evolu-

tion of Standard Costing in the U.K. and U.S.: From Decision Making to Control,” Abacus, March 1998, pp. 92-119.

2 Don R. Hansen and Maryanne M. Mowen, Managerial Account- ing, Thomson/South-Western, Mason, Ohio, 2002.

3 Mike Lucas, “Standard Costing and Its Role in Today’s Manufacturing Environment,” Management Accounting, April 1997, p. 32.

4 Ashish Garg, Debashis Ghosh, James Hudick, and Chuen Nowacki, “Roles and Practices in Management Accounting Today,” Strategic Finance, July 2003, pp. 30-35. The survey found that more than 76% of members of the Institute of Man- agement Accountants (IMA®) use traditional costing tools such as standard costing.

5 David Lyall and Carol Graham, “Managers’ Attitudes to Cost Information,” Management Decision, Vol. 31, Issue 8, 1993, pp. 41-45.

6 Chris Guilding, Dawne Lamminmaki, and Colin Drury, “Bud- geting and Standard Costing Practices in New Zealand and the United Kingdom,” The International Journal of Accounting, Vol. 33, Issue 5, 1998, pp. 569-588.

7 Maliah Sulaiman, Nik Nazli Nik Ahmad, and Norhayati Mohd Alwi, “Management Accounting Practices in Selected Asian Countries: A Review of the Literature,” Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 19, Issue 4, 2004, pp. 493-508; Maliah Sulaiman, Nik Nazli Nik Ahmad, and Norhayati Mohd Alwi, “Is Stan- dard Costing Obsolete? Empirical Evidence from Malaysia,” Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 20, Issue 2, 2005, pp. 109-124.

8 It is worth noting that even if we were to differentiate between foreign and local companies by surveying companies from the free zones and the rest of Dubai, we would have a sampling problem because the number of companies in the free zones is by far lower than the number of companies in the rest of Dubai.

9 The survey was conducted from May 2007 to April 2008, and questionnaires were e-mailed to 400 companies listed in the Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI) 2006-2007 Directory. The response rate was poor even after four reminders within six months. The questionnaires were resent by mail to the heads of the management accounting depart- ments of 270 companies, of which, 140 companies were from the industrial sector and 130 from the services and retail sector. A series of follow-ups resulted in a response rate of 41% and 32%, respectively.

10 Colin Drury, Steve Braund, and Paul Osborne, A Survey of Management Accounting Practices in U.K. Manufacturing Companies, Chartered Association of Certified Accountants, London, England, 1993.

11 A sample of the questionnaire is available from the authors.

12 A criterion of ≤500 MDhs is considered for treating such com- panies as SMEs.

13 One of the issues related to the collection of primary data is the likelihood that the survey questionnaires that were received late might indicate no responses or unreliable responses because managers might fill out the questionnaire just for the sake of it because of their preoccupation. In other words, these late responses may not reflect what is actually happening at the firm, let alone the current practice. We tested for the existence of a nonresponse bias using the Mann- Whitney U test by selecting the first 10 and the last 10 responses. We computed the mean response scores for each question to test whether the differences in the means were sta- tistically significant across the two subsamples. Our analysis rejected the null hypothesis to conclude that our data does not suffer from the nonresponse bias.

14 This may be due to the fact that the U.K. study was conduct- ed in the beginning of the 1990s when the use of information technology was very limited.

FURTHER READING Mohammed Al-Omiri and Colin Drury, “A Survey of Factors

Influencing the Choice of Product Costing Systems in U.K. Organizations,” Management Accounting Research, December 2007, pp. 399-424.

Trond Bjørnenak, “Diffusion and Accounting: The Case of ABC in Norway,” Management Accounting Research, March 1997, pp. 3-17.

Robert A. Bonsack, “Does Activity-Based Costing Replace Stan- dard Costing?” Journal of Cost Management, Winter 1991, pp. 46-47.

James A. Brimson, “An ABC Retrospective: ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…,’” Cost Management, March/April 2007, pp. 45-47.

Carole B. Cheatham and Leo R. Cheatham, “Redesigning Cost Systems: Is Standard Costing Obsolete?” Accounting Horizons, December 1996, pp. 23-31.

Colin Drury, Steve Braund, and Paul Osborne, A Survey of Manage- ment Accounting Practices in U.K. Manufacturing Companies, Char- tered Association of Certified Accountants, London, England, 1993.

Richard K. Fleischman and Thomas N. Tyson, “The Evolution of Standard Costing in the U.K. and U.S.: From Decision Making to Control,” Abacus, March 1998, pp. 92-119.

Ashish Garg, Debashis Ghosh, James Hudick, and Chuen Nowacki, “Roles and Practices in Management Accounting Today,” Strategic Finance, July 2003, pp. 30-35.

Chris Guilding, Dawne Lamminmaki, and Colin Drury, “Budget- ing and Standard Costing Practices in New Zealand and the United Kingdom,” The International Journal of Accounting, May 1998, pp. 569-588.

Don R. Hansen and Maryanne M. Mowen, Managerial Accounting, Thomson/South-Western, Mason, Ohio, 2002.

Ronald W. Hilton, Managerial Accounting: Creating Value in a Dynam- ic Business Environment, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, Boston, Mass., 2002.

Toshiro Hiromoto, “Another Hidden Edge: Japanese Manage- ment Accounting,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 1988, pp. 22-26.

10M A N A G E M E N T A C C O U N T I N G Q U A R T E R L Y W I N T E R 2 0 1 0 , V O L . 1 1 , N O . 2

John Innes and Falconer Mitchell, “A Survey of Activity-Based Costing in the U.K.’s Largest Companies,” Management Account- ing Research, June 1995, pp. 137-153.

International Federation of Accountants, International Management Accounting Practice Statement: Management Accounting Concepts, IFAC, New York, N.Y., 1998.

H. Thomas Johnson, Relevance Regained: From Top-Down Control to Bottom-Up Empowerment, Free Press, New York, N.Y., 1992.

P. L. Joshi, “The International Diffusion of New Management Accounting Practices: The Case of India,” Journal of Interna- tional Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Spring 2001, pp. 85-109.

H. Thomas Johnson and Robert S. Kaplan, Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass., 1987.

Yutaka Kato, “Target Costing Support Systems: Lessons from Leading Japanese Companies,” Management Accounting Research, March 1993, pp. 33-47.

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