توجه بر همانندسازی نیوزیلند از اینز و همکار،بررسی هزینه یابی بر مبنای فعالیت انگلستان

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a well known technique for costing products and providing management information. This note reports the results of a faithful replication in New Zealand (NZ) of Innes et al.’s 1999 UK survey of ABC usage and a comparison of the results of the two surveys. Adoption rates were found to be similar, with NZ companies showing slightly lower rates of implementation of ABC than UK companies. However, once they had implemented the method, NZ companies demonstrated greater commitment to ABC across more areas of the firm than UK companies. ABC systems in NZ tended to display less complexity than their UK counterparts. Strong correlations were found in the different uses of ABC by industry sector, but there were contrasting perceptions on the success and importance of some ABC applications. This study provides an insight into ABC in NZ, data on trends in ABC experiences between two countries of widely differing size and geographic location, and suggestions for further research.

The rationale for the replication study reported in this note is twofold. First, apart from limited surveys conducted by Cotton (1993) and Lowe (1994), no data exist on the use of activity-based costing (ABC) in New Zealand (NZ). Second, there was a desire to carry out a replication of a prior survey in a different location. Most survey research to date have provided only evidence of ABC adoption at one location and one point in time. The exception is Innes et al. (2000), who replicated in 1999 their survey of large United Kingdom companies carried out in 1994 (Innes and Mitchell, 1995, Innes and Mitchell, 1997 and Innes, 1999). This note summarizes some empirical evidence of trends in two widely diverse locations in the practical consideration, adoption and use of ABC. The note is based upon a comparison of the 1999 UK survey with a NZ survey carried out by the authors in 2001. The NZ survey instrument was a replica of that used in the UK. The study reported in this note provides new evidence on the usage of ABC in NZ and was the first replication of the Innes and Mitchell study outside the UK.1 It is recognized that there were differences in the population characteristics of the NZ and UK firms in the surveys. The most obvious difference is in the size of the firms. No specific questions about the size of firms were included in either survey, but it is noted that the NZ population included a number of small organizations not quoted on the NZ Stock Exchange, whereas the UK survey population consisted of firms in the Times 1000. The average capitalization of all firms quoted on the London Stock Exchange is larger than that of firms quoted on the NZ Stock Exchange. It is reasonable to conclude that the average size of firms responding to the NZ survey was significantly less than the average size of firms responding to the UK survey.